Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Institutionalizing Innovation

I wish it had this one more feature !!
You have bought a new camera and realized that it should have had that one more feature that would make it perfect
. Or thought about this intresting mix for the breakfast cerals while at the table this morining.

Manufacturers crave for such ideas and consumers have no where to go to tell thier ideas to the manufactures. Often manufacturers look for ideas inside thier company and fail to find many really good ones.

In the recent past manufactures have looked towards consumers to help innovate. However these practices seem adhoc. A few succeses were coverd in the economist -> http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3749354. Talks about GE, BMW and Staples benefiting from consumer led innovation.

How are New Ideas Born

1. When people think diffrently
2. The product\service is used is ways other that thought of by the creators
3. When lots of people use it
4. When the consumers grow beyond the capabilities of the product
5. When you see other intresting products and mix and match them in your mind, to create that new imaginary product.


And how can the Sony's and Kellogs of the world know this from their consumers.......... There is NO WAY. At least as far as I have seen on the Internet

The Perfect Macth Web 2.o and Consumer led Innovation
Web 2.0 suggests co-creation of value by the user community and the famous network effect. This simply means that the total value of the system increases as more and more people start using the system. Take Fikcr or StumpleUpon as an example. These applications are only tools but the real value comes from people using it.

While Consumers are the best source of Ideas for any product/service, the web2.0 concept can be used to create an application that can allow consumers to suggest what is right\wrong with the product\service and how it can be improved. Manufacturers\Service Providers on the other hand can work togther with consumers who suggest these ideas to improve their offerings. In the meanwhile the manufactures can provide incentives like gifts\prizes to consumers for providing vauable suggestions. Consider your innovation team of a size of 50 Million people instead of 5-10 people thinks alike and with hugh pay checks.

Creating the next generation Consumer Innovation and Interaction Platform
The system can be a simple web site that
- Allows consumers to suggests good\bad things wrt to products\services
- Allows consumers to suggest ideas that would help create new products and target them to manufacturers
- Allows manufacturers to incentivise ideas and provide the consumers with benefits for their idea


Some one out there intrested in this concept??...... You can get in touch with me if you would like to explore this concept further. Just Leave a note here .....


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Chandan, just bumped into your site from Nipun's blog. I think this idea (feedback to company) is pretty cool and sounds very promising and futuristic, considering...


Eric Von Hippel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is about to publish a book, “Democratising Innovation” (MIT Press). “User innovation has always been around,” he says. “The difference is that people can no longer deny that it is happening.” Indeed, it is “very likely that the majority of innovation happens this way,” says Mr Von Hippel. Such innovation, he says, has a “much higher rate of success”.
from the article.

Another interesting aspect is this...

One really exciting thing about user-led innovation is that customers seem willing to donate their creativity freely, says Mr Von Hippel. This may be because it is their only practical option: patents are costly to get and often provide only weak protection. Some people may value the enhanced reputation and network effects of freely revealing their work more than any money they could make by patenting it.


This is pretty much the spirit of the open source movement... though of course the companies would benefit. So an infrastructure/framework could be developed, and companies could be charged for registering in it, while its kept free for consumers, with consumers being awarded points, etc.

As of now I can't say if I can implement it myself but maybe we can talk more about it - email me at msanjay75 at gmail dot com.

Chandan said...

Sanjay,
I have sent an email to your Gmail ID, Please check.

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Venky said...

hi chandan... sounds a good idea...i have a couple more of them and am from bangalore... my mail id is venkatesh11 at gmail.com can u pass me your email id.