After listening to Lawrence Lessig the other day, I started thinking about remixing and how it’s interesting, in different contexts. When talking about remixing you often hear about examples like the ones Lessig mentioned.

Thinking about it today, a more interesting theme of remixing (in a non-copyright related way) is when it’s done in casual and less advanced forms. Perhaps something that could be described as lo-fi remixing of content.

Let’s look at an example. A really good meme is basically a story or situation put in many different contexts. From the Kanye-meme you’ll have hundreds of these kind of images.

But you also have tweets like this (one of the best tweets of all time).

The meme is providing a new frame to an existing situation. The obvious limitations of the meme-frame creates distinct rules in which it’s easy and fast to play with.

Yesterday I stumbled over a fantastic piece of storytelling on Flickr, and another example. It’s a gallery curated by Britta Gustafsson (Dreamyshade). She is using existing Flickr photos to compose an alternative Blade Runner narrative in contemporary San Fransisco. This is a perfect example of a kind of lo-fi storytelling that emerges from limitiations. Through the gallery functionality Flickr enables users to access and play around with existing content. Building, not one, but many possibilities to remix content. And this could both be done through the more advanced way through the API, but also through less advanced and casual functionality.

So, how does this apply to business?

Business and brands needs different Kanye-memes. Something that gets played with, distributed and talked about over and over again.

Best Buy, Guardian, Tesco (soon), and Amazon are all business that allow for their products to be played with. To be spread and messed with, often through their API’s. What Amazon does better is to enable people and organizations of different levels of engagement and knowledge to have the freedom of playing and distribute their products.

Amazon have also been able to create memes through their system. By having comments and related products combination on all products. This weirdness in their system let people create memes such as for example The Three Wolf Shirt .

Taking inspiration from the Dandelion theory provided by Cory Doctorow. There is no point to feel an attachment to your products. They are just another commodity. Instead try to create narratives and functionality that provides different frames for them. Make them available to play, alter and remix with. In all kinds of ways. It’s not about the product, instead the product is just another by-product of a more interesting theme.

So accept that your product often, if not always, is a commodity. And instead of trying to make it something else, create different set of rules on around it that enables customers, partners and others to play with it in different ways. Then your product will have an even greater chance in discovering a new value somewhere, somehow, to someone, which you in turn can explore the capitalization of.