Mass Customization & Open Innovation News

Exnovate: New Open Innovation Community Site

Our colleague Wim Vanhaverbeke has initiated a great community service for everyone interested in open innovation: He just has launched Exnovate, an European Network of Excellence on Open & Collaborative Innovation.

Exnovate is just another name for the idea of open innovation that originated from the pioneering work of Henry Chesbrough and other domain experts. The site very much focuses on open innovation in a company setting, with a focus on getting access to technical solution information in the periphery of a firm. The topic of customer co-creation and user innovation (the "Eric Von Hippel School") is not so much in the focus of the site.

What is Wim's idea for Exnovate? In a statement, he says: "Exnovate aims to become a highly visible, leading European network of excellence on managing and oganizing open & collaborative innovation -- a place where OI best practices could be exchanged and where a genuine market for OI expertise would be prepared and organized for all stakeholders."

On the site, I found three features especially useful:

•  A list of case studies on open innovation for teaching
• A list of academic papers on open innovation, most with a link to download (while not comprehensive in the moment, it can become a great collection)
• A list of people working in the field

For companies, there is the possibility to join a company consortia, but this seems to be just in the making. On top, the site has also information for policy makers, service providers, and venture capitalists. Just have a look: http://www.exnovate.org/

Mass Customization Comparison Shopping

Milk or Sugar, the Amsterdam based consumer site with a listing of customizable products, has launched a new service: On the site, you now can compare different offerings in one category. Have a look:

• 3x custom shoes compared
• 3x custom bikes compared
• 3x custom bags compared

Nice idea! When following MoS (or the German site EGOO), I am always surprised about the sheer number of offerings and new comers on the field. It seems that the time is ripe for MC in the BtoC domain.

We are moving. RWTH-TIM at new address

We are moving. Today and tomorrow, our RWTH-TIM research group is moving into our new building in a research park in the suburbs.

The growth of the group within the last two years (from five to 18 people working full time in the group, plus about 25 student assistants and tutors) required that we need new space. And as often, new space only is available in new buildings.

The RWTH has acquired the old headquarters of AIXTRON, an Aachen high-tech company. Among other institutes and research centers, we can move into this building (and we are happy hat we got the former floor where the executive board was situated :-)

Our new colleagues will be material science researchers, civil engineers, textile engineering and electrical engineers -- so we are moving to a space where new technology is developed. While it really is a pity that we have to leave the core building of RWTH's School of Business & Economics, I am excited about these opportunities for cooperation. But most importantly, we will have sufficient space for our own researchers, and a more communicative office environment that should foster communication and creative exchange.

Our new building is close to Ford's European Research Center, Microsoft's Aachen Lab, and many further corporate research centers and start-ups. The building is well connected with many bus lines with the RWTH core campus.

Our new address:

RWTH Aachen, Lehrstuhl Technologie- und Innovationsmanagement
Kackertstraße 15-17, 52072 Aachen, Germany

All phone numbers and e-mail contacts remain the same !!!

How to find us: Go to Contact Section of our homepage. We hope to meet you soon in our new offices!

Customers #1 Source of Innovation, Global Innovation Study Finds

A new innovation report by Grant Thornton International (GT), a consulting and advisory firm, examined the thoughts and attitudes of business executives globally towards innovation. The report is based on a survey conducted by the renowned Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Students, beware: As usual with these kind of reports, it should not be considered as a rigid academic research but more than a snapshot of company perceptions.of its authors. Still, the reports are good starting point for further study. Also, their purpose often is to drive the consulting business

In the GT 2009 report, the role of customers, along with the attitude of companies to their customers, emerges as a defining characteristic. "No longer simply passive recipients of goods and services, customers now help to shape the future of their own consumption." They are now the leading source of innovations globally (41 per cent), more important than anything inside companies, including research and development.

Firms in Asia Pacific are particularly attuned to what their customers want with almost half (48 per cent) of the best innovative ideas coming from customers against 40 per cent in Western Europe and 35 per cent in North America. Globally, heads of business units followed as the best origins of ideas followed by general employees and the inhouse R&D team (both 33 per cent). So the customer is king, then comes the boss, then the R&D team.

The report also asked about the notion of open innovation, broadly defined in the survey as "leveraging both internal and external ideas and information". The answers show an interesting picture: 33 per cent of the companies say they have applied open innovation and will continue to do so, as they regard open innovation as a key for future growth. This figure is lowest in North America (30 per cent) and highest in Western Europe (35 per cent). This seems interesting, but confirms my earlier notion that companies in Europe are better networked and organized in associations and university networks for innovation. But at the same time, a lot of companies also have major concerns against open innovation.

The report's authors draw four main conclusions:

• Pay more attention to what your customers say and their ideas for innovations
• Consider expanding your open innovation projects and working with more third parties
• Look outwards, explore new markets, rather than drawing back into your domestic market
• Capitalise on the great shifts of the age, the move away from carbon-based energy and the emergence of China and India as major trading nations with huge consumer markets.

GT offers the reports for free download here.

I got notice about the GT report by reading a blog posting at Promise, a UK innovation market research and co-creation company. Promise, together with the LSE, also recently published a good report on the status of co-creation and the role of customers in the innovation process.

MCPC 2009: My Personal Conclusions and Learning from this Year's Conference

(updated on Oct. 17) After almost one week of discussions, lectures, keynotes and many personal interactions -- and four long postings about the conference --, what were my key insights from the MCPC 2009 (2009 Conference on Mass Customization & Personalization)?

(1) Don't mention the crisis: While still talking about the economic crises dominates the conversations of many business people, it was no topic at all during the conference. So is mass customization crisis resistant? Well, many of our participants told me that they saw it as unaffected or even an answer.

Take consumer goods. The more conventional retailers are coming under cost pressure, the more they are streamlining their assortments. The less likely it is that customers find exactly what they want -- the larger the appeal of customized offerings. This was a pattern reported frequently from participants from the apparel and clothing sectors. At the same time, mass customization is "affordable" luxury. When I am not sure about the future, I am postponing the purchase of my new car. But I still reward myself by paying a tad more for a pair of customized ski boots. This was a good sign – and a positive mood (To be honest, however, there also may have been a self selection effect: Branches of industry interested in mass customization but affected by the crisis did not show up – and so there was no one to complain).

(2) Configuration Technology: A new generation of customization logic is coming up: While Joe Pine, Lars Hvam, and myself still preach that modularization and product family structures are the key to efficient customization, Dr. Yusel from Certusoft Inc. and Konstantin Krahtov from the Open Experience GmbH both provided presentations that turned the common argumentation upside down:

I normally tell my students that for manufacturing companies mass customization means to move from ETO to MTO or ATO (engineer- => make- or assemble-to-order). But in these presentations, the idea was presented that instead of combining pre-defined modules, the configuration toolkit will engineer the components on the fly in real time. As Dr. Yusel said: "Conventional configurators replace what engineers do. Our system replaces how engineers think." He has implemented his configuration system within large US truck makers with amazing results -- and really opened my eyes to a new way of thinking of configuration. Similar Open Experience from Karlsruhe in Germany. Their vision is that in the end you just doodle what you like, and the system turns this into a component.

Perhaps the future of configuration is indeed beyond arranging pre-defined modules to a product, but developing components and production patterns in real time (you need, however, a very flexible manufacturing system for this).

(3) Customization & Personalization are becoming "the new imperative of business". In our MCPC community, we have to make the connection to industries like financial services, health, computer gaming, media, etc ... All these industries are very much driven by personalization but have not really been part of the mass customization debate (and community) yet.  This is one of my goals for the next 2011 conference: Broaden the conversation of mass customization from the domains where we are today into these new fields of applications.


(4) Customization is the true luxury – no matter the price. There is a long debate about the future of luxury goods. But a repeating theme during the conference was the notion that for many consumers, being able to customize a product is the true luxury, whether it is a chocolate bar for $4 or a custom trunk by Louis Vuitton for $25K.

Positioning mass customization in the "mass market" and regarding it as a "democratization" of manufacturing perhaps has misplaced the concept – and also has communicated it wrongly towards consumers. Even if mass customized goods still should be affordable and should not lift the offering into different market segments, its appeal for consumers still is the luxury and personal service connected with it (see the report about the MCPC 2009 Fashion Lab for more).

Mass customization means to "take away the need of products which are full of stuff and replace it with products full of meaning", as one of the participants of the discussion during the business seminar said. We have plenty of research on this meaning for consumers in mass customization offerings, but still have to find better ways to communicate and transport it to consumers.


Concluding, the MCPC 2009 again was a great experience. It really became a gathering of friends and colleagues, many of them joining the conferences since 2001 and becoming a great community of practice. Our community has started several companies, made important business connections, created many PhDs and master students, and really advanced the thinking in an important field!

What is next?

The next MCPC World Conference will be in October 2011, probably at a convenient East Coast location in the U.S. We will extend the name MCPC to "Mass Customization, Personalization & Co-Creation" to acknowledge the larger scope of the conference.

In 2010, a number of focused, smaller events will take place:

• We are planning again a German language MC event. My idea is to focus on the new wave of entrepreneurs that we find in Germany in the moment.
• I envision a similar event for the US, perhaps in connection with the next MIT Smart Customization Seminar, planned for late Spring 2010.
• Stefan from "Milk & Sugar" is planning a MC event in the Netherlands.
• Finland will continue to host an important MC meeting with the FIMCP 2010 in Tampere.

Context Information: More reports about the MCPC 2009 conference:

==> Twitter reports about the MCPC.

==> Great reports by Mass Sinclair in his blog no-retro.

==> Personal impressions of our keynote speaker Bruce Kasanoff.

==> Ran Machtinger, CEO of Optitex, about his presentation on Virtual Fashion.

==> Raul Lansik has a great new blog on customer co-creation in general, and a nice posting about the MCPC.

==> Teemu Arina, a speaker at the business seminar about real-time business, shares the ideas of his presentation.
==> Uche, Author of Luxury Online and panelist in the business seminar, will report about the conference at her new blog.
==> Mikkel Thomassen wrote a blog (in Danish) about the MCPC. And Robert Freund in German. And Chris Chatzopoulos has a report for everyone understanding Greek. Satu Miettinen wrote a nice report about the conference and service customization, in case you can read Finish.
==> Kate Herd has some pictures on Flickr.

(please let me know if you also have a blog post about the conference)

My previous reports about the MCPC 2009:

- Part 1: Day 1 of the Research Conference
- Part 2: Day 2 of the Research Conference
- Part 3: Business Seminar
- Part 4: MC Fashion Lab

MCPC 2009 Conference Report Day 4: Fashion Lab: Anna Ruohonen, Selve, Servive, Rivolta on why customization is the true luxury in fashion

The last day of the conference was dedicated to three labs, which provided an interactive platform for discussion around specialized fields. I joined the Fashion Lab.

We were a very nice group of people, ranging from luxury companies LV, Selve, or Paris-designer Anna Ruohonen to streetwear labels like Converse and Spreadshirt, from great students and professors from the Helsinki design and fashion scene, from specialist consultants like Sergio Dulio (footwear) to my academic colleagues from RWTH-TIM in Aachen.

The day started with a presentation by Sirkku Liukkonen, responsible for customization at the  Helsinki concept store of Anna Ruohonen. "From atelier work to mass customization", so the title of the journey Sirkku described.  Anna Ruohonen is a Paris-based fashion designer with two clothing labels carrying her name, both for men and women. Her style follows the tradition of Finnish design: the forms are architectural, the cuts are considered, and simplicity and sustainability are key concepts.

They started with customization for some retail clients and slowly moved into the consumer business after opening a mass customization concept store in Helsinki in April 2009. Products are produced together with the general items; all are produced on-demand in Paris. The popularity of the customization offering largely exceeded expectations. "Better fitting is the key word", Sirkku said. No wonder, as they offer the customization service at no additional fee. It is a "premium service for free".

An interesting debate started at this point: Conventionally, "sustainable fashion" is an oxymoron: Fashion is all about change and getting the latest stuff … But as Sirkku explained, sustainability is more than just using eco textiles: "If an item fits well and people really like it, people really will use it for a long time". And Sergio Dulio added: "Mass customization equals sustainability: the amount of products which are not sold corresponds to such a huge batch of energy without no use at all." An interesting debate that we will continue during the next conferences.

The presentation about Anna Ruohonen started a second stream of discussion (along the solution space dimension of our framework): How to balance between the design aesthetics of the brand and the vision of a star designer like Anna Ruohonen: Shall Anna allow the modifications of her dresses that they are suited for customers with body dimensions not seen in her patterns before? Where does the "dream" of a customer ends? What will this mean for a brand?

This is a question that also drives Claudia Kieserling, one of the longest members of our community. Claudia is founder and president of Selve, the first and leading customizer for ladies shoes in the world. "Luxury is a key characteristic of mass customization", she said. "No matter what price you ask, consumers see it as pure luxury." This is an interesting turning point in the discussion, as previously, we saw as one objective – or even as part of the definition – of mass customization that it should reach a large "mass".Claudia reported that her customers are coming for both fashion and fit (often starting for fit, and returning for fashion). Some of her best (and wealthy) customers have ordered more than 100 shoes --- making the shopping of a creation process of her own. For her, "time and experience are the new luxury" – an impression shared by Kamel from Louis Vuitton.  

A final example of experience was provided by Sergio Dulio. He has consulted in the past months extensively to an Italian entrepreneur who wants to revolutionize the way how custom-made shoes in the upper segment are sold and produced. A concept / testing store has just been open at the famous Via della Spiga (#17) in Milan.

Under the name of "Rivolta", customers there can experience one of the most advanced configurators in the world. You not just can design your shoes like on your iPhone on huge screens, but also fully try your custom shoes virtually on your own body in a virtual mirror. There also will be an iPhone Application to customize your shoes on the run! Shoes are expensive (Euro 1400 an up), but targeted to business people who have expensive custom shoes anyway, but want to purchase them with a new twist and different level of service and experience. Here, the act of purchasing the shoe becomes a luxury experience.

The Fashion Lab further had a number of interesting live demos. Thorsten Harzer and Moritz Wellige from my group at RWTH Aachen demonstrated a financial model to calculate the impact of mass customization in the clothing industry, developed as part of our Servive project. We could see a demo of a 3D knitting machine -- the complement to rapid manufacturing and laser sintering in the fashion industry ("data in, pullover out"). We got a demonstration of the Corpus.e Foot Scanner and its application at Pakerson, another upscale customizer of men's shoes with a successful store in St. Petersburg.

All in all, a great finale of a great conference!

Participate in our opinion market "Open Innovation": How will the concept develop within the next month?

How will the concept of open innovation be perceived by German managers in October 2009? 

This is a question that is traded on the opinion market "X-Market", initiated by our partner Management Zentrum Witten and our RWTH-TIM research group as part of the joint research project INTEGRO

If you understand GERMAN, please read on and poll your opinion how the buzz around open innovation will develop in the next weeks!

X-Märkte sind Informationsmärkte, die als virtuelle Börsen über den Marktmechanismus kollektives Wissen bzw. individuelle Wahrnehmungen zu validen Prognosen bündeln. Zusammen mit ausgewählten Fachpartnern werden zukünftig relevante Entwicklungstrends in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft sichtbar gemacht.

Neben anderen Themen ist diesmal auch das Thema Open Innovation mit von der Partie. Wie wird sich die Wahrnehmung bezüglich der Open Innovation verändern?

Machen Sie mit, geben Sie Ihre Einschätzungen über die Zukunft ab, informieren Sie sich zugleich über Zukunftstrends, und vielleicht gewinnen Sie einen der lukrativen Preise! Den Zugang zu den X-Märkten finden Sie hier.

MCPC 2009 Report Day 3: Business Seminar: Co-Creation, Louis Vuitton, Spreadshirt, and why self expression is the true luxury of our time

MCPC 2009, Helsinki, Day 3: Business Seminar.  Many people called this the most interesting day of the conference. I wouldn't make the judgment, as the MCPC Business Seminar is different in nature to the main conference, and serves a different purpose, but without any doubt: it was a remarkable day and perfect line-up of speakers.

One good thing was that I personally could relax a bit, as Kristian Möller, a marketing professor at the Helsinki School of Economics, was our host and chaired the seminar. The day started again with Joe Pine who this time focused on customer centricity, defined by him as "the one who pays you money ... placed at the center of everything you do." The talk was a good wrap-up of his previous thinking … and humorous and insightful as always (reminder: check out the personalization/customization strategy of Progressive).

The following panel on Creativity and Customer Value Co-creation started with Teemu Arina, a Finish thinker on Web 2.0. What I liked, was his presentation's title, "Interactive Value Creation" (the title of our 2006 book on customer co-creation). The presentation itself remained a bit philosophical, building on Stafford Beer's 1970 utopian vision of establishing a "real time economy" in Chile.

Afterwards, Prof. Harri Oinas-Kukkonen from University of Oulu commented on the connection between social media and personalization. He was followed by Raul Lansink, from the Dutch open innovation consultancy Favela Fabric. His most memorable claim "Customer co-creation starts inside". When moving into customer co-creation, start within your own company first before reaching out. Do an idea contest with your employees or sales partners to get a better understanding and internal commitment.

After lunch, the perhaps most interesting session of the conference started, titled "Customer-Centricity, Luxury, and Personalization". The keynote was provided by Louise Guay from MVM.com, who rocked the hall as usual. Her statement: Real personalization is the reduction of choice complexity while keeping the experience of browsing. She introduced the new 3D creation kit that allows the generation of "try-able virtual garments" for free by an user (a service for which MVM has charged $2000 in the beginning and §300 later).

Afterwards, Kamel Ouadi, Director for everything online and interactive at Louis Vuitton, provided a great insight into personalization at LV. At LV, they see "mass customization and personalization as a great opportunity to expand the interaction with consumers." Interestingly, today this starts not with the products (here, monogramming and customizing the interior of 25K trunks still is the only option), but with the brand experience. For their recent space campaign, Kamel created a great site where users can become a film director and cut a LV movie according to their own desires. Their objective: Using personalization to emotionally engage consumers with the LV experience.

Next, Philip Rooke, new VP at Spreadshirt, provided his perspective on luxury: self expression. The main claim and vision of Spreadshirt, to support self impression, can be seen perhaps as the ultimate form of self expression (a theme that also came up during the Fashion Lab on Thu, more on this later). While the products and presentations of Spreadshirt could not be different to LV, they shared a joint vision: True luxury is when you are able to express yourself as you like.

The next panelists reinforced the trend to customization and personalization in the luxury industry. Uché Okonkwo, Executive Director & Founder of LUXE COR, and Sandy Carter, Social Media Evangelist at IBM, provided a number of further case studies how luxury houses today enable consumers over the internet to create custom items of their choice.

The last panel started with perhaps the most entertaining presentation by Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman and Executive Creative Director of OgilvyOne Worldwide Ltd. He applied behavioral economics on personalization and customization (a bit) and marketing in general (a lot). The panelists, Bo Harald from Tieto, Johan Wallin, CEO of Synocusm and Jarmo Suominen brought Bruce Kasanoff's vision from the first conference day into practice. Their talks focused on personalization in the service industries and true mass matching, and provide a good outlook and summary of the conference.

Overall, another great day! And while being already a bit tired, we closed the day with a reception by the mayor of Helsinki in City Hall and then drinks and dance in a Helsinki night club.

Mass Customization Media Blitz in the German Press

After 15 years in the business, I have see many waves of hype around mass customization. But in the German media, it never has been as strong as recently.

Probably triggered by an article in BrandEins (the most innovative German business publication) and a report about mass customization by dpa, the German Press Agency, many newspapers and weeklies followed with articles in the last weeks. There was a report in the main news show of RTL. And last weekend, even taz - die tageszeitung, a German newspaper on the left side of the spectrum that normally has no reports about hedonistic products, had a long report.

The theme (similar to the article in BrandEins): Mass Customization of food. I have commented on this category in a previous post. 

What do I learn from the sudden media attention about a phenomenon that is 20 years old?

1) Perhaps the time now is ripe? People are more internet savvy, willing not just to shop but also to configure custom goods online. At the same time, there is a growing level of sophistication of the market, more knowledge how to create a great MC website has been distributed ...

2) In economical bad times, people love easy sophistication with a bit of affordable luxury - which a custom chocolate bar or your own tea creation probably offers. So this is a great product for bad times.

3) Some journalists are not too creative, and when one is writing a nice article on a new theme, other copy. The same, by the way, is true for many academics.

4) The idea to customize an item still is big news and a real novelty for most consumers. In my classes for students and executives alike, I am still astonished how many people have never ever heard about the possibility to customize products or services online. We finally have to create a better understanding how to communicate mass customization!

=> Context information: For a collection of press articles covering mass customization, please head here (shameless self promotion as all these articles quote me :-)

MCPC 2009 Report Day 2: Benedict Dellaert, Zazzle, and Joe Pine

The first day of the MCPC ended with a great dinner in the center of Helsinki and one drink too much in the bar later. Still, everyone was back in time for the second day.

For more impressions and summaries, also check out the many Twitter feeds on the MCPC 2009 that report live!

MCPC 2009 Day 2: Prof. Benedict Dellaert from Erasumus University in Rotterdam started the second day with a great keynote on "Designing the gateway -- gateways to product spaces". He provided a very good overview of the state of research in marketing on the space where customers and suppliers interact today.

He started his differentiation of personalization and customization: Personalization is often a strategy of retailers to passively support customers to find the right selection, e.g. by using profile data or collaborative filtering. At the same time, mass customization is seen as a strategy by manufacturers to actively integrate customers in a co-design process. Along this line (a continuum, not two alternatives), Benedict then addressed the crucial question how to match solution options available in general with the capabilities of customers to make the choice: "It is nice to have the flexibility [to mass customize], but consumers also have to have the capabilities to make the right choice."

James Johnson from Avery Dennison and Jeff Beaver & David Gross from Zazzle followed with the second plenary presentation. The project that they presented was actually initiated during the Business Seminar of the Smart Customization Group at MIT last November: There at our meeting, the multi-billion incumbent  Avery Dennison met the much smaller Zazzle.com and started a cooperation that was launched last Thursday.

Custom binders are the first product that shoppers can customize under the new business alliance. Shoppers will be able to generate custom binders for contests, promotions and sales, or business binders for the office. They can select from thousands of templates, or start from scratch with a blank canvas. Like with every Zazzle designs, people can create stores and make money by selling designs in the Zazzle marketplace.

The interesting thing is that Zazzle is not offering its manufacturing system. "At Avery, we've been looking at Mass Customization for several years. Our focus on Enterprise Lean Sigma has allowed us to develop the expertise in manufacturing to be able to provide custom-made one-off products while still enjoying the benefits of mass production," said James Johnson who is the Director of Business Development at Avery Dennison Office Products. "Zazzle's software capabilities plus their partnerships with leading branded content owners complement our manufacturing core competencies." So it takes more than flexible manufacturing to do mass customization successfully.

Consider what the cooperation with a MC platform provided for Avery. The company was offering custom binders already since about one year over their own website. In just three days on Zazzle, there already were 60 times more designs created than in 365 days on their own website.

After these exciting keynotes, the conference participants again spread out into parallel sessions on all issues being custom and personal. Again, it is impossible to cover the breadth of discussion here.

After lunch, Fabrizio Salvador and I provided a plenary presentation based on our recent Sloan Management Review paper. I am sure some blogging participants will cover it soon, and will refer to them for a review.

After many exciting more parallel sessions, the day ended with Joe Pine, who provided some outlook.

His last slide probably was the most memorable:

• In 1987, when Stan Davis coined the term, mass customization = oxymoron.
• In 1993, when Joe wrote his first book, mass customization = "the new frontier".
• In 2009, when we all came together to the MCPC 2009 in Helsinki, mass customization = imperative!

I believe that the first 2.5 days of the provided great evidence that now mass customization and personalization are really becoming an imperative for businesses of all kinds -- and also for other organizations like education, public management, or non-profits.

The conference continues tomorrow with the business seminar at the Helsinki School of Economics.

MCPC 2009 Report Day 1: Joe Pine on the Future of MC and Bruce Kasanoff on Personalization

Just coming back from a long conference dinner and drinks (so excuse the typos), but here a first report from the MCPC 2009:

The main MCPC conference today took off with an opening presentation by the CEO of KONE. Matti Alahutha very neatly showed that for a multi-billion company like KONE, mass customization in an  essential driver of value and competition.

Next, Joe Pine -- brilliant as usual -- inspired us with some ideas on the "Future of mass customization"

He started with his famous 4*4 picture of process change / product change, placing invention (craft businesses), mass production, continuous improvement, and mass customization in it (if you haven't seen this argument, look up for Joe's speeches in YouTube).

From there, he moved into four themes where he sees mass customization is going. Here are his key thoughts in a nutshell (as I believe they are the roadmap for his next books :-):

1) From mass customization to continuous innovation: In order to build a sustainable mass customization business, you cannot stop with an existing MC solution space.  So what Joe sees next is connecting mass customization with tools of user co-creation and user innovation to continuously work on the solution space of a MC offering.

2) From markets of one to "one of markets": The traditional notion is that mass customization serves super niche markets, up to the market of one. But Joe thinks this is not the end, and we will move to "one-of markets". This very neatly addressed our conference theme of "mass matching". Consider you as a traveler. When YOU are traveling for business, your needs with regard to hotel selection, plane scheduling , or eating are very different compared to the (same) YOU when are traveling with your family for vacation. So the same YOU are representing different markets.

This is where personalization and mass customization meet. And a large future of mass customization will be to work not just on creating new products, but bundling (matching) them according to different "markets'"needs.

3) From reality to virtual reality. This is the theme of the next new book of Joe coming up. When the physical world is not offering enough variety, you move to the virtual space. Here, not only ultimate variety is possible, but also variety with regard to the self. Just as you are different person in front of your children as you are in front of your spouse, you can be a different person in a virtual world. So virtual reality is offering the opportunity of personalizing the self.

4) From MC of offerings to MC of management. This probably was the largest development Joe suggested. His idea: Why not take the tools and thinking of mass customization and transfer them to the way of managing a company. For this idea, Joe referred to Kim Korn of Business Architecture who originally came up with the idea of the Progression of Innovation Value. It reminded me also to a number of similar lines of thinking on "management innovation", as sketched for example by Gary Hamel. We today know that there is not "one best way" to manage a company. But at the same time, also "craft customizing" an organization may be not the best way. So I am curious to see what our community takes out of this and how "mass customization of management" will look alike. Johann Wallin, for example, in his presentation already was building on a similar idea, called "mass-co-configuration" of a value chain.

With so much food for thought, we entered into the parallel sessions. There was too much to listen to and to learn that I can summarize this here, so I just invite you to browse through the conference abstracts.

After lunch, Bruce Kasanoff, got everyone excited with his keynote: "Personalization will be THE driver of the economy within the next 8 years!" (yes, not "a", or "one of", but "THE"). He very much broadened the perspective of everyone but illustrating that the theme of customization and personalization is much larger than we cover today here.

His argument: the basic mechanism of personalization, "sense - reason - respond", can be applied for many markets -- or are already being applied. Consinder the revolution in media.DailyMe, MeeHive, DailySnooze, or FanFeedr are all start-ups that recently started with offerings for the future of media. All these companies' core is an algorithm to match user preferences to existing content. Still no one in this industry uses the term mass customization or personalization to address this.

Bruce made a second very interesting case about the development of personalized medicine ... go to hi blog for the full argument!

His second main point was: "To work on personalization means that we need much more interdisciplinary work". Well, in innovation management, the cure for all problems is seen in the interdisciplinary team. But Bruce has a point here that to understand the full consequences of personalization and customization, a firm really has to bring together people from inside and outside and different disciplines to make personalization happen. Sounds difficult? Yes, but when personalization is THE driver of competition, this effort is well invested.

I am looking forward very much to the second day of the main conference tomorrow!

Context information: ==> Great report on Day 1 also by Mass Sinclair in his blog no.retro.

MCPC 2009 Conference Has Started!

The MCPC 2009 just has started. It begun with some hick-ups in the morning, when the conference website server had some problems, but now everything is running well and working.

We are just sitting in the conference pre-workshops. After some introduction by Fabrizio Salvador and myself, we are just working in the three different workshops: (1) Martijn Pater is talking about "Co-Creation and Co-Design with Consumers", (2) Fazleena Badurdeen just is having her "MC Simulation Game", and (3) Mitch Tseng is building with Lego's to explain the advanced basics of "Building up Product Family architectures for mass customization". 

Here is the link to the conference web site with all information. And in case you cannot come but want a souvenir, you can create your customized MCPC t-shirt here!!.

More information about the MCPC 2009-- whether you are participating here or just over the internet.

Download the full abstracts:

Download MCPC 2009 final program 1 oct 2009

Download the program with locations:
Download MCPC 2009 final abstracts and presentation 1 oct 2009

Map with conference locations: Google Maps

The conference will start today (Sunday) for all participants who registered for the pre-conference workshop at 13:00 (registration starts at 12:30). The pre-workshop takes place at the Design Factory, a Building on the Campus of the Helsinki University of Technology. Address: Espoo, Betonimiehenkuja 5, in Espoo (a suburb of Helsinki)

The opening reception (for anyone) starts on Sunday evening at 18:30 at the Art Museum EMMA at Espoo.

The main conference starts on Monday morning at 9:00 (check in starts at 8:15) at the TAIK - University of Art and Design, Hämeentie 135, Helsinki (in a part of the city called "Arabia").

Chocri Announces U.S. Launch -- Customized Chocolate Bars from Berlin

Recently I wrote about the move of Zazzle into the German market. Now a German mass customization company moves to the US, chocri (www.chocri.de). The URL for the US site will be http://www.createmychocolate.com.

The company only recently came to my closer awareness when it won an entrepreneurship award by WirtschaftsWoche, a German business weekly, for their concept of personalized chocolate bars. It is one of the ten or more recent start-ups in Germany which were inspired by MyMuesli to enter the market of mass customized food.

The idea behind the chocri chocolate bar is simple: consumers can choose their chocolate base (dark, milk, or white), and then select "toppings" of their choice to personalize their chocolate bar. Toppings include both the traditional (nuts and dried fruit) and the outrageous (coriander and chives)! Upon checkout, customers can then choose to create a personalized name for their chocolate bar as well as select their wrapping paper.

I have to admit that I am still skeptical about the sustainable value of this business concept, but I am more than happy to accept that I am wrong and that this kind of food is a future of mass customization.

For me, it starts to get interesting when the functional or nutrition value of the food can be adopted to a person's nutrition requirements. But in the moment, hedonistic offerings rule the market, many of them in the field of gifts and presents.

Chocri hopes to benefit from the continuous mass customization trend in the U.S. and will start selling customized chocolate to U.S. consumers in January 2010.

In a press release, co-founders Michael Bruck and Franz Duge say, "Since chocri was launched, we always believed in developing a close relationship with our customers, who are the true creators of chocri; and so this award is not only a recognition of our hard work, but also the generous contribution of our early fans and supporters."

By constantly polling its customers for new ideas on toppings and flavors, chocri has established itself as a receptive, engaging brand that encourages its customers to be involved in the company's decision-making process and growth.

The young start-up, based in Berlin, has already sold 120,000 of its bars since launching last year (about 600-2000 a day, for prices between 3 and 8 Euros), and declares its revenue to be in the mid-six digits.

Canceled - German Mass Customization Event: Mass Customization of Industrial Goods

Did you miss the MCPC Conference in Helsinki? Do you understand German? Then there is an opportunity to follow up. On 22 October 2009, RKW is organizing a mass customization event for BtoB companies in Marburg close to Frankfurt.

UPDATE: I just learned that RKW has canceled this event.

The event is in German language only, and so is the invitation:
Kunden verlangen zunehmend individuell zugeschnittene Produkte und Dienstleistungen. Wie können Hersteller von Industrie- und Investitionsgütern darauf reagieren? Dies ist das zentrale Thema der am 22. Oktober 2009 in Marburg stattfindenden Fachtagung "Kundenindividuell und wirtschaftlich produzieren" Ziel ist es, zukünftige Herausforderungen für Industrie- und Investitionsgüterhersteller zu identifizieren und Lösungen für eine kundenindividuellere Produktion zu diskutieren. Dazu stellen hochrangige Vertreter aus Wissenschaft und Industrie neue Erkenntnisse aus Forschung, Entwicklung und Praxis vor. Einen besonderen Schwerpunkt legen sie dabei auf die Wettbewerbsstrategie der "Kundenindividuellen Massenproduktion" (Mass Customization).

Kundenindividuelle Massenproduktion verbindet die Kostenvorteile der Serienproduktion mit der Flexibilität der kundenindividuellen Fertigung. Viele Konsumgüter-Anbieter machen es vor: Ob Müsli, Turnschuhe oder auch das neue Auto - sie erreichen diese scheinbar widersprüchlichen Ziele, indem sie ihre Produkte modular gestalten und entsprechend der Kundenwünsche individuell konfigurieren. Auch für Hersteller von Investitions- und Industriegütern bietet diese Strategie Chancen: Module und Konfiguratoren ermöglichen kundenspezifische Produkte und damit entscheidende Wettbewerbsvorteile.

Wie kann eine solche Modularisierung umgesetzt werden? Welche Konsequenzen hat das für die Produktionsorganisation? Und wie können Kunden mit Hilfe von Konfiguratoren in die Auftragsabwicklung eingebunden werden? Über praktikable Lösungsansätze zu diesen Fragen wird im Rahmen der Veranstaltung diskutiert. Die Fachtagung wird gemeinsam vom RKW Kompetenzzentrum, der IHK-Innovationsberatung Hessen und dem TechnologieTransferNetzwerk Hessen organisiert.

Mehr information, Anmeldung und vollst. Programm hier.

MCPC 2009 - Latest News - Website Running Again

When you organize a huge conference, there are many small problems and things to fix. The organizing committee of the MCPC 2009 conference can tell you much about it ...

Yesterday, a larger problem occurred: today. It seems that there is a main internet cable cut somewhere in the city of Helsinki (outside the university). This has stopped access to the conference website.

UPDATE: The conference server is running again as usual ... so please check back to see the final program.