Starbucks: A Company That Embodies the Essence of Groundswell Thinking

At the end of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff present “a day in the life of the ubiquitous groundswell” with a company executive listening to, talking with, supporting and embracing the groundswell, inside and outside of the company. 

Li and Bernoff may as well have been talking about Starbucks.

The coffee chain has often been at the forefront among companies in embracing the groundswell.

In 2008, Starbucks launched MyStarbucksIdea.com. Within 5 years, more than 150,000 ideas had been submitted and 277 ideas had been brought to life, many of which greatly improved the customer experience.

“That’s what accelerates innovation – starting a conversation with your customers and using your skills to understand and exploit their knowledge,” Li and Bernoff wrote.

Infographic via BusinessWire.

This video with Matthew Guiste, Director of Global Social Media at Starbucks, explains that the company was able to act upon and create this idea because of the recession and a downturn in sales.

As Li and Bernoff note, you need to take implementing groundswell strategies step-by-step and have executive support. Because 2008 was a time of struggle for the company, innovators were able to get Starbucks executives to try out groundswell thinking.

With the success of MyStarbucksIdea.com under their belt, the company was able to then try bringing even more groundswell thinking to within their company. Because Starbucks is such a large company, they chose to use existing social media platforms to bring together their employees.

Starbucks Partners has a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram page. They connect hundreds of thousands of staff from Starbucks shops all over the world and the company uses the pages to share news.

This allows Starbucks to “tap into the power of the groundswell of ideas among the people who know best how your business runs, your employees,” as Li and Bernoff suggest.

Starbucks is clearly a company that embodies the essence of groundswell thinking, as stressed in the final chapter of our book.

They’ve been good listeners, they’ve been collaborative, they’ve been opportunistic.

Ultimately, Starbucks truly seems to understand that the groundswell is about person-to-person activity. In their latest venture, Starbucks Stories, the company has built social media pages with the focus of “Stories worth telling—coffee, community, humanity and a better world.” They share press releases about the company, but also real stories about human connection. 

It maybe doesn’t seem like this has much to do with selling coffee, but they are remembering an important aspect of the groundswell and Li and Bernoff note:

“You can take advantage of the groundswell, but it’s the people’s groundswell -- you’re just trying to be a part of it.”

Can you think of other companies using and embracing the groundswell like Starbucks does?