Towards a Reputation Economy: How Openness and Transparency Become a Central Business Strategy for Cultural Heritage

Robert SteinDeputy Director for Research,Technology, and Engagement

TOWARDS A REPUTATION ECONOMY

How Openness and Transparency Become a

Central Business Strategy for Cultural Heritage

Flickr Credit ~rednuht

WHAT IS A

REPUTATION

ECONOMY?

Flickr Credit ~rednuht

THE REPUTATION ECONOMY

But here's the interesting paradox: The reputation economy creates an incentive to be more open, not less. Since Internet commentary is inescapable, the only way to influence it is to be part of it. Being transparent, opening up, posting interesting material frequently and often is the only way to amass positive links to yourself and thus to directly influence your Googleable reputation.

Putting out more evasion or PR puffery won't work, because people will either ignore it and not link to it - or worse, pick the spin apart and enshrine those criticisms high on your Google list of life.

Clive Thompson, “The See-Through CEO”WIRED Magazine - Issue 15.04, March, 2007

SUPPLYDEMAND

PURCHASING DECISIONS?

WHAT DRIVES

Perception of Product Perception of Company0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

2011 Forbes Reputation Survey

PurchasingAdvocacy

Source http://www.forbes.com/2011/06/08/reputation-economy-stupid.html

79% of HR

professionals use

online reputation in their

hiring processSource: Microsoft – 2010, http://bit.ly/cPsOXX Flickr Credit ~ helenasicily

Flickr Credit ~altus

THE REPUTATION

ECONOMY EXISTS

Driven by:- Rise in access to information- Rise in public awareness to that fact- Rise in a culture of participation

Flickr Credit ~adforce1

REPUTATIONAND CULTURAL HERITAGE



Attendance is DISCRETIONARY and NOT prescriptive of LONG-TERM success



Funding is increasingly SCARCE and driven by SOCIAL IMPACT



Philanthropy is fueled by RELATIONSHIP and PAST PERFORMANCE



There is no outside world anymore, just a world. one that is blogged, Facebooked, Twittered, and utterly porous. The extent to which we can control our image is directly proportionate to our honesty about ups and downs in a context that we can to some degree define

-Maxwell L. Anderson

But, this is just about

marketing and PR stuff,

right?

source ~donsolo


AND SOCIAL CAPITAL


AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to the properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called “civic virtue.” The difference is that social capital calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a sense network of reciprocal social relations. A society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital.

Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, 2000

IS OUR SOCIAL CAPITAL

BANKRUPT ALREADY?

Flickr Credit ~swamibu

REPUTATION HAS

MANY FACETS

PUBLIC

PROFESSIONAL

FUNDERS

TRANSPARENCY

COLLABORATION

SOCIAL CAPITAL

AUTHORITY

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Strategies of…

Lead to…

SHARING

Trans-par-en-cy:

“The full accurate and timelydisclosure of information”

-Wall Street Wordshttp://www.dictionary.com

Flickr Credit: ~marcomagrini

WHAT IS

TRANSPARENCY?

IF YOU CAN’T AVOID IT…

EMBRACE IT!

transparency

kalexanderson/

Some facts About the IMA

THE INDIANAPOLIS

MUSEUM OF ART

152 ACRES

300 STAFF

127 YEARS

Enrich Permanent Collection

THE INDIANAPOLIS

MUSEUM OF ART

428,000 VISITORS

1M WEB VISITORS

54,000 OBJECTS

IMA’S CHALLENGES

“The Indianapolis Museum of Art might be the web-smartest museum in America, and its blog is one of my favorite daily reads”

– Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes

Launch: Sept 2007

Goals:SimplicityDeep DivesWorkflowFlexibility

IMA DASHBOARD

wWHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?

“Of course, such systems [dashboards] raise a rather vexing challenge: what, exactly, are the few key indicators you would need to watch to monitor your success? It's this question that actually proves to be more effective than the dashboard tool itself. To know what you should monitor, you need to know what you're trying to do, and you also have to define what success looks like (more people? happier people? more art? better reviews? prolific artists?).”

Andrew Taylor, “Keeping an Eye on Dashboards”, The Artful Manager Blog, October 20, 2006,.

WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?

“The root of the problem is that there is no longer an agreed-upon method of measuring achievement… While many challenges beset art museum leaders today, finding a way to measure performance is accordingly among the field’s most urgent… Without generally accepted metrics, arts organizations will have more and more trouble making a case for themselves.”

Maxwell L. Anderson, “Metrics of Success in Art Museums”, Getty Leadership Institute (2004),.

WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?

http://www.getty.museum/leadership/compleat_leader/downloads/metrics.pdf

RESULTSFOR THE IMA

GOOD PRESS

WELL RECEIVED BY PEERS

INSPIRED OTHERS

CLARIFYING GOALS

OVERCOMING FEAR

COMPARE AND DESPAIR

OVERCOMING FEAR

ACTUAL FAILURE

Flickr Credit ~sziszo

Flickr Credit: ~carowallis1

WHY FAILING PUBLICLY IS GOOD

HIGHLIGHTS SUCCESS

DISPELLS ASSUMPTION OF SPIN

DOCUMENTS A NEED FOR CHANGE

BENCHMARKING

“Thus, benchmarking has many direct and indirect benefits: increasing the impact of mission-related activities, raising internal standards, improving performance, attracting more funding, uncovering (and fixing) hidden weaknesses, and overall, improving the public face of the organization.”

Jason SaulBenchmarking for nonprofits

Fieldstone Alliance, 2004, pg 12

STATISTICAL

SURVEY

AAMD

IMA’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRETTHE DASHBOARD IS FOR STAFF

HOW CAN MUSEUMS

PURSUE EXCELLENCE?


W. EDWARDS DEMING

KaizenKAI = change or to correct

ZEN = good

KAIZEN = a system of continuous

improvement


EXECUTE

EVALUATE

REPEAT

TRANSPARENCY

COLLABORATION

SOCIAL CAPITAL

AUTHORITY


Strategies of…

Lead to…

SHARING

AUTHORITYHOW DO YOU ESTABLISH

AUTHORITARIAN

AUTHORITATIVE

VS

JULIA CHILD

Flickr Credit ~kevharb

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Julia’s Kitchen at

Flickr Credit ~jasoneppink

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGECultural Heritage &

Visitor Inclusion

• No offense to Bruce, but who doesn’t want this?

source ~victoriapeckham

IMA’S STRATEGIES FOR

COLLABORATION

Steve.MuseumExploring Applications of Social Tagging for Museums

Founded in 2005

2006 Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Research Grant

2008 IMLS NLG Steve In Action

2008 IMLS NLG Research Grant T3: Text, Tags, Trust

Open Source software supporting tagging in museums

33 Partners• MoMA• National Gallery of Art, USA• Metropolitan Museum of Art• Museo Nacional del Prado• Van Gogh Museum• Museum Boijmans Van

Beuningen

SAY HELLO TO

TAPTAP

Museums• Balboa Park Online Collaborative• Dallas Museum of Art• The Eiteljorg Museum of Native

American and Western Art• Indianapolis Museum of Art• The Metropolitan Museum of Art• Minnesota Historical Society• Museum of Contemporary Art,

San Diego• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

• National Air and Space Museum• The Smithsonian

Vendors• AdLib Systems• GuideByCell• Imagineear• MyTours• NOUS Guides• Tristan Systems

MFA Boston

Gemeente Museum Den Haag

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative

RESULTSFOR THE IMA

$3.2M GRANTS SINCE 2006

$1.2M CONSULTING SINCE 2009

+89% WEB TRAFFIC SINCE 2008

EXCEEDS EXHIBITION REVENUE BY > 50% IN FY12

DECLINING

SOCIAL CAPITAL?

Putnam suggests in Bowling Alone that the individualizing nature of technology is at least partially reponsible for an observed decline in social capital.

I DISAGREE

CULTURAL HERITAGE

NEEDS THE REPUTATION

ECONOMY

THANK YOU!@rjstein