” In essence, I’ve defined “facilitators” as organisations that exist to solve their own problems; and “institutions” as organisations that exist to solve their own problems at their customers‘ expense. To provide some more context, I’ve extracted the following characteristics that I believe mark an organisation as one or the other. I’m interested in any comments you have.

Facilitators:

• Exist to solve customers’ problems;

• Do not presume to ‘own’ the relationship with people who use their products;

• View the world through the eyes and experiences of people who use their products;

• Are prepared to work with complimentary businesses to support their users’ end-to-end activities (including linking to material produced by others);

• Are highly adaptable and responsive to criticism;

• Allow ideas to develop from staff and users bottom-up, generating passion and connection amongst them;

• See uniqueness, change and adaptability as a source of competitive advantage;

• Interact well with users in open forums;

• Are ‘free-rider tolerant‘;

• Work to simplify their products and users’ experience;

• Seek to make the world a better place in which to live, addressing the impact of their activities on the wider world;

• See users as the controllers of their relationship.

Institutions:

• Exist to solve their own problems at the expense of ‘their customers’;

• View the world through the lens of their own products (whether goods or services);

• Resist criticism and change – believing that their own processes, judgement and publicity should prevail;

• Impose their own views on staff and ‘their’ customers, top-down;

• Run with the herd to retain competitive advantage;

• Interact poorly with users (if at all) in open forums, experiencing ‘vicious cycles’ of adverse publicity;

• Are ‘free-rider resistant‘;

• Demand that ‘their’ customers must become more capable if their products or experiences are to improve;

• Deliberately adopt complex pricing, conditions and ‘pressure’ techniques in their sales and marketing activities;

• Rely on cross-subsidies to distort the attractiveness of new products;

• Mandate the use of their own add-on services;

• Avoid addressing the impact of their activities on the wider world;

• Regard themselves as controlling the relationship with users