co>innovative

The entire production chain is being opened up, ever so slowly and minutely. Small scale design, manufacture, and distribution - in units as few as 1 - have been decoupled and are available to anyone, anywhere.

The latest example of which is Ponoko (via MadeForOn), out of the recently productive New Zealand (see: Flight of the Conchords). Essentially it works like this: Anyone can design a product, send the design to Ponoko, and they send the finished physical product to you. Pretty cool so far, but eMachineShop does similar work. However, you will also release and sell your design on Ponoko’s website. Nothing is built until a customer buys your design, which Ponoko builds and distributes, and you get a cut. Although the term is overused, it seems this is another case of the long tail at work: essentially it is limitless inventory and designs. (I imagine pricing will be an issue. Who decides how much to charge? Will Ponoko be able to easily calculate their cost of production for various items?) Users will even be able to purchase designs and build the objects for themselves, perhaps they could employing a home fab machine or computer controlled laser cutter.

Extrapolating from this, perhaps the future could look like this:

Step 1: Anyone makes a design. In the future, perhaps you will be able to use multiple design tools, producing a standardized file. Maybe: Google sketchup, CAD software, eMachineShop’s design tool, etc. Design departments become decoupled from manufacturing companies and can range from a guy tinkering at home alone to a highly experience, large team.

Step 2: Release the design into the wild. Here you have the choice of doing a number of things: release it into the public domain or creative commons, sell it through a broker/aggreggator like Ponoko, put it up for bid by manufacturers, etc.

Step 3: Customers, whether they be individuals, communities, or retailers, then decide how they would like to have their product built: make it themselves, have a local manufacturer produce it, or order it from a manufacturer that specializes in the type of widget you need made. When buying a design for commercial purposes or medium scale manufacture, buyers will be able to purchase a number of licenses corresponding to the number of finished products.

Designs are decoupled and freely available to anyone (or for a fee). These designs can then be manufactured anywhere. Some items will become popular and others will be made by a handful of farmers in the developing world who need an extremely specialized tool. (Fab machines are becoming cheap and easy enough to build such that local manufacture of specialized items is possible in the developing world).

Anyone with an idea, some design skills, and 0 money can now test out physical product ideas on the market.

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Open Source Car hopes to design and develop a car over the web. This falls right in line with the original concept I was focusing on around crowdsourcing design and development of physical products, but it is about 469 steps down the line in terms of complexity. It will likely be a great learning experience, but first, it seems, companies should focus on figuring out how to involve crowds in co-development of simpler products. (Such as say… the design of products… like laser etching on a Mac, for example.) A car is just about the most complex type of product one can develop for a consumer — when you factor in sourcing, regulations, safety concerns, etc.

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Brilliant research by this Finnish fella. Exactly what I have been saying, but more… concise and professional-like. I totally buy into open and crowdsourced innovation, but, there is still a solid place for the old style. Case in point: iPhone, iPod, MacBook… really anything Apple does. It’s very secretive with it’s creations and generally comes out with a brilliant, simple design that gets to what consumers always needed without knowing they needed it.

Since I am not a Jobs, I am more drawn to the crowdsourced and open innovation model, bringing in customers and the crowd whenever possible. Apple is the exception, outside innovation should be the rule. Why limit yourself to the ideas within your company or network of partners?

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Ideastorm.com is a perfect example of what the big companies are doing around this area. Dell is soliciting ideas for products and services they should offer, anyone can vote on and discuss the best ones, and, of course, the most popular might find its way into a real product. I’ll have to add them to the list of customer innovative companies. Like I’ve said in the past, I want to try to figure out the best way to apply this type of thing from the ground up, involving customers in as many aspects of development and marketing as possible… Haven’t quite figured it out yet.

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For a long time I have had an intense interest in:

• Social computing/Web 2.0
• Crowdsourcing
• Great design
• Radically open business
• The world is flat/outsourcing/the ability for tiny companies to outsource/freelance what in the past only large companies could
• Entrepreneurship in general

One day, after following these topics over several years, I was struck by an idea about how I could bring all of these together. I was still waiting to hear from several B-schools, but I decided to quit my job anyway, in order to start a project centered around this. I had originally intended to work on how I could apply social computing and crowdsourcing to physical product design: what is the next step in terms of product configuration and design complexity along the lines of Threadless? Along the same lines, some other folks are working on just that: Cambrian House and Crowdspirit. Very interested to see how those two develop (Cambrian has yet to develop physical products, focusing instead on crowdsourced software ideas and Crowdspririt won’t be launching until this summer).

A few other examples of crowdsourcing type projects: A Swarm of Angels (movie financing), Sell A Band (funding to produce an album), Ringside Startup (funding and idea voting for an online startup).

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