Taking a break from the multi-part series, I thought I would cover a bunch of interesting goings on in the areas of crowdsourcing, lead users, and outside innovation. Read and enjoy.
Eric von Hippel speaks at MIT about Lead Users (Video: Part 1 and Part 2):
Lead users in certain segments are working together to drive the [...]
Listening to customers is nothing new, but the technology and transparency it enables are. Recently, companies like Dell, Starbucks, and SalesForce have implemented forum-like sites for users to submit, discuss, and vote on product enhancements and product extensions. (The technology under the hood of Starbucks’ site is actually provided by SalesForce, called SalesForce Ideas.) This [...]
Extremely cool and definitely effective, Crowdfunding is a viable application of these principles. Of course it is: it’s been going on for centuries via investing in companies and projects — but now it’s so much easier and transparent of a process. No longer focused on commercial enterprises, any enterprise in need of funds can connect the long tail of people interested in a particular topic, play, artist, film, event, political candidate, even a niche knitting and crocheting site to bring together small amounts of money to raise what is needed. Raising money from fans to record an album, for example, would have been prohibitively difficult in the past, but now a band can easily offer free downloads, take payment, show progress, and keep fans abreast of developments.
I lack a specific definition or term for what I have been writing about here — mainly because there isn’t one. “Crowdsourcing” comes close, but it is a bit constraining in that it connotes outsourcing work to the crowd, which is only part of the story. Thus, in light of that, I will be posting a series covering the various aspects of whatever the hell this is that I am talking about with examples of each portion in action. It will by no means be exhaustive, but it should provide a good overview of some interesting orgs that are leveraging these principles.
