co>innovative

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 manufacturers out of the innovation process.  Companies are freely revealing to others so that others can improve on it. An example of lead users in action: Kitesurfing, which was developed by users.  First, manufacturers stepped in, then Saul Griffith posted his designs online and others did too. Each manufacturer had 1 or 2 engineers, but then aerodynamicists from NASA started joining in and brought their tools with them.  These lead users drove manufacturers back out of the design busines.  Users collaboratively built tools and designs.

Linus’ law: the reason you want a lot of people looking at a problem is that they all look at it in different ways.  Given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow.

Users innovated historically but collaborative user design is becoming so efficient it will drive manufacturers out of design.

Johnny Chung Lee: A perfect example of lead user innovation: 
Not only has he dones these wicked things with nothing more than cheap parts and a Wii, he is the creator of the poor man’s steadycam, and wowed the audience at TED.

Freakin awesome Future of Making Map from the Institute for the Future:
Check this out for an incredible overview of many of the topics and companies covered on this blog.  Categories covered are: Networked artisans (Threadless); Citizen R&D (Lego Mindstorms, Innocentive); Lightweight manufacturing (Ponoko); Personal design and fabrication (reprap); From closed IP to open innovation (theoscarproject.org).

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… so this time I have an excuse for not posting for weeks on end.  And now I’m in New York starting my internship at FiLife, a joint venture between Dow Jones and IAC.  More fabulous co>innovative type content soon.

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How to Laser cut a cake

Ronen Kadushin offers up some Open Designs. Why not download a CAD of a design you like, upload it to Ponoko, and get the parts shipped to you — at a now-reduced price?

To follow on to my last post: A great list of Open Innovation projects and another list of Ideagoras — marketplaces for ideas.

In further comment about whether this is all worth it, whether open innovation and crowdsourcing will work: shouldn’t people be empowered to create what they want more easily? Whether that be through collaborative/crowdsourcing projects that facilitate graphic design, device design, feature improvements, etc.?  I mean, easier creation and distribution of content, designs, and products is what the Internet is made for. The real question: is it a viable business and can it be commercialized?  Of course, everyone asked the same question of free open source software in the early days, but the creation of open source by companies large and small, not to mention the companies who have created quite a business out of servicing and distributing open source, have put those questions to rest.

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My former co-workers at Forrester, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff have completed a book called Groundswell that will be published in April. The book focuses on how firms should understand and work within the social computing environment. They have been blogging about it, discussing it with clients, and generally vetting their thought process throughout. Knowing their research — and of course, being all about the topic — it should be a good read.

A couple of months ago, they posted the winners of Forrester Groundswell awards: company initiatives that successfully highlight key aspects of social computing — listening, talking, energizing, supporting, embracing, managing, and social impact.

Charlene and Josh: best of luck on the book, I’m looking forward to it.

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These guys have done some amazing iPod accessory design work. Mophie (now owned by mStation) also put into practice a concept I have been noodling over for a while now: involving end users in an interative design and voting process to produce innovative, niche products. They first rolled out an early form of what they call their Illuminator process at Macworld 2007. As they put it:

In less than four hours MacWorld attendees doodled over 100 concepts. Over the next three days the community and [chose] three that became actual prototypes at the show.

As I have said before involving users in the design process is not the answer to everything and when done incorrectly can have the potential to churn out total crap that no one wants. But when you take in all of the successful developments over the last year, the possibilities and power of something like this emerge:

• The maturation of online social tools
• Improving online collaboration technology
• Do it yourself product design, build, and/or sell companies such as Ponoko, Big Blue Saw, eMachineShop, Instructables, Crowdspirit, and Mophie.
• Successful crowdsourcing efforts such as A Swarm Of Angels, Crowdspirit, Dell IdeaStorm, Sell A Band, and Threadless.

My prediction: we will see more of this. And someone is going to figure out an awesome way to do it and bring all of these pieces together. .

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I’ll be traveling for the next few weeks, so don’t expect any brilliance until July.

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