Mass Customization & Open Innovation News

Brand Value and Open Innovation: Companies open for customer input are more popular, study finds

The connection between open innovation and branding has been explored in a few studies recently. The best probably is Johann Füller and Eric von Hippel's study on brand creation by users in the outdoor community "Outdoorseiten" (see the short summary in MIT Sloan Management Review).

In their study, Johann and Eric surveyed members of Outdoorseiten.Net (ODS), a community of German, Austrian and Swiss hikers, about their brand preferences — and found that ODS members showed significant interest in buying hiking products with the community’s ODS logo. For example, when community members were asked whether they would prefer to buy a backpack from their favorite commercial manufacturer or one that was of equal quality and price but instead had the ODS logo, slightly more than one-third preferred the ODS product, and an additional 17.7% viewed the two brands as equally attractive. User communities seem to have the potential to create strong brands at low cost. Such user-generated brands, they suggest, can represent potential competition for traditional brands — but they may also present opportunities for co-branding and collaboration.

This is where a new study by Fronteer Strategy starts, a Dutch consultancy on co-creation. Together with a market research firm, they looked on the impact of openness of a company on brand value. While not a scientific study with a very sophisticated measurement instrument, the study still is interesting.

Among some big consumer brands in the Netherlands, coffee brand Douwe Egberts, supermarket chain Albert Heijn and Rabobank are considered to be the most "accessible brands."  Accessible brands are open for comment, opinion and contribution of customers. Sometimes, customers are even integrated as a partner in the innovation process.

While more a definition of "customer centricity" and not "openness", the study still is interesting. The more accessible a brand, the more it is perceived as "attractive" and "innovative".  This study shows the impact of a new significant factor: accessibility. It calls for an intelligent and relevant use of input from a firm's periphery.

The finding of this research: "openness" (horizontal axis) and "brand popularity" (vertical axis) are highly correlated.

But there is plenty of work to be done on developing better scales and research instruments. For example, according to this study, Nokia, Samsung and Apple are competing for the best position in the electronics sector. But Apple, for example, is known as a counterexample of open innovation: Apple does not connect with its customers, it is not doing any open innovation with regard to customer input, and it is just dictating consumers how to use its products.

So the real conclusion may be vice versa: The more attractive a brand, the more "open" is its appeal ... even if it is a closed shop. More research definitely is needed here.

Context:  Use Google to translate the Fronteer study into English.

Open Innovation at OSRAM: User Idea Contest Open on LED technology

Siemens finally has entered the open innovation landscape. They started late with a dedicated and focused initiative, but now have a full-scale open innovation program that shall explore and pilot various new methods of open innovation among their different business units.

One of the first projects is at OSRAM, part of the industry sector of Siemens AG and one of the two leading lighting manufacturers in the world. According to Wikipedia, the name is derived from osmium and Wolfram (German for tungsten), as both these elements were commonly used for lighting filaments at the time the company was founded. Today, OSRAM is a high-tech company in the lighting industry.

And now they step ahead with a user idea contest, which again has been planned and implemented by Hyve AG (Disclosure: I am a member of the board of directors of Hyve AG).

For more than the weeks, the new Innovation Contest is online. OSRAM and Hyve invite designers and other interested persons worldwide to join the "LED-Emotionalize your light"-Idea Contest and to create innovative light solutions with the latest LED technology.

Have a look on the contest at www.led-emotionalize.com

The contest's tagline: "Are you creative? Does technology inspires you? Do you like puzzles? If so, enter the “LED – Emotionalize your light” idea contest today and create your own light concept using the latest LED technology!"

Since the beginning of the contest two weeks ago, the community has already grown up to 200 active users. The participants can submit their own ideas and designs and present them to the community. More than 70 ideas have been submitted, some of them with a really high potential. The community also intensively uses the possibility to discuss and evaluate the contributions.

With the help of this platform a well-established company like OSRAM (respectively Siemens) deliberately considers the creativity of customers and actively integrates them into the development of new products.

The contest is organized in two stages:

• Phase 1: The ideas of all participants are collected and discussed.
• Phase 2: The best designs are jointly advanced by the community.

At the end of each phase a professional jury will evaluate the contributions and select the winners. The winners will receive attractive monetary and non-monetary prizes amounting to 7000€ (again a contest where money is not seen as the core driver of innovation :-)

For more information, head to www.LED-emotionalize.com

Interview: The Next Generation of Architectural Design: Daniel Smithwick from Physical Design Co on a great way to build the garden house of your dream … and much more

Daniel Smithwick is the co-founder and CEO of Physical Design Co., a Cambridge, MA, startup that wants to start a revolution in building structures. His vision: To empower every consumer to transform nearly any custom design into easily assembled physical structures delivered to your backyard! This could be your next garden house project. Before, you either had to purchase an expensive standard house at Home Depot that was not only labor intensive to assemble, but often ugly and not fitting exactly your requirements. Or you could get your hands dirty and start a complicated DIY project, constructing it with 2x4s and nails. As a last alternative, you could hire a contractor to build you your dream house … but this comes with a heavy price tag and often delays of the construction crew.

Daniel wants to offer another alternative: You design your dream in SketchUp, the free CAD software by Google, and his company will translate your uploaded design in a custom kit of interlocking CNC-cut parts that you can then easily assemble after delivery. His promise: "With Physical Design Co Web Platform anyone can design, remotely manage production, and assemble their own full-scale inhabitable creations!"

In an interview, Daniel shared more information about his project and company and what he regards as the future of mass customization.

Daniel Smithwick is an architectural designer by training and he is currently a graduate researcher at MIT where he is a member of the Smart Customization Group and the Digital Design and Fabrication Group.  Daniel co-lead the latest research project by the Digital Design and Fabrication Group called, “Digitally Fabricated Housing for New Orleans,” a project commissioned by and exhibited at the MoMA in New York for their 2008 show, Home Delivery, Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.  Before coming to MIT, Daniel worked professionally as a designer for leading architecture and design firms including: Pompei Architectural Design in NYC, Loom Architects in Minneapolis, MN, and Howeler + Yoon Architecture in Boston.

FTP: Daniel, what is the idea behind your startup, Physical Design Co?

DS: The central idea behind Physical Design Co. is to provide consumers with easy-to-use online tools that engage them in the design and manufacturing process and enables them to become the producers of their own architectural-scale designs.  Our web platform also allows consumers to utilize local manufacturing via our distributed fabrication network which not only reduces carbon emissions, but it also strengthens local economies.  Essentially, we’re re-thinking how our built environment is designed and constructed – with the Physical Design Co, online users, whether they live in rural China, or they are busy professionals interested in design, they can now play an active and participatory role in the built world around them.  

Through our web platform, anyone can upload and transform their digital design – any inhabitable accessory structure, from doghouses to backyard art studios - into a customized kit of interlocking parts that are locally manufactured and that can be easily assembled.  Consumers no longer need to rely on the traditional labor-intensive and wasteful construction process: with the Physical Design Co all you need is a rubber mallet to assemble your creation.

FTP: How is this different to existing companies in the field like Ponoko, Replicator or Shapeways?

DS: The Physical Design Co distinguishes itself in two ways. First, we provide consumers with the ability to custom design, and have fabricated, life-size and inhabitable scale structures, as opposed to only hand-held items like fashion accessories and table-top objects.  We’re interested in offering consumers more than just personalization; our web platform engages the consumer in the design, manufacturing and delivery process – giving them the tools to make smarter decisions about how they impact the built and natural environment.

Second, we have developed a patent-pending technology which automatically translates the user’s design into a unique kit of interlocking, easy-to-assemble parts.  For example, let’s say you wanted to design a backyard shed.  Instead of having to digitally model all of the individual parts, consider how they all attached together, worry about the structural integrity and verify that it is indeed possible to put it all together, with the Physical Design Co., all you have to do is model the shape of your design.  Our technology automatically and digitally translates the design shape into a kit-of-parts that can then be CNC fabricated and subsequently interlock together without the need for nails, screws or any additional hardware.  

FTP: Dan, you recently presented your company and some creations at the Maker Faire of MAKE magazine, a large gathering of hardware hackers and DIY enthusiasts in Austin, TX. Can tell us some more about this exhibition and the feedback you received?

DS: In October of 2008 the Physical Design Co., in collaboration with ShopBot Tools (an innovative manufacturer of user-friendly CNC machines) designed, fabricated and exhibited the ‘Austin Shed’ for the Maker Faire in Austin, TX.  This is the world’s first digitally fabricated shed.

The feedback we received from the Maker Faire attendees was incredible.  Most were simply amazed at how structurally strong the shed was without any nails, screws or hardware holding it together.  However, the most rewarding feedback we received was from children.  At the faire, we pulled a few of the ‘skin’ panels off to reveal the grid structure of the interlocking ribs so that visitors could understand how it was assembled.  What surprised us was that 10 year-old kids would pick up the removed parts and correctly replace them back on the shed without any knowledge of how the system worked.  We were delighted to find that our assembly process is intuitive enough that children could put it together!

FTP: How do you master the manufacturing process; who are your cooperation partners?

DS: The great thing about the Physical Design Co and our manufacturing process is that we don’t need to build any new large and energy-inefficient factories to produce our users’ designs.  In fact, the manufacturing infrastructure already exists worldwide – it’s the tens of thousands of individual CNC owners around the world whose machines are online.  These are our cooperation partners.

Through our web platform, these CNC owners become members of our distributed manufacturing network through which they can promote their existing and on-going services.  This is how we enable the users and designers on our web platform to have their structures locally manufactured - which greatly reduces delivery costs both in terms of money and energy use. 

FTP: What are the next steps for your company, and how do you expect to grow it in the coming months?

DS: This summer, in collaboration with ShopBot Tools, Make Magazine and Google SketchUp we’re hosting a competition called the Get Physical! Design Competition which will take place at the Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA.  The top 3 winners will have their designs digitally fabricated using our web platform, assembled and showcased at the upcoming Maker Faire.  Keep an eye on our blog for more details over the next couple of months.

FTP: What are other trends you see with regard to mass customization?

DS: When answering this question I like to quote Eric von Hippel from his book, Democratizing Innovation:

“When the cost of high-quality resources for design and prototyping becomes very low, these resources can be diffused widely, and the allocation problem diminishes in significance.  The net result is and will be to democratize the opportunity to create.”

I think we’ll continue to see an increase in user-engagement not only in the design process but also in the production process of our built environment as the availability of digital fabrication equipment exponentially grows.  In addition I think we’re just beginning to understand the power of online user communities and crowd-sourcing.  Rather than just offering product mass customization to isolated individual users, we are starting to see that by enabling them to interact with each other through a web platform, their collective intelligence is boundless.

For more information, contact Daniel at dan@physicaldesignco.com
http://www.physicaldesignco.com/
http://www.physicaldesignco.com/blog/

Crowdsourcing at Mervis Diamond Importers: A nice case of open innovation at a s small company with one big question

In a just published contribution on msnbc.com, Emma Johnson provides a good introduction into Crowdsourcing ("Free Problem-Solving for Your Biz: Tapping the masses for brighter ideas and bigger margins").

In the article, she brings the simple case of Mervis Diamond Importers, a small chain of jewelry stores in the Washington, D.C., area. This company employed crowdsourcing to generate a series of successful newspaper advertisements with the help of a crowdsourcing facilitator, Genius Rocket; a site is specialized on broadcasting ideas for ads. The description of this case is nothing special, but the questions Jonathan Mervis, the owner of the jewelry stores, asks at the end are very interesting:

For a $500 fee, Mervis sent out a query looking for one-line ad copy to accompany the front page of the local edition of satirical newspaper The Onion, which is popular with young adults. Genius Rocket publicized the contest, and Mervis spread the word through his company's blog and his own contacts.

The query netted more than 500 responses, many of which were outstanding, Mervis says. He personally read all of them and wrote checks to 10 entrants, which were "brilliant" and many of which are often quoted by customers in his store and strangers on the street.

Standouts include, "She likes the Beatles, but she loves the Stones," and "Conflict-free diamonds for a conflict-free bedroom."

"This doesn't even compare with working with my usual ad agency," Mervis says. "If I just sit down with my agency to discuss an ad in The Onion, it costs me $1,000 and it doesn't get me 500 options, it only gets me two or three. Often I don't really love those two or three, but I don't want to pay for more so I just go for it."

He says the return on investment is tough to calculate, but he plans to launch more crowdsourcing queries. The time and monetary investment were minimal, quality of responses phenomenal, and the ability to control the creative process rewarding and productive, he says. "It's almost like a free shot."

Tips include giving potential responders lots of information about your company, the type of responses that you're looking for, and your target audience. Also be careful to attach an appropriate fee. Mervis sponsored a second crowdsourcing competition for an online video advertisement he hoped would go viral. The eight responses were so-so, and Mervis wonders if the $1,000 reward was too small to attract top talent.

"What if I doubled the reward money? Would I get double the number of good videos?" he asks. "That's the thing: There are no statistics to support any of this."

Here, Mr. Mervis has hit one of the largest open spots in the open innovation literature. Empirical evidence on the divers of efficiency and effectiveness of open innovation initiatives. A great field for further study -- and one that is in the focus of our Aachen research group in a couple of projects.

Open Innovation Speaker Series at UC Berkeley

Henry Chesbrough, Author and Executive Director of the Center for Open Innovation, and Adjunct Professor at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, is propably the best known figure in the world on the new paradigm of open innovation. So it is no wonder that he is able to get some of the most interesting people in the world to contribute to his weekly "Open Innovation Speaker Series" (Mondays, 12:30 - 2:00 pm).

Every monday during lunch time, the Open Innovation Speaker Series provides both academic and managerial perspectives on open innovation and related subjects. It is open to students, faculty, staff, and the general public.

I am delighted to have been invited to join this elite crowd, and will present in Berkeley on April 13.  My talk will be on "Customer Co-Design and Co-Creation: Mastering Long-Tail-Markets by Integrating Customers in the New Product Creation Process". The presentation will introduce a number of strategies that help companies to profit from heterogeneous customer demand.

But before, there are many more interesting presentations. In case you can not join, there is a video download of all presentations. But if you are living in the Bay area, I would be pleased to meet with you at my presentation in Berkeley!

Here is the full Spring 2009 Series Schedule

Mondays, 12:30 - 2 pm (Refreshments provided)
Cheit Hall, Room 330, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

• Feb. 9 - Wim Vanhaverbeke, Professor, Hasselt University, Belgium, "Broadening the scope of Open Innovation"
• Feb. 23 - Steve Goers, Kraft Foods, VP Open Innovation, "Applying the principles of open innovation to drive growth"
• Mar.  2 - Peter Williams, IBM, CTO, Big Green Innovations, "Case Studies in Environmental Innovation at IBM"
• Mar. 9 - Dan’l Lewin, Microsoft, Corporate VP, Strategic & Emerging Business Dev.
• Mar. 16 - Marko Torkelli, Professor, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland    
• Mar. 30 - Alex Osterwalder, Business Model Advisor
• April  6 - Tony Singarayar, Founder, Analogy Growth Partners
• April 13 - Frank Piller, Professor, RWTH Aachen University, and MIT Smart Customization Group
• April 20 - Francesco Sandulli, Professor, Complutense University of Madrid
• April 27 - Andrew Davies, Professor, Imperial College, London
• May 4 - Rich Friedrich, HP Labs, Director, Open Innovation Office

For more information, and also to download the videos and presentations from the Fall 2008 series, head here. http://openinnovation.haas.berkeley.edu

Business Forum at RWTH Aachen: Innovating With Your Customers

[This is an announcement of an event in German language at RWTH Aachen. To continue with the next posting in English, click here.]

Innovation durch Interaktion – mit dem Kunden zum Erfolg

Aachen, 25. und 26. Mai 2009

Prof. Robert Schmitt, ein Kollege am WZL an der Maschinenbaufakultät der RWTH, organisiert am 24. und 26. Mai in Aachen seine jährliche Veranstaltung zunm Thema "Qualität und Unternehmensführung". Dieses Jahr steht sie unter dem Motto „Innovation durch Interaktion – mit dem Kunden zum Erfolg“.

Ziel des Forums ist es, Methoden kennenzulernen, die den Innovationserfolg durch die Verknüpfung von interaktiver Produktentwicklung mit emotionaler Wertgestaltung zu fördern.

Viele der etablierten Ansätze wie Kundenbefragungen und Quality Function Deployment scheinen nicht ausreichend, um Kundenwünsche und Begeisterungsfaktoren zu identifizieren und in technische Spezifikationen zu überführen. In der Veranstaltung werden Lösungsansätze vorgestellt und erfolgreiche strategische und operative Lösungswege diskutiert.

Der erste Themenblock „Strategische und operative Implementierung einer interaktiven Produktentwicklung“ behandelt Ansätze, wie der Kunde intensiv in den Innovations- und Entwicklungsprozess mit dem Ziel eingebunden wird, Blind- und Fehlleistung infolge von Produkten, die den Markt verfehlen, zu minimieren.

Der zweite Themenblock „Konzepte zur Emotionalisierung von Produkten“ ermöglicht Einblicke in namhafte Unternehmen, denen es gelungen ist, über die reine Erfüllung von Kundenforderungen hinaus ihre Produkte mit subjektiven Werten zu bereichern. Die Emotionalisierung von Produkten ist der Schlüssel zu hoher Preisbereitschaft Ihrer Kunden und damit ein wichtiges Element Ihres Unternehmenserfolgs.

Mehr Information und das vollständige Programm hier im Flyer oder auf der Konferenz-Web-Site.

Internship at Leading Open Innovation Company in Munich, Germany

HYVE -- the innovation company -- is one of Europe's leading providers of open innovation support for companies and non-profit organizations. It is a great place to work and learn, located in Munich's lively university quarters (Disclaimer: I am in the Board of Directors of this company). Starting now, Hyve is offering an internship in one of their open innovation projects. While good English skills are required, you also should have good skills in German. So the remaining announcement is in German :-)

Praktikum Innovationsmanagement & Marketingforschung

Beginn: Februar 2009, Dauer: mind. drei Monate, Vergütung nach Absprache.

Die Innovationsagentur HYVE unterstützt namhafte internationale Unternehmen bei der Identifikation neuer Innovations- und Wachstumsfelder. Für die Entwicklung erfolgreicher Neuprodukte vereint die HYVE AG Open Innovation Methoden und Werkzeuge wie Netnography, Lead User Methode oder Toolkits mit Produktdesign. Weitere Informationen findest Du unter www.hyve.de

Deine Herausforderung
- Vollständige Integration in Kundenprojekte und Übernahme von Projektverantwortung
- Arbeiten in interdisziplinären Teams aus Beratern und Industriedesignern.
- Analyse von Online-Communities und Generierung von Consumer Insights
- Mtwirkung bei Innovationsstudien sowie Erstellung von Ergebnisberichten und Präsentationen
- Kennenlernen innovativer onlinebasierter Analyseverfahren

Unsere Anforderungen an Dich
- Begeisterungsfähigkeit für die Bereiche Produktdesign, Innovationsmanagement und Marketingforschung.
- Affinität zum Internet und Interesse an neuen Technologien und Medien
- Sehr gute Kenntnisse im Umgang mit MS Office ( Power Point, Excel, Word)
- Lösungsorientierte Bearbeitung von Fragestellungen der quantitativen und qualitativen Innovations- und Marketingforschung
- Selbständige und zuverlässige Arbeitsweise
- Engagement und Spaß am Arbeiten im Team
- Sehr gute Englischkenntnisse , eine weitere Fremdsprache wäre wünschenswert

Was wir bieten
- Innovatives und interessantes Arbeiten mit marktführenden Unternehmen
- Ein junges und hochmotiviertes Team
- Angenehmes Betriebsklima in einer schönen Stadt

Interessiert? Dein Thema?  Dann sende Deine aussagekräftigen Bewerbungsunterlagen an info@hyve.de oder per Post an die HYVE AG,  z. Hd. Steffen Hück, Schellingstrasse 45, 80799 München, Germany.

Embedded Toolkits: Participate in Our Survey on the Next Generation of Configurators in the Automotive Industry

My research group in Aachen is working on a nice project (EMOTIO) on the next generation of customization toolkits. Our idea is to extend the conventional configuration of custom products before you order the product by an embedded solution that would allow you to configure your product while you are using it!

We need your feedback on how you evaluate this idea. There is a short (15 min) survey that presents you some use cases of such an embedded toolkits:

Survey in English language: http://www.embedded-toolkits.com/survey/ (there also is a German language version) (it will take not more than 15 mins to answer).

Funded by the IMP-Project Fund within Germany's "Elite initiative", our project wants to pilot these toolkits and get a better understanding on their acceptance by users.

With our survey, we study this phenomenon in the automobile sector. Cars are rather complex products that include a wide array of features and characteristics. There also is a lot of configuration of cars before you buy it. But in the usage stage, you can just adapt your seats and similar changes. With some future technology, customizing a car while you are using it, however, could go much further!

In general, think of an embedded auto toolkit as a user interface that is supposed to enable drivers to change certain features or vehicle characteristics of their car at any time after the purchase. This idea is based on the assumption that users develop new customer needs during the usage period of a product. By using the product the users realize needs that they did not think about when buying the product. Thus, by the means of an “embedded configurator”, certain design decisions are postponed into the user domain and the fit to market can be improved. You will get the idea from the scenarios presented in the survey, so please participate!

Survey in English language und in Deutscher Version

We will publish a summary of the feedings here! For more information on this project, contact me or Frank Steiner.

Context information:

- Our internal project site with background information on this use case.
- A link to the general project website.

Open Innovation in the Financial Services: New Book by Daniel Fasnacht Covers Change in Banking Industry

Can open innovation save the financial industry? A new book suggests that this concept may have an important contribution to the change required in setting up more sustainable business models.

 The idea of open innovation is still getting more and more attention of managers responsible for innovation. Most of the publications and reports on the topic, however, are focusing on tangible products. But how about open innovation for services? Like financial services? Daniel Fasnacht says yes. In an upcoming book, he regards open innovation as a key concept for change. Daniel Fasnacht is an executive director at Bank "Julius Baer" in Switzerland and the author of the recently published book, Open Innovation in the Financial Services, published by Springer in January 2009.

The book identifies the shift from a closed to an open innovation paradigm in many financial institutions to react on recent financial and political challenges. Open innovation according to Fasnacht's definition is a mindset characterized by openness, flexibility, and customer integration. The book presents open innovation as a broad framework, including also concepts like developing ambidextrous thinking, creating an intrapreneurial attitude, and getting a systemic and holistic view on the firm. The term "open innovation" thus is used as a metaphor to address a wider array of options for strategic change in a conservative industry (Fasnacht uses the term much broader than I do it usually).

I invited Daniel Fasnacht to summarize his thoughts presented in his book. Find his short guest article to this blog in the following. FTP.

---

Open Innovation in the Financial Services

By Daniel Fasnacht

Banking has traditionally been a conservative industry and resistant to change. The stable industry structure, defined boundaries, clear business models, and identifiable players made change linear and predictable. But the recent global financial crisis have led to an industry with ambiguous structure, blurred boundaries, new business models, intermediaries and market entrants.

Banking and in particular banks have come under great pressure since September 2008 when Lehman Brothers, an institution which traces its roots back to 1850, filed for bankruptcy. Today, change in banking is unpredictable. Speed, efficiency, flexibility, and reliance have all become equally important factors not only for success, but to survive.

These new business rules and the hypercompetitive global environment have wide implications for management. Visionary leaders realized the need for extensive adaptations with innovation as a source of competitive advantage. Beneath the surface of banking, the overall phenomenon that will drive change in years to come is anticipated to be the shift from a closed to an open innovation paradigm.
Within the new paradigm, focus lies on openness, flexibility, and customer integration with the cooperation as the dominant organizational model. Firms in the financial services increasingly adopt open innovation concepts from manufacturing.

One application of open innovation has been adopted by almost all banks in recent years. They embraced open architecture as a model, which offers clients a full range of products, regardless of their suppliers. Openness is an essential prerequisite for the ability of modern financial firms to achieve differentiation, expertise, and specialization on the supply side, while providing superior service to highly satisfied customers on the demand side. To offer such a wide assortment, banks must balance the internal and external offerings. Thus, banks must restructure their client advisory processes as a complementary service to their product portfolio, with the aim of increasing customer value.

But with flexibility I would also like to refer to collaborative innovation. In other words, in a partnership flexibility is needed to control risk, commit limited resources, adapt to changing conditions, and exit easily. Listening to the voice of the customer and differentiating customer needs suitably are vital activities and impact customer satisfaction. Understanding client needs is key for developing new segments and value propositions. Many wealth managers hence today move from client segmentation based on assets to qualitative and psychographic criteria such as behavior type, source of wealth, and the life-cycle phase of the client. These are concepts for the future that help to tighten the relationship between the customer and the bank. Offering open architecture and focusing on servicing rather than pushing products is what clients want.

I am convinced that such approaches additionally increase trust. But managing multiple product offerings, serving, and advising clients across the globe is a huge challenge. By adopting a new open model of innovation, executives are able to cope with strategic change and simultaneously increase efficiency, flexibility and customer service. The capability for open, flexible, and aligned interactions is required for all business practices, but is not only important for expansion strategies in general, but especially during turbulent times.

In my book, I developed an integrative open innovation model (see the figure for an overview). The model illustrates the environmental changes, coming from the market, policy & regulation, customer, technology, and economy. These developments, together with recent incidents such as the financial crisis, have led to the phenomenon – the transition from a closed approach to open innovation. To master the transition, I elucidate the transition strategies observed in a number of firms. Implementing those strategies requires a set of new dynamic management practices and an open organizational culture that fosters the transition and releases organizational energy required to do business in the open innovation paradigm.

About the author: Dr. Daniel Fasnacht, born 1969, is an Executive Director at Bank Julius Baer. As chief of staff for Latin America, he is in charge for strategy, market development, and management support. Daniel has previously worked for Credit Suisse, Accenture and SAP. He has more than a decade’s experience in the financial services industry. He holds a degree in information management, an MBA from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and a PhD in Strategic Management from the University of Nottingham, England. He has published several articles about open innovation and strategy. He may be contacted at open.innovation@gmx.ch

Download the table of contents and a sample chapter of the book.

Crowdsourcing for a Good Cause: How InnoCentive's Utilized an Untapped Pool of Altruism to Work on Non-Profit Challenges

Putting together the donations you want to give for a good cause at this time of the year? Think again about just giving money. How about earning big money why doing good? Just solve one of InnoCentive's challenges for non-profit organizations.

FastCompany, a US business magazine, recently had a very good interview (conducted by Kermit Pattison) with Dwayne Spradlin, CEO of InnoCentive. At InnoCentive, corporations post research problems and a global network of 160,000 solvers takes a crack at solving them for cash rewards. Increasingly, non-profit organizations are beginning to consider crowdsourced innovation as a strategy for humanitarian causes too, such as developing medicines to fight tuberculosis in the developing world, cleaning up oil spills, or designing solar technologies for villages in rural India and Africa. Non-profit challenges have grown to about 20 percent of the InnoCentive portfolio, up from virtually none only two years ago.

For Dwayne Spradlin, this is not just is a way to "to tap technical expertise around the world, it also seems to be an untapped pool of altruism". For the solver community, oftentimes participating in a non-profit challenge is the vehicle by which they’re able to contribute (note: while the solutions are used for non-profit causes, prices are real and pay the usual 20-50K for a winning solution). Solvers may not have the financial resources, but they may have the know-how to solve problems that no one else can. That gives them great satisfaction. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Dwayne Spradlin provides an example of Non-Profit Crowdsourcing in the FastCompany interview:

"We ran a challenge for the Oil Spill Recovery Institute out of Cordova, Alaska. They needed to find a new and novel way to get oil of the bottom of Prince William Sound from the Exxon Valdez spill. For 15 years, that oil has been sitting down there at the bottom of the ocean. They could get the oil off the bottom and onto the barges, but the surface temperature drops so dramatically that the oil almost solidifies and they can’t pump it through the barge system.

The solver ended up being an engineer out of the Midwest and he recognized a way to solve that problem using technology that’s fairly common in the construction industry. He recognized that was very similar to the problem of keeping cement liquid when you’re pouring a foundation. They used commercial-grade vibrating equipment on the barges to keep the oil fluid enough so they could process it through the system.

Anyway, the moral of the story is he won $20,000 for solving the challenge and he spent part of that money to fly himself to Cordova, Alaska because he wanted to meet the people from the foundation he was most directly associated with helping. He’s now made himself available to do work for them pro bono on future projects. There’s very little likelihood he would have had an opportunity to use his skills and resources in this philanthropic way without InnoCentive."

How for-profit and not-for-profit challenges differ

Openness: "In the commercial space, we’re not able to be as open. Commercial entities oftentimes are running challenges anonymously. … But in the not-for-profit space, the rules change entirely. It’s much more about openness. It’s much more about trying to drive collaboration and almost a planetary learning to drive something that ultimately benefits humankind in general."

Handling intellectual property:  "In the commercial space, we’re typically transferring intellectual property and trade secrets. In the not-for-profit space, it really is much more about an open source form of licensing and putting into the public domain the learning and outcomes of the challenges."

Success rates: "40 percent of challenges on the network are solved in general. But of the philanthropic challenges, the success rate is closer to 60 percent, as (1) the fundamental desire for people to work on problems that are important to the global good. (2) Not-for-profits in general have not had access to the same kinds of innovation, research and development tools as commercial enterprises. With InnoCentive, these organizations can access to the same kinds of brilliant people around the world on demand that companies have for years."

From crowdsourcing to crowdfunding.

Interestingly, InnoCentive also already thinks of the next big step.

"Imagine challenges to which people can vote and contribute with their donations—prize amounts that grow in relation to public interest. This approach could focus millions of dollars and an extraordinary amount of attention in a way that merges free market activist philanthropy with the power of prizes.

Perhaps 100,000 people could speak with their hearts, minds, and wallets to bring a challenge related to climate change into the forefront more easily than industry or government. We call the idea "crowd-funding meets crowd-sourcing" and could represent the truest form of democratic engagement in the process of innovation. This is an idea we are spending a lot of time developing ..."

Context: Read the entire interview here.

Hard Copies: New Open Designs by Ronen Kadushin

An exhibition at Appel Design Gallery, Berlin 1-22 Nov. 2008 -- and an invitation to download all design and place it on your local CNC machine.

Now we have Ponoko, eMachineshop, JuJups, Shapedays, etc to produce what ever come to our mind in an easy way. But still, at least I don't have every day a nice idea for a great coffee table in my mind.

This is where Ronen Kadushin comes in. I wrote about this Berlin-based designer before. Ronen's idea is to publish all his designs under a CC Creative Commons license( by-nc-sa). So whenever you have access to a CNC cutting facility, you can get his designs:

As Ronen describes: 

"Open Design products flow with an essential cultural wave: towards freer information, Web-based collaborations and open-source methods. In Open Design anyone can download and produce my designs for free. Open Designs encourage modification, redistribution, and direct contact with the designer. I would only ask producers to share with me revenues from commercial uses. This means that with no tooling investment, you can produce Open Design products independently."

All object rely on a very clever 2D digital start point, which makes them easy to alter into new shapes and uses, and they are flat packed. “Hard copies” of the designs can be ordered from any CNC cutting facility that’s local to you, your consumers, or distributors. Ronen's idea is that designs that typically live only a few years in the marketplace can live on and develop.

Still, at the same time, Ronen needs to earn some money. Generating fame and buzz and getting his name out is one of the intentions of the Open Design project. But he also produces some of his collections in high quality and exhibits (and sells) them in an annual exhibition at a Gallery in Berlin.

He says about his new exhibition: 

"This Open Design collection of lighting and furniture limited editions is playing a double role. As gallery pieces, they express my personal style: simple, effortless and humorous. But they also relate to wider cultural issues and offer a designer an alternative course to consumer products, especially relevant in economically troubled times.

There is a feeling about Open Design I would like to convey. Making products this way is, for me, mind clearing and fun. You can feel as good about the Open Design production process, its low environmental footprint, and what it stands for, as you do about the objects themselves."

Context information:
- Freely download the Open Designs and more from www.ronen-kadushin.com
- Order them at Appel Design Gallery, Berlin, www.appel-design.com

Exhibition at:
Appel Design Gallery
Torstr. 114, 10119 Berlin, Germany
phone: +49 (0)30 32 51 81 60
info@appel-design.com

The next generation of user design: Forget about CAD, just handdraw your design, and Ponoko will make it

While this may be small step for mankind, it is a large step for user co-design and customization. Until today, users who wanted to get a custom product had to be able to use at least an online configurator, or, in case they wanted larger freedom of creation as offered by user manufacturing sites like Ponoko, eMachineshop, Shapeways, Fabidoo, or others, they had to be able to use some graphik design software.

Now Ponoko makes co-designing even more intuitive and easier. The crew today launched their service Photomake. It turns digital photos of hand drawings into real products simply by uploading them to the Ponoko website.

The company is again one step further to its mission of making "it super simple for anyone to make anything that is on their mind, at low cost."

Previously at Techcrunch40, Ponoko launched Designmake for designers to make things on demand – over 10,000 have signed up. Earlier this year, they also launched Ponoko ID for shoppers to request goods to be made just for them by these designers. Now with Photomake they're inviting creative people who don't know how to use design software to participate simply by sketching what they want on a piece of paper and uploading a photo of it to get it made.

Derek Elley from Ponoko said in an e-mail that "One of the cool things about Photomake is the quality of the result – it's truly hand drawn. Because digital making is so very precise every tiny bump in the hand drawn creation is picked up and made for real. This gives a very natural and human feel to the things you make."

The trick behind Photomake is some very clever file conversion technology that is more accurate than anything that has come before it. It is designed so that what you draw is what is made, without any touching up required in a design software program.

This is a major revolution in the democratization of design and innovation. We know from empirical research that many users innovate and have creative ideas ahead of the market. Up to today, they either needed a manufacturer listening to them and turning their ideas into products. Or they had to have specific skills to turn their ideas by themselves into a design and get it produced. The later process was made much easier in the last few years, but still required skills in using design software and how to place a design on a machine. Now, even this hurdle blurs ... driven by new technology that allows this process at rather low cost.

So, go ahead and just hand draw your next Christmas presents.

Context:
- Press release by Ponoko on their new service.
- Video showing the entire process: http://www.ponoko.com/photomake
- On the upcoming MIT Smart Customization seminar, Cathy Lewis, CEO of Desktop Factory, will present what will be next: Transfer your custom designs into products in your home as easy as today printing a document.

UK Event on Leading Innovation and Open Innovation

Innovation Leader Summit 2008, 3 - 4 November 2008, Copthorne Hotel, Slough, United Kingdom

My friends at Pure Insight are running a great event on innovation that also has a core focus on open innovation in form of an executive round table.  The conference organizers wants to extend your understanding of the relationships between strategy, people, culture, customers and organisational issues that are required to enable your organisation’s innovation capabilities, and some of the tools required to frame problems, research customers, analyse insights, and create breakthrough concepts.

One of the keynote speakers is my colleague Bettina von Stamm, Founder of the Innovation Leadership Forum, who is running with John Bessant the Discontinuous Innovation Lab, one of the projects at our department at RWTH-TIM. Bettina is hugely passionate about understanding and enabling innovation, particularly in large organisations.

The event faculty and an experienced panel from Fortune 500 companies will share their perspectives, experiences and methodologies. Articulating not just the ‘what’ but also the ‘how to’ required to succeed based on their own successes and failures, this event focuses firmly on 'how to innovate successfully'.

For more information, head to http://www.innovationleadersummit.com.
To download a brochure, click here.

Redesign of RedesignMe: Dutch user innovation catalyst starts new service

Everybody knows about some product he or she struggles with once in a while. Maybe you even thought of a solution. Now you can upload these solutions to a website and share them with the world.

RedesignMe is a great Dutch company focusing on open innovation and user co-design, It was founded by designer Maxim Schram who was frustrated that he had some great ideas how to improve existing products, but had not opportunity to get companies listen to his ideas.

So he started his own web site posting his ideas for improvements – and inviting others to do the same. 

His company, RedesignMe, aims to improve the products and services around us by collectively rethinking bad products into better products and good ideas into great ideas. The offering is called Design Critique. Maxim even came up with a simple toolkit so that users are able to quickly capture ideas. Actually it is not more than a simple, easy to use drawing tool that allows you to draw on a photo of a product. But is a great help to really express what you are going to say.

With Design Critique, RedesignMe collects the best product improvements based on their users input and communicates that back to the original product designers & producers.

RedesignMe contacts the companies behind the products in question to show them the feedback and encourages them to reply directly to the users and eventually fix the problems.

RedesignMe also encourages the companies to work more closely with their end-users by setting up RDM Challanges, their second product.

RDM Challenges are conceptual or design-driven challenges initiated by companies that want to involve their customers more closely into their product development process. RDM Challenges clearly describe a (design) problem and participating users are rewarded for their input through their RDM system. Feedback can be in form of a comment, sketch, set of pictures, mood-board, movie, prototype or total redesign. They just started the first RDM Challenge for the DECT Forum, for concepts based around their new CAT-iq technology: http://cat-iq.redesignme.com

As an incentive, participants can earn points (RDMs) by co-designing products with manufacturers. They can redeem these RDMs in their online shop.

In a short while, RedsignMe also plans to introduce the "RDM Challenge Pro", where they invite people to come to our office to co-design products, and discuss with manufacturers.

So another opportunity for you, the consumer, to place your creative ideas.

RYZwear.com: Applying the Threadless Concept to Footwear

"At RYZ we’ve set out to create a people’s brand – a community of designers, sneakerheads and anyone that cares enough about art, fashion or sneakers to speak up. Together we’ll create sneakers that are designed and chosen, not by some big, faceless corporation, but by you.

Think of RYZ as a stage for designers to showcase their creativity and a forum for people to define what great sneaker design means. In other words, we just make comfortable sneakers – the rest is up to you."

This is how Rob Langstaff announced his new business just one month ago, ryzwear.com The hope of RYZ is to become the Threadless of footwear, connecting people who design custom sneakers with those that vote on the designs and purchase. I am wondering since long what could be good fields where the extremely profitable Threadless idea can be applied to, and footwear could be one option.

Rob Langstaff is not an outsider of the sneaker world. The former Adidas America Inc. president has turned the business model of its former employer upside down, Instead of assigning design jobs to inhouse designers, he is relying on online clusters of consumers to design products and figure out which ones to sell. "In Ryz's case, it's MySpace meets "American Idol," with footwear as the unit of expression", as an online report called the business model.

"The corporate design team is limited by its walls," Langstaff is quoted in the news report, "The corporation shouldn't be dictating what the consumer wears. The consumers should."

This is how RYZ works:

• Each month, Ryz will post a different standardized shoe silhouette on its Web site (a high-top shoe and a low-top shoe were the first two). Users can download the template and, using Adobe Photoshop, illustrate or add images across the shoe.
  
  
• Site visitors can rate and comment on submissions. After a month, a winner will be declared and Ryz will order a run of the winning design -- 100 pairs to start and 1,000 pairs by next year -- from a contract manufacturer in China.
  
  
• The winning designer will get $1000 for the start, plus royalties of $1/piece on ongoing sales, and get their profiles attached to each pair and a listing in Ryzwear.com's Hall of Fame.
  
  
• Two weeks after the contest ends, Ryz will sell the winning shoes on the Web and, for now, in Xebio Co., a leading Japanese sporting-goods retailer that owns a stake in Ryz. The retail price: $75 to $90 a pair.

By 2012, Langstaff hopes to allow users to design the entire shoe, from the shape of the sole to the shape of the eyestay. He also hopes to get into athletic wear. He expects to rely on customers to do most of his marketing.

Rob Langstaff is putting $4 million into his shoe startup, saying there is too great a disconnect between businesses and consumers. He expects to do $40 million in revenue by 2012 (which would be about half the time of Threadless' way to scale, but could work given his larger experience in the market and the higher price tags).

Interestingly, among some of the people helping Langstaff to set to the business is Mikal Peveto, a former footwear executive who started design-your-own shoe site Customatix in 2000. In case you have followed mass customization since its beginning, you should know Customatix. The company got much attention and had one of the best online configurators of its time. But it also did offer too much of a good thing, giving users really zillions of choices at a time when consumers were not really educated in mass customization configurators.

But Peveto believes Ryzwear can succeed where Customatix failed because consumers today are more comfortable interacting and purchasing online from less-established companies.  "Our timing wasn't great. We couldn't get people to buy because they didn't trust the brand," Peveto said. "Now is a completely different time than in 2000 because there are so many different brands that are valid."

So I am curious to see whether Mikal Peveto and Rob Langstaff's predictions come true. They took some serious modifications of adopting the Threadless models for their industry. But Threadless' customers are as much purchasing the membership in a club, a community, by purchasing t-shirts frequently at $15 a pop. I am not quite sure that this will work with $90 sneakers.

To develop however a great (and profitable) underground line of sneakers with a great story, their approach may work will. They may want to learn from Muji, the Japanese's retailer, and its approach to the model. Muji is not just letting customers vote on new designs, but also asks them to make a small cash payment on the item they really want to have in stores. Thus, they can much better predict what
people will purchase later. Such an approach also could benefit RYZ as it would connect the voting process closer with purchasing..

Context information:

A good article in Oregonlive told me first about RYZ

A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle on crowdsourcing and user idea competitions is featuring RYZ, Threadless, and a number of other companies.

My previous reports about the CEC User Co-Design Competitionand Open Source Footwear.

NYT on Open Innovation and the Innocentive model of distributed problem solving

The New York Times today had a good new story on InnoCentive and open innovation via distributed problem solving (or "Broadcast Search", as our friend and HBS professor Karim Lakhani calls it). Beyond sharing some information on the state at Innocentive, it names a number of other recent examples where price challenges are set up to work on tough scientific problems.

According to the article, InnoCentive has solved 250 challenges for their clients (meaning that they have posted about 3 to 4 times as many) for prizes typically in the $10,000 to $25,000 range. The achievements include a compound for skin tanning, a method of preventing snack chip breakage and a mini-extruder in brick-making.

Solvers come from 175 countries. More than a third have doctorates, CEO Dwayne Spradlin is quoted in the article, and while motivated by money, they also have a desire to solve “problems that matter.” The outlook? By 2011, Spradlin hopes InnoCentive participants will have answered at least 10,000 challenges.

This demands some serious scaling up of the business model. But I believe that Innocentive is on the right track and a great example of open innovation, using the term beyond a new expression for traditional R&D networks. Karim Lakhani is quoted in the article that

“most laboratories, most R & D endeavors still work on the premise ‘we can accumulate and make sense of all the knowledge that is relevant.’ The open-source models and a model like InnoCentive show that other approaches can help.”

So, fancy some challenges to work on? Here you go: Today, would-be innovators can sign up online to compete for prizes for:

• Landing on the Moon (space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge)
• Inventing artificial meat (www.peta.org/feat_in_vitro_contest.asp).
• The National Research Council recommended that the National Science Foundation, the major government financing agency for physical science research, should offer prizes of $200,000 to $2 million “in diverse areas” as a first step in a major program “to encourage more complex innovations” addressing economic, social and other challenges. (The report is available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11816).
• John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, has proposed that the government offers $300 million to whoever invents a battery compact enough, powerful enough and cheap enough to replace fossil fuels.

The article also tells about a great project not know to me before:Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Washington began recruiting computer gamers to an online competition, named Foldit, aimed at unraveling one of the knottiest problems of biology — how proteins fold (http://fold.it).

"The Foldit contest is a volunteer effort. It began as Rosetta@home, a project using down-time of computers throughout the world to do the laborious calculations needed to determine the shapes of proteins, strings of amino acid crucial to the cells of every living thing. The way these molecules work depends on how the strings fold, but calculating the folding is, as the Foldit researchers put it, “one of the pre-eminent challenges of biology.”

In Foldit, players will compete online to design proteins, and researchers will test designs to see if they are good candidates for use in drugs. The researchers who worked to design it say results will also be interesting because people’s intuition for protein folding does not seem necessarily to be tied to formal training or laboratory experience.

“Our ultimate goal is to have ordinary people play the game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize,” said Zoran Popovic, a computer scientist and engineer at the University of Washington."

So, in case you are a good computer gamer, chances for a Nobel prize never were larger!

The CEC Co-Design Contest: Open Innovation in the Footwear Industry

A year ago, I reported about the CEC User Co-Design Contest. Now, the results are in and the experiment is over. In the following guest article, Angelika Bullinger and Erik Hansen report about the contest. They are working at TUM Business School and were the project leaders of this contest. Here is their report:

During the last three to four years, we have seen a dramatic surge in interest in the principle of “open innovation”. “Open innovation” means the involvement of customers and other partners in the innovation process. By their creative input, many companies are significantly increasing their ability to source powerful products.

But how to meet with the creative minds outside your company?

For European shoe manufactures, an answer to this question is provided by the “CEC Co-Design Community (CE3C)”, a web-based platform that enables the integration of customers in the innovation process. The platform provides combinable modules for the interaction of the company with its customers and partners. For example, in the “mindstyle module”, customers get an analysis of their preferred style by intuitively selecting pictures out of number of photographs. The manufacturer gets information which trends are currently “hot”.

In another module, “product configuration” those shoes in the collection which can be customized are shown. By the data on individualized shoes, manufacturers are informed about customers’ preferences. Especially in combination, the modules of CE3C provide shoe manufacturers with rich information on their current consumers’ preferences. 

But preferences of current customers are not enough to your company? You want really innovative designs and get to know their creators? In this case, the “idea contest” is your solution. An idea contest is a forum in which passionate contributors from all over the world can exercise their creativity on account of a topic defined by the organisator. Prizes – and the recognition by the company – generate interest and drive participation. Typically, one company organizes an idea contest and submitted ideas are judged by a panel of employees.

The idea contest module of CE3C has already been very successfully tested - the “CEC Shoe Design Contest” was run between October and December 2007 on the platform. To involve customers more closely, a voting functionality allowed users to express their opinion on the submitted shoe designs. User votings were integrated the final decision-making on the winning designs.

The results of the CEC Shoe Design Contest have been very satisfying to the involved shoe manufacturers: In total, 63 highly innovative designs have been submitted. The active community of interested users (and submitters) has about 400 members who stem from nearly 50 countries around the globe. Both the unusual size of the community and the number of high-quality submissions indicate the power of the idea contest module of CE3C. The winning designs are currently manufactured and companies are getting in touch with the creative minds behind the designs.

You also want an idea contest for your company? You would like to meet with the still unknown designers? The CEC CoDesign Community (CE3C) stands ready for adaptation to your company’s particularities – and the established community only waits for the next idea contest on account of a thrilling topic. Let’s thus integrate and innovate!

For more information, contact Angelika Bullinger or Erik Hansen.

Here are some more results of the first contest in form of pictures:

Conference on Open Innovation and the Importance of External Information for the Innovation Process at Zeppelin University

JULY 11, 2008, 2-6pm, Friedrichshafen

Zeppelin University is the rising star among the new private German universities, and they reinforce their status by organizing their first Innovation Symposion around the topic of open innovation.

I am privileged to be invited to open the event with a keynote, but three managers from leading companies will demonstrate how they apply open / user innovation in practice. And in a workshop with all participants, we want to explore how you can profit from an internet based platform for open innovation for your company.

The event is in German language, and so is all other information as well:

 
Das Symposium für Innovation

Das Symposium für Innovation der Zeppelin Universität Friedrichshafen möchte Unternehmer und Entscheider aus dem Innovationsbereich mittelständischer und großer Unternehmen aus der Bodensee-Region und darüber hinaus zusammenbringen, um über dieses bedeutende Thema zu diskutieren.

Anregende Praxis-Beispiele und Vorträge ausgewiesener Experten auf dem Gebiet des Innovationsmanagements verdeutlichen Ihnen die Bedeutung offener Innovation auch für Ihr Unternehmen. Nutzen Sie das Symposium für Innovation, um sich mit Unternehmensvertretern aus Ihrer Branche und anderen Branchen in einem offenen Rahmen auszutauschen und neue Kontakte zu knüpfen.

Zunehmende Bedeutung externen Wissens und offener Innovation

Das erfolgreiche Management von Innovationen stellt heute eine zentrale Herausforderung für Unternehmen dar, um langfristig erfolgreich zu sein. Die zunehmende Bedeutung von Wissen als grundlegender Ressource von Innovationen macht hierbei die Integration externen Wissens (beispielsweise von Kunden, Zulieferern, Universitäten, etc.) zu einem häufig wettbewerbsentscheidenden Faktor für ein erfolgreiches Unternehmen. Das Management offener Innovationsprozesse in Innovationsnetzwerken und anderen Kooperationsformen vermag somit einen bedeutenden Beitrag als Quelle neuer Innovationen für die Entwicklung von am Markt erfolgreichen Produkten zu leisten.

Aus dem Programm:

• „Die Hilti AG und die Einbeziehung von Kunden in den Innovationsprozess“, Elke Baessler, Corporate Innovation Manager, Hilti AG, Liechtenstein
• „Open Innovation in der Automobil-Industrie: Das Network of Automotive Excellence und der Innovations-Wettbewerb 2008“, Herbert Köpplinger, ewf institute, München, Leiter der Initiative Network of Automotive Excellence, eines firmenübergreifenden Zusammenschlusses von Unternehmen aus der Automobil- und Automobilzulieferer-Industrie
• „Outside In: Kundenintegration als Erfolgsfaktor im OEM-Geschäft“, Alexander Lang, Director Marketing & Innovation, Webasto AG, München

Workshop: „Anforderungen von Unternehmen aus der Praxis an eine internetbasierte Plattform für den Einsatz von Open Innovation im Unternehmen“

Download des Programm-Flyers mit allen Informationen als PDF.

Mehr Informationen und Registrierung (60,- Euro Teilnahmegebühr) hier.

Threadless - the full story: Inc. Magazine Feature on Threadless

Max Chafkin, a staff writer the US Entrepreneurship journal Inc. Magazine, has written a great report on Threadless  for the June 2008 issue of the magazine. It is available in a free online pre-press version now.

Max tells the entire story of Threadless, starting with the episode of a meeting at MIT where the Threadless guys gave one of their first public presentations. I had the privilege to be part of this meeting, and it is fun to read about it in paper (especially as I am at MIT in the moment, writing these lines from the same building where we had the initial meeting with Threadless).

Max did a great job in documenting the history and genesis of Threadless, but also reflecting on its future. Here are some quotes of Max' analysis of the case, but head to the website to read the entire article:

On Threadless' Size and Development

This rapid engagement propelled the company through four years of phenomenal growth, beginning around 2004. The user base grew tenfold, from 70,000 members at the end of 2004 to more than 700,000 today. Sales in 2006 hit $18 million -- with profits of roughly $6 million. In 2007, growth continued at more than 200 percent, with similar margins. Though Nickell refuses to disclose the exact revenue number -- perhaps because he now counts Insight Venture Partners, a New York venture capital firm, as a minority shareholder -- it seems fair to assume that Threadless sold more than $30 million in T-shirts last year.

Ask Nickell what he makes of his company's whirlwind success, and he will respond rather sheepishly. "I think of it as common sense," he says. "Why wouldn't you want to make the products that people want you to make?" Indeed, the idea that the users of products are often best equipped to innovate is something many entrepreneurs know intuitively.

And it is supported by a growing body of research. A study published last year in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal suggested that the vast majority of companies are founded by "user-entrepreneurs" -- people who went into business to improve a product they used. Meanwhile, studies by von Hippel and others show that in industries as diverse as scientific instruments and snowboard equipment, more than half the innovations generally come from users, not from research labs.

On user innovation and the resistance of traditional companies to adopt it

Some companies actually punish these people by cracking down on unauthorized innovations. Apple has famously "bricked" -- that is, electronically disabled -- iPhones that have been enhanced by their owners. Other companies pay lip service to user innovation but have trouble following through on the concept. "Companies are very good at creating platforms for external input, but they're very bad at using this input," says Frank Piller …

Threadless is an exception to this. "You could say that what Threadless does is trivial, but it's not," says Harvard's Lakhani. In fact, the very triviality of Threadless's product -- something as low tech and as commoditized as a T-shirt -- proves that vibrant online communities can drive all sorts of nontechnical businesses. This should be encouraging news to entrepreneurs. Customer communities have become exceedingly inexpensive to build and manage; blogging software and social network platforms, for example, are now available for free from a handful of start-ups. "We thought that open source could only work in software, and now it's being successfully applied to a product as mundane as a T-shirt," Lakhani says.

On Threadless' Corporate Culture and Work Style

[Today], the company is suspiciously companylike. The go-carts generally stay parked, the buck stays mute, and the Ping-Pong table serves as a gathering place for impromptu meetings. "When I started, we spent half the day playing," says Lance Curran, a bearded 29-year-old wearing a beanie, jeans, and a flannel shirt. "That doesn't happen anymore." This is not to say Curran doesn't like his job. On the contrary, he nearly glows when he talks about his rise from a temporary warehouse worker in 2005 to the warehouse manager in charge of a staff of 18 today. ...

Like Curran, most of Threadless's employees come with no obvious qualifications for their jobs. The oldest staff member is 33, and many are under 25. The employees do, however, arrive with a deep and abiding love of Threadless, having joined the community long before they entered the work force.

Joe Van Wetering, a 21-year-old illustrator who works in the production department, was a frequent visitor to Threadless's offices as a teenager before taking a job in the warehouse in 2006. Ross Zietz had won seven competitions while studying art at Louisiana State University before he took a job as the company's janitor in 2004. He has since been promoted to art director, charged with helping the winning designers get their entries ready for printing. In fact, 75 percent of the company's 50 employees were community members before they were hired.

On other product categories Threadless is exploring

Now, Nickell is set to let his club loose on other businesses. In addition to expanding to children's clothing and retail, Threadless will begin selling prints and posters online. And later this year, the company will add a range of products, including handbags, wallets, and dinnerware, under the brand Naked & Angry. Each item will be adorned with patterns submitted by users, with a new product launched each month. "I think Naked & Angry, if handled properly, has the potential to be way bigger than Threadless, because we have the flexibility to do everything," says Kalmikoff, who envisions moving into high-end clothing as well as housewares. Jeff Lieberman, managing director of Insight Venture Partners and a board member, is even more bullish. "To say it's just a T-shirt company is absurd," he says. "I look at it as a community company that happens to use T-shirts as a canvas."

 
And Max' final evaluation of Threadless' Business Model: A fundamental economic shift

The way Eric von Hippel sees it, Threadless has tapped into a fundamental economic shift, a movement away from passive consumerism. One day in the not-too-distant future, he says, citizen inventors using computer design programs and three-dimensional printers will exchange physical prototypes in much the same way Nickell and cohorts played Photoshop tennis.

Eventually, Threadless-like communities could form around industries as diverse as semiconductors, auto parts, and toys. "Threadless is one of the first firms to systematically mine a community for designs, but everything is moving in this direction," says von Hippel. He foresees research labs and product-design divisions at manufacturing companies being outstripped by an "innovation commons" made up of tinkerers, hackers, and other devout customers freely sharing their ideas. The companies that win will be the ones that listen.

This may or may not come to pass, but the lesson of Threadless is more basic. Its success demonstrates what happens when you allow your company to become what your customers want it to be, when you make something as basic and quaint as "trust" a core competency. Threadless succeeds by asking more than any modern retail company has ever asked of its customers -- to design the products, to serve as the sales force, to become the employees. Nickell has pioneered a new kind of innovation. It doesn't require huge research budgets or creative brilliance -- just a willingness to keep looking outward.

Context:
- My earlier reports on Threadless are here and here.
- The full Inc. Magazin article

Spreadshirt Reveals New Crowdsourced Logo

Remember the Spreadshirt Crowdsourcing contest to get a new logo from its community, the Open Logo Project 1.6 (OLP) ? I was part of the judging panel, and it was a fun activity to do. "We wanted to take this to the community who use, create and live our product, rather than to an agency", Jana Eggers, Spreadshirt CEO, is quoted in a press release.

The results were in at the end of the year, and now finally the winning logo has been placed on the site and all CI materials. Kim Larsen’s ‘Love Tab’ was the winning design, chosen from 2,800 submissions (from 45 countries). Kim is a 23 year old graphic and interactive media designer from Sweden.

"I wanted to make personal branding visually simple and to embed a symbol everyone can relate to.", he says, "The heart resonates with the feeling of love you have for something you’ve created and the stitching with the hand-crafted nature of the product."

Context:
- My previous report about the contest.
- The official contest site
- Press release at Spreadshirt (and I do not know whether being a web 2.0 guru is a good thing or not today).

Update: Fashion Crowdsourcing Project Nvohk Set to Launch on June 5, 2008

Some weeks ago, I reported about nvohk (pronounced ‘invoke’), a company that puts our "collective customer commitment" model into action: Get 5000 members who pay 50$ each of funding, use the money to create an eco-friendly line of clothes, and then sell the clothes to a wider public and share the profits with the original members. Members, as part of their pre-payment, get the right to vote on new designs and co-manage some of nvohk's business decisions.

In a press release today, the company reported that since December 4, 2007, nvohk could recruit 2,800 members worldwide – enough that the company will officially activate membership and launch its brand on June 5, 2008.

I am curious to see how the project will develop and if it reaches its threshold of 5000 members. It seems a bit more difficult then the founders officially expected. In January they were talking about 20,000 people to be recruited. to start the project. Now they are down to 5000, and still 40% away from this target.

Perhaps the founders should just position nvohk in the "pimp my C.V." domain. For just 50$ investment, you honestly can say you run your own eco-business and are investing in the sustainability revolution ...

Context:
- Website: www.projectnvohk.com
- My previous posting about the company

New Open Innovation Marketplace Connects Connects Inventors With the Problems They Can Solve

Planet Eureka started its beta test. Free open innovation service for SMEs.

In its upcoming issue, Information Week reports about a new online marketplace for open innovation. The site is devoted to helping people with solutions find problems. As Marianne Kolbasuk McGee reports in her article, Planet Eureka lets an inventor post an idea in hopes of finding a company interested in using it to solve its own problem or in bringing it to market to solve others' problems. The new site aims to match inventors with small and midsize businesses.

Thus, Planet Eureka turns the idea of Innocentive upside-down (Innocentive posts problems) and is much closer to the conventional patent / invention databases.

"There are thousands of inventors wanting to commercialize their ideas, but it's hard to get a potential manufacturer," says Ken Bloemer, president of Eureka's innovation group.

Many small and midsize businesses also lack deep R&D resources but are looking for great new ideas, he says. Those companies will get first dibs at Planet Eureka. Only small and midsize companies can view ideas during their first 100 days posted on the site. But after that, any company can access them.

Access is free to sellers and buyers. But the company charges for services it provides inventors, such as workshops on how to write descriptions of ideas that tell potential investors quickly what the invention is about without forcing them to trudge through patent abstracts. Inventors can also use Planet Eureka's Merwyn software, which Bloemer says can assess the probability of an invention or idea's success based on its written description.

Planet Eureka isn't the first Web site to traffic in ideas. Open innovation marketplaces have been matching businesses that have problems with people who have promising solutions for several years. Similar services are:

INNOCENTIVE: Connects companies, nonprofits, and government agencies looking for solutions to problems with people and organizations that have answers. Charges $15,000 to post a problem as well as 40% commission on amount paid to the solution provider.

NINE SIGMA: Prepares and posts RFPs for companies and others seeking solutions to problems. Charges fees for all services.

Context: Read the full Information week article here.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers Goes Open Innovation: User Innovation Contest Started

You create the next IT Services for Tomorrow’s Data Center

Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC), a large IT infrastructure provider, just started their first community-based innovation contest this week. The contest asks everyone with a clever idea to develop ideas around the Data Center of the future.

They ask the questions how data centers will work in the future, what services will be required by users, and which topics will be of strategic importance for their business.

The contest has been created by a business team within FSC with the help of HYVE AG, a Munich based open innovation accelerator. On the platform, users not just become a source of ideas, but a member of an Innovation Community. This shall enhance their ideas with the help of other contest participants and the internal experts from Fujitsu Siemens Computers.

Every idea can be evaluated and commented by every contestant. As a consequence, ideas become vital elements which can be formed and developed by many spirits and thereby have the chance to gain excellence. While the original spin doctor competes for one of the prizes for one specific idea, the contestant’s activity within the community is rewarded as well.

In order to enable the contestants to actively interact beside the discussions on ideas, several additional functions are available to the participants. Weekly chats with other participants and Fujitsu Siemens Computers Professionals are dedicated to specific topics which are defined according to eminent issues within the pool of ideas. Not to mention the forum and other features.

Every contestant can contribute several ideas. The essence of the ideas is described through a handful of uniform parameters such as target group and basic functionality. The idea can also be enriched by any attachment such as diagrams or mind maps. In order to compare and rank the ideas, the contributions are evaluated along some criteria such as market potential, value to the customer or novelty to the market. Contestants evaluate their own as well as any other idea by these criteria.

The contest consists of different phases:

First, ideas are contributed and evaluated by the community. After two weeks the contest went on, FSC experts will come into play and start the expert evaluation phase were ideas are evaluated along similar criteria as the community evaluated the ideas. A tag cloud helps to explore the pool of ideas intuitively and your favorite ideas can be added to your personal list in order to keep an eye on their progress. And in the end, the winning idea gets 5000 Euro, plus there are several of the latest FSC laptops to win.

So if you are interested in data centers services, here is the opportunity to shape the future of this industry. http://innovation-contest.fujitsu-siemens.com. I am curiuous to see how this company-driven innovation contest works and which people come up to submit ideas.

Conference on Open Innovation in Munich on April 24, 2008

The MÜNCHNER KREIS is a prestigious non-profit supranational association working at the interface of public policy, science, business, and the media on issues of technology, societal and business impacts, and regulation of information and communications technologies. The MÜNCHNER KREIS organizes discussion groups, member conferences, symposia, and congresses.

On April 24, it organizes a rather large conference on open innovation in the telecommunication industries in Munich:
Leadership by Open Innovation in the Telecoms, IT and Media Industries
April 24, 2008, Haus der Bayerischen Wirtschaft, Munich

From the conference announcement:

The telecommunications, IT and media industries are simultaneously facing the challenges of globalization (in emerging markets such as China), convergence (through IP networks) and new value chains (through increased customer involvement and competition). Innovation will be the key to lead in these industries. The important question is: How should firms innovate?

Innovation cycles are shorter and costs are increasing. Could Bertelsmann have created a Google without having a garage in Silicon Valley? Will Kodak and Fuji be the leaders of the digital photos and videos? Will Apple take over EMI? How should firms use inventions of their R&D departments, which do not fit into their current business models? How should firms share, save or protect intellectual property? Is Digital Rights Management advantageous or is a free market model better? Should a mobile operator focus on customers or become a utility company to transport bits and bytes?

Perhaps “Open Innovation” is the magic word to answer these challenges and provide a model for innovation in these industries. Open means on the one hand the involvement of customers, users and clients in the innovation process and on the other hand the opening of the innovation process and sharing of intellectual property with third parties and even competitors. The conference is mainly focusing on the latter aspect, but a few speakers, including myself, will also address the former aspect of user innovation.

Open innovation as a methodology has an impact on business models, on corporate culture, on communication processes with users/suppliers, and on the architecture of the value chain. What do firms need to lead in their markets? Certainly they will need the right innovative products/services, the right business model, the right management and team, and the adequate financial backing. But more and more smart people are living and working outside their corporate borders. Will Open Innovation motivate people to team up, to create and to be passionate across borders or will it lead to strengthen competitors? There are no black and white answers to these questions.

The conference "Leadership by Open Innovation in the Telecoms, IT and Media Industries" will examine and discuss the importance of innovation for the commercial success of new inventions including technology, marketing, business models or a mix of all three.

For more information and registration, have a look in this PDF file (the conference will be in English and German with Simultaneous Translation of German-English language).

Zapfab: User-generated content meets 3D Printing

A new Ponoko-alike company is coming from Manchester in the UK! Zapfab Ltd is a user manufacturing start up that offers a new way of delivering individualized, customized products. As other companies in this field, they are combining the creativity of user-generated content with the power of 3D Printing (fabbing).

In a press release I got today, the company is described as follows:

"User-generated content is ubiquitous throughout the internet, from weblogs to YouTube videos. Zapfab builds on this trend, by providing a website where users can easily generate unique designs for 3D objects.

3D Printing is rapidly gaining ground as a way of creating real, physical objects from 3D design data. Zapfab provides an easy way to access this technology: Once you have generated a 3D design you can choose to have it 3D printed: Zapfab will 3D print the design and deliver the finished object to you.

The Zapfab website has two main areas: the Design Catalog and the 3D Customizer. The Design Catalog contains all the designs on the site and is a repository like Google's 3D warehouse. The 3D Customizer is where the customizing takes place: Each design can be customized in different ways: color, size, pattern, etc. and the 3D Customizer contains simple controls for each of the options. So, once a user has customized a design, she can save it back into the catalog for other people to see. And then they in turn can customize and build on her design.

“We see three main groups of users for Zapfab.com,” said Julie Wood, Zapfab Director, in the press release “First, we have made the 3D Customizer really easy to use, so that anyone can create a unique, customized design in just a few minutes.

Second, there are a range of users with 3D modelling skills, who will be able to upload their designs to the site; and we aim to make it easy for them to add customizations to those designs.

Third, users with programming or scripting skill will be able to create new, highly-customizable designs. And all the designs, from the simplest to the most complex, are customizable through the same easy-to-use 3D Customizer.”

At the moment, Zapfab’s Design Catalog contains over 100 customized designs, ranging from bowls to boxes and bangles. All of the designs can be 3D printed “as is”, or freely customized. It is a nice, but at this stage not too creative collection of things. But I hope to see much more activity on their side, and given that they are located in Europe, I also will try this service by myself in the next weeks and let you know about my experiences.

Open Innovation in the Automotive Industry: NoAE Idea Competition 2008 Has Started

NoAE, the Network of Automotive Excellence, has just opened the second round of its open innovation competition for the automotive industry. NoAE is a German network of more than 100 companies from the automotive industry, including many OEMs (like Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ford, Mazda, MAN, Porsche, and Volkswagen), first- and second-tier-suppliers, and related companies. It is one of the best examples of a non-hierarchical network I know.

For the second year, they also organize an innovation competition where everyone can submit ideas and concepts within three areas:

(1) Health and Wellness in the automobile

(2) Infotainment and Navigation

(3) CO2 Reduction, lightweight constructions, and new materials

The contest itself is a good idea, the execution however follows not the state-of-the-art of open innovation principles: You really have to be motivated intrinsically as you can win nothing than a place on a conference exhibition where the 30 best ideas will be presented. The claim of the organizers is "Ideas become projects, projects become contracts".

Well, many small inventors know that it is a large and difficult path from an invention to a profitable contract in the automotive industry. The structure of the competition still mirrors the hierarchies and traditional structures in this industry.

There may be some value for inventors to get publicity, PR, and an access to auto managers. But in order to really motivate innovation, this may be not enough and sustainable. I believe that in the future, the success of such competitions, and the quality of the ideas submitted there, depends on more than just providing a platform for presentation.

For example, NoAe could

- provide detailed feedback to any idea so that inventors could improve their concepts,

- offer free prototyping capability for inventors lacking this,

- provide networking between the inventors so that some could cooperate to bring their idea on a higher level,

- provide active matching of ideas with potential industrial users,

- pay prize money and honor good ideas and input to the industry.

This incentive structure may also explain why in 2007, almost all winners were companies and no single inventors or "lead users". For a small company, participating in such a competition may have the value of getting an award that can be exploited for marketing purposes. They also may have the skills and capacities to follow up an interested party in a professional way. But for individual actors, I believe there are much better idea competitions to profit from a creative idea.

Important: To submit an innovation, you already should have a patent or design protection for your invention, as participating in such a competition may mean that you have revealed your idea in public and thus you may not be able to protect your idea later. And this industry still is very much about conventional patent protection and not about open source hardware. So submitting a great idea without having IP protection may harm the commercial value as potential users may expect problems of non-exclusivity.

Here is all information about the competition http://www.noae.com/wettbewerb.html However: To participate, you have to understand German as all information is just in German language (but they say in German on their website that they are open for non-German contributions :-)

Great Report on User Manufacturing, Mass Customization, and How a New Infrastructure is Providing New Opportunities for SMEs

Last week, I got a note by Steve King, a research affiliate with the Institute for the Future. This is a non-profit research group based in Silicon Valley. Founded in 1968 by a group of former RAND Corporation researchers with a grant from the Ford Foundation to take leading-edge research methodologies into the public and business sectors, the IFTF today publishes reports to help people and companies to understand what is coming next.

They recently released a forecast report that is part of a series on the future of small business. In this report, they stress that small businesses will actively take advantage and use new manufacturing methods to create mass customized goods.

The report was sponsored by Intuit and can be downloaded on their website: http://www.intuit.com/futureofsmallbusiness/ (download Report #3)

In the report, IFTF writes about a new artisan economy that is the result of new manufacturing technologies, enabling individuals to access similar production technologies as large corporations (crafters using Ponoko, see previous posting, are a perfect example). It is a very nice summary of many of the recent trends that I have discussed here. Fabbing, blogging, user manufacturing, customization, open innovation -- it's all there and brought into a nice and coherent framework.

I especially liked the part about the new infrastructure that is enabling these developments:

"Plug-and-play infrastructures will make small businesses more competitive and successful. The ability of small businesses to take advantage of large-scale infrastructures and leverage new technologies will allow them to enter and compete in industries formerly served only by big business."

As an example, they refer to a great service that is enabling moms to become entrepreneurs, Mom Inventors, Inc.:

"For those who want to avoid teh hassle of assembling these services, firms are available to do everything for an entrepreneur. Mom Inventors Ic., for example, weill develop, manufacture, and sell quality Mom invented products throughout the United States and Europe. The mom (entrepreneur) only needs to come up with the idea, Mom Inventors will do the rest."

So I am expecting to these many more knitted marvels and clever kitchen aids on the shelves, invented by "Lead Moms".

In an e-mail exchange, Steve told me more about the background of the report, and stressed another implication from their research:

"A major issue we are trying to figure out is how small business relates to mass customization and user innovation. This was originally prompted by our work looking at consumer generated media - specifically blogs.

We found that the blogs with the most traffic were not authored by consumers, but by professionals. The professionals tended to fall into two categories: (1) small or independent businesses trying to build a small publishing business; or (2) professionals using blogs to promote either themselves or the goods and services of their company. Looking deeper at the second group, we found that most of them worked for small businesses.

Based on this work (which we did several years ago), we started looking at other categories. We quickly found a similar pattern of small business participation across a broad range of categories, including media (YouTube videos, etc.), open source software, crafts and small scale manufacturing (a lot of Makers at Maker Faire are small businesses, for example), financial services, etc.

Basically, we saw small businesses playing a role in almost every category where niche products and/or services were being built or highly customized. We also found a pattern of category "power users" moving from being hobbyists to starting their own small businesses. We kept seeing "prosumers" turning into small businesses, and we kept seeing small businesses somewhere in the customization value chain."

Accordingly, another area indicated in the report where small businesses will grow in the future is to serve as an innovation lab for larger corporations. Platforms like Innocentive or P&G's connect and develop program will help small businesses to sell their creativity to larger corporations in an efficient way. This may be the next wave of contract research.

Overall, a nice summary of recent trends that is worthwhile reading due its focus on small businesses.

Context: Get the full report here. http://www.intuit.com/futureofsmallbusiness/ (download Report #3)

User-led innovation: New report suggests a framework to structure forms of interactive value creation

strong>"User-led Innovation: A New Framework for Understanding Business and Social Value" is a new report published by the Smart Internet Technology Research Group in Australia.

The report reveals some of the major drivers of user-led innovation and explores how it is affecting organizations' relationships with key stakeholders. It investigates how user-led practices generate business and social value through a major case study of the virtual world Second Life.

A first part by Darren Sharp presents a comprehensive analysis of the structural changes behind the rise of user-led innovation, and develops a model of an emerging ‘User-led Services Ecology’. The second part by Mandy Salomon presents a practical case study of the 3D virtual world Second Life, an important site from which to explore advanced user-led practices, business strategies, and new forms of social engagement.

A nice feature of the report are extensive quotes from interviews with some of the key persons in the user innovation world, including: Eric von Hippel (MIT), Yochai Benkler (Harvard), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Siva Vaidhyanathan (Virginia), John Howkins (Adelphi Charter), Michel Bauwens (P2P Alternatives) and Mitch Kapor (Linden Lab).

The report distinguished between four different fields where user-generated value creation unfolds:

"Widespread convergence of participatory culture, DIY media, collaboration and open exchange, along with decreasing processor, bandwidth and storage costs, have all driven the development of user-led practices across a range of disparate fields. This is leading to the emergence of a post-industrial innovation system that brings with it new production processes, content models, service platforms and licensing agreements.

In contrast to various forms of market-based transactions, user-led practices encompass their own distinctive value systems, motivations and principles governing cooperative forms of social exchange.

This report identifies four ‘user-led niches’ which have become sophisticated enough in their own right to warrant further investigation. Each niche embodies a major driver of the new post-industrial innovation system in the present era of distributed capitalism. These drivers play an important role in shaping the future development of user-led services, and comprise their own unique internal logic, economic model, source of value and objective."

The four user-led niches identified are:
- Social Currency Niche
- Collaborative Niche
- Extractive Niche
- Hybrid Niche

For a summary of the characteristics of these niches, see the picture or read the entire report. I enjoyed the structure and think it provide a nice way to evaluate current developments in the field of interactive value creation. The report is available for download here.

Invitation: European Conference on Sports and Innovation

Are you interested in the future of sports and mass customization in the sports goods industry? Then you should join this upcoming conference.

12 to 14 March 2008 in EINDHOVEN, Netherlands

The conference is an initiative by the European Action Project INNOSPORT.EU. In this project, a number of the core players of the European sports goods industry brainstormed in the last year how to create a better platform for this important industry. I was invited to join the advisory board of this project, as mass customization and user innovation are regarded as some of the key trends in this sector.

The results of this coordinated brainstorming will be presented on the conference. This also is THE KEY EVENT if you are interested in participating in European projects around this sector.

Topics to be discussed on the event:

Sport vision 2015: What social trends are there in relation to sport? What developments are taking place in health and safety aspects? What impact can sport have on the economy? Where are the opportunities for innovation? The Sport Vision 2015 which will be presented at the conference will provide some insight into these issues about trends, needs, aspects and innovation opportunities. The programme also includes a number of workshop sessions and visits to field labs about football, sports promotion, gymnastics, swimming and horse-riding.

European platform: The European Sport Innovation Platform (ESIP) will be launched at the conference. This is a proactive networking platform at European level for high-tech companies, knowledge institutes and government, with the aim of joining forces in innovation and creating new opportunities as a result.

Free company presentation: We are pleased to offer you the opportunity to present your company free of charge during the conference. Please visit the website for more information.

International speakers who have already agreed to take part in the conference are Alberto S. Bichi – Secretary General FESI (Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry), Antonello Marega – R&D Director of Tecnica, and Philippe Freychat – Vice-president Sporaltec and R&D Director of Decathlon.

Program and registration: For a detailed and up-to-date programme, please visit www.innosport.eu where you can also register for the conference.

Further contact: Marc van der Zande, TNO Science and Industry, marc.vanderzande@tno.nl

Crowd F(o)unding an Eco-Clothing Label: nvohk explores the collective customer commitment method to create a new fashion line

In a press release today, nvohk (pronounced ‘invoke’) announced that it has signed up over 1,250 future members for its crowdsourcing-based business model. Its founders, Brendan T. Lynch and Sergio Salas, claim that it is the "first community-managed, eco-friendly, surf-inspired clothing company."

Their idea places our "collective customer commitment" model into action: Get 5000 members who pay 50$ each of funding, use the money to create an eco-friendly line of clothes, and then sell the clothes to a wider public and share the profits with the original members. Members, as part of their pre-payment, get the right to vote on new designs and co-manage some of nvohk's business decisions. Members, for example, can decide about the logo design, web design, product design, advertising, etc. In addition, nvohk will donate 10% of net profits to environmental organizations selected by its members. In the mid-term, the company wants to recruit up to 40,000 members.

The idea has some appeal. It indeed "fills a gap in the lifestyle brand arena," as the press release says. Nvohk enables consumers to get involved and participate in business decision-making and environmental causes. It also provides consumers with an entertaining platform for making a perceived positive impact on the environment.

But it also is a clever business model building on customer integration. For the 50$, customers will get a special t-shirt and 25% off all nvohk products. They also get kind of a dividend: 35% of nvohk’s net profits will be transferred into reward points that can be redeemed by members to purchase products. This all sounds like a slef-sustaining business cycle.

If you want to invest 50$ as well, go here: www.projectnvohk.com.

Open Innovation in Switzerland: Help Major Swiss Firms to Innovate

The open innovation idea has arrived in Corporate Switzerland (in research, there already have been many activities in this country). And it is not about reinventing their chocolate or cheese ...

Open Innovation GmbH is a new intermediary in Switzerland that is building on idea competitions as a method for open innovation. The company was just launched and is now in its beta stage. Its founders are three young Swiss entrepreneurs, Christian Hirsig (CEO), Reto Aebersold (Software Development) and Mathias Ruch (Business Development). The pilot stage is evaluated by Christian Lüthje from the University of Berne, one of Europe's key professors in the area of user innovation.

And they need your help:

Major Swiss corporations like Swiss Telekom, Mammut Outdoor wear, Google Switzerland, Swiss Postal Services, and many others are opening their innovation processes to the public -- and you can participate in solving their challenges. Have a look on the web site http://pilot.openinnovation.ch for more information and registration.

The participation in this challenge is open to everybody (who is able to understand German, sorry!) and the best ideas are rewarded by cash in good old Swiss Franc. This open innovation projects starts on January 22nd 2008. I will keep you posted on the results of this project.

Crowdsourcing methods are McKinsey's Prime Business Technology Trends to Watch In 2008

In the recent issue of McKinsey Quarterly, the business journal of strategy consultants McKinsey & Co, James Manyika, Roger Roberts and Kara Sprague discuss Eight Business Technology Trends to Watch In 2008. Five of those eight relate directly to the topics of this blog:

Four trends, Distributing Cocreation, Using consumers as innovators, Tapping into a world of talent, and Extracting more value from interactions are sub-sets of the larger Crowdsourcing idea.

(1) Distributing co-creation is just another term for our own "interactive value creation" or Benkler's "commons-based peer production" or Don Tapscott's "Wikinomics". No doubt that this is a mega-trend which has been described widely in the last years but which practical implementation just has started. In consequence, McKinsey estimates that 12% of all labor activity could be transformed by more distributed and networked innovation:

"Outsiders offer insights that help shape product development, but companies typically control the innovation process. Technology now allows companies to delegate substantial control to outsiders -- co-creation -- in essence by outsourcing innovation to business partners that work together in networks. By distributing innovation through the value chain, companies may reduce their costs and usher new products to market faster by eliminating the bottlenecks that come with total control."

Interestingly, however, in the entire McKinsey article is no word on open source or open licensing models ("commons-based") which are a main driver for the efficiency of distributed open systems of value co-creation. This may be perhaps too much for the typical reader of McKinsey Quarterly.

(2) Using consumers as innovators: Well, not really a new trend, Eric von Hippel is saying this since the 1970s, and since the beginning of industrial production consumers are inventing new products. The new trend, however, is that firms are seeing this potential and they increasingly are utilizing the capabilities for innovation. They are not just asking for feedback on their own creations, but they are integrating consumers actively in the creation of something new. MyKinsey is quoting Threadless here, but this is not a correct example for this trend as most the creators at Threadless are no consumers but experts!

A better example, quoted by the iRise Blog in a posting on the McKinsey article, is Dell's IdeaStorm, and, on the B2B front, Salesforce.com. This software company is using an application for users to make suggestions to improve their CRM software. The top ideas from this contest is receiving executive-level visibility.

(3) Tapping into a world of talent is the consequence of opening your innovation and value creation process:. The people reacting on an open call for participation in the " Distributing co-creation" idea are those who are the most talented to do this work (as they have relatively lower cost to fulfill the job):

"As more and more sophisticated work takes place interactively online and new collaboration and communications tools emerge, companies can outsource increasingly specialized aspects of their work and still maintain organizational coherence. Much as technology permits them to decentralize innovation through networks or customers, it also allows them to parcel out more work to specialists, free agents, and talent networks."

This leads to a further consequence, and their next trend: (4) Extracting more value from interactions. The more a company is relying for value creation in its periphery, the higher is its costs for coordination compared to production cost.

"As a result, a growing proportion of the labor force in developed economies engages primarily in work that involves negotiations and conversations, knowledge, judgment, and ad hoc collaboration—tacit interactions, as we call them. By 2015 we expect employment in jobs primarily involving such interactions to account for about 44 percent of total US employment, up from 40 percent today. Europe and Japan will experience similar changes in the composition of their workforces."

This is nothing new at all, the fact, that the so-called transaction cost are dominating the overall cost in a modern economy is known since several decades. But it is good that McKinsey are stressing this relationship again – as mastering these cost will become a major capability for firms which want to profit from crowdsourcing. Technology is leading this path:

"Technology tools that promote tacit interactions, such as wikis, virtual team environments, and videoconferencing, may become no less ubiquitous than computers are now. As companies learn to use these tools, they will develop managerial innovations—smarter and faster ways for individuals and teams to create value through interactions—that will be difficult for their rivals to replicate. Companies in sectors such as health care and banking are already moving down this road. […] But: Creating the business case for investing in interactions will be challenging—but critical—for managers."

(5) A last trend from their report is "Putting more science into management". Technology is continuously helping managers exploit ever-greater amounts of data in real-time to make smarter decisions. One of the business models which are enabled by this data-driven management is mass customization, named by McKinsey as "the holy grail of deep customer insight":

"The amount of information and a manager’s ability to use it have increased explosively not only for internal processes but also for the engagement of customers. The more a company knows about them, the better able it is to create offerings they want, to target them with messages that get a response, and to extract the value that an offering gives them. The holy grail of deep customer insight—more granular segmentation, low-cost experimentation, and mass customization—becomes increasingly accessible through technological innovations in data collection and processing and in manufacturing."

Go to the original article which has plenty of good references for further reading (requires registration, for a version of the full text of this paper, go to ZDnet).

Trendcamp Open Innovation by Net Culture Lab Austria

Net Culture Lab Austria is an initiative that wants to explore what "internet culture is" and how a large corporation, Telekom Austria, its main sponsor, can learn from it. The project was initiated in May 2007. It supports small projects of innovative people all around Austria who want to build, experiment, create, or craft in the broad area of "net culture" (remember that Austria is one of the world's leading countries with regard to multimedia and electronic arts).

Recently, I was invited to one of their regular "trend camp" gatherings, and it was a great experience for me. The topic of my 1.5 day workshop was open innovation, and we were a mixed crowd of managers of Telekom Austria (a typical former monopolist in the telecommunication industry, now under pressure in a deregulated market) and young artists, web programmers, lecturers in the area, and consultants. Organizer was Thomas Fundneider from a small innovation consultancy in Vienna.

The day was a great surprise for me: I frequently do this kind of workshops with companies, and regularly the reaction is one of fascination for the opportunities of open innovation, but always paired with a very strong resistance towards change and how this could work in their own corporation.

Not this time, however. The Telekom managers seemed to be even more open on the topic then the "net people", and thus it was a very refreshing experience, one that really filled me with hope that Crowdsourcing and open innovation really can change large corporations fundamentally.

In many small presentations by everyone from the group, and two large structures open table discussions, we generated lots of ideas and great input. I also learned a lot – and mow I am curious to see what Telekom Austria will do with our results.

More reports on this Trendcamp can be found (all in GERMAN language) at Polymatic, digitalks.at, the Telekom Austria Blog and at Thomas Fundneider's Blog

Video interview on mass customization and open innovation

In case you understand German and prefer to watch a video instead of reading a paper or book, this video is for you: Förderland, a large German Blog on Entrepreneurship, has conducted a nice video interview where I explain the basic concepts of mass customization, user innovation, co-creation and how this all belongs to each other (for a more detailed version of this, read our book).

In the video, I define the the basic concepts, give some examples, talk about the challenges, discuss, how entrepreneurs and start-ups can profit from these concepts, and name my personal best practice of a company in this area. And: The video also offers a view into my not really tidy and organized university office (note: I recently have ordered nice new office furniture, but as this industry is not doing any mass customization at all, delivery times for this are more than two months ...)

Here is the video (or go here to the full link and summary):
Thanks to the Exciting Commerce Blog where I noticed that my interview has been published first!

Create the Shoe of you Dreams - Participate in the CEC Shoe Design Contest

Open Innovation and crowdsourcing finally is arriving in the footwear industry

Crowdsourced logos were yesterday, now it is all about shoes. The CEC project is a large European research project dedicated to nothing smaller than reinventing the footwear industry. My old research group at TUM is a major partner in the project, and as part of the work, they are now running the first European Consumer Shoe Design Contest where everyone can become a shoe designer.

Your task is to design a shoe model along a theme called “Original Origin”. This category of aesthetic trends expresses cultural values, regional roots and techniques and at the same time uses authentic materials and innovative shapes. The contest asks everyone to play with the theme and interpret it in the most creative, but still feasible way.

More details on the contest can be found in the CEC Contest briefing which also has the exact rules of the design contest.

Submissions are evaluated by a top-class jury consisting of international shoe and design experts from companies like Hugo Boss, CallagHan, Liitto, Future Concept Lab, and Frau. The jury's criteria for the assessment will be design, innovativeness, feasibility, task alignment, and an overall score for excellence. In addition, also the public can vote on their favorite design and nominate a public winner.

Awards are a bit technical but provide a nice opportunity for everyone interested in footwear:

The first price is a site visit with Hugo Boss in Morrovalle/Italy to get a prototype of your design as well as to gain insight into prototyping process.

The second price is a real working prototype of your design, manufactured according to your design and mailed to you

The third price is a free participation at the “Future Vision Workshops” dedicated to the aesthetic trends in Milan (also, winners of the first and second price are invited to participate).

How to participate:

Register on cec-designcontest.net and enter the “Design Studio” to upload your design. All what you have to do is to provide a sketch or rendering of your design (and a short description). All further information can be found in the design briefing.

Submissions are accepted until December 31st, 2007. Winners will be announced on February 29th, 2008.

Now, start designing!

A personal comment at the end: The footwear industry is an extremely conservative industry far behind many other industries with regard to open innovation and customer driven value creation. So it is a real revolution that they now start such a competition. I am curious to see how this contest may change their attitude and expectations – and if the wining design ever will be produced. However, the rather long contest rules and the not too fancy prices already show how difficult it is to get their commitment. But it is a great start – and hopefully more initiatives like this will follow!)

Context information:

- The contest web site: http://www.cec-designcontest.net
- Earlier post on the CEC-made Shoe Research Project
- Similar ongoing competition (open source footwear)

Webinar: The Next Gen of Mass Customization: User Manufacturing, Instant Companies, and Customer Co-Creation (Nov 29, 2007 on your desktop)

How a new infrastructure is enabling consumers to become instant manufacturers – and your future competitor -- 10% discount for MC&OI Blog readers

I am coming back to your desktop. After the large success of an earlier webinar on mass customization, London based Pure Inisghts is organizing a second webinar on the theme, this time around my new favorite topic of user manufacturing.

The topic: We are used to have a networked laser printer on every desk in our office and in every home, enabling us to print documents on the spot which a few decades ago demanded a specialized manufacturer. The same may be happening with the production of many other goods. Today new production technologies ("fabbing") and advanced design software allow average users to produce almost everything – on their own desk. Welcome to the factory in your kitchen.

This session will discuss the upcoming user manufacturing trend, a development that recently is taking shape in larger scope and scale: User manufacturing refers to a public available software, manufacturing, and distribution infrastructure that enables creative users and customers to design, build, and sell own creations to a larger public – without the traditional investments in setting up a business. User manufacturing supplements – or substitutes – mass customization strategies which many companies have implemented. It also may become the most efficient strategy to serve the long tail of variants in many industries.

Consider Spreadshirt, one of the world's largest producers of graphic t-shirts. This company just allows everyone to create an own assortment of designs, and then sell this assortments in highly targeted retail outlets, online and offline, to a small market segment the user knows best. Thus, Spreadshirt does not have to predict the long tail of heterogeneity of fashion products, but just focuses on allowing users to create and sell this assortment by their own.

User manufacturing is enabled by three main technologies: (1) Easy-to-operate design software that allows users to transfer their ideas into a design. (2) Design repositories where users upload, search, and share designs with other users. This allows a community of loosely connected users to develop a large range of applications. (3) Easy-to-access flexible manufacturing technology. New rapid manufacturing technologies ("fabbing") finally deliver the dream of translating any 3-D data files into physical products -- even in you living room. Combining this technology with recent web technologies can open a radical new way to provide custom products along the entire "long tail" of demand.

User manufacturing builds on the notion that users are not just able to configure a good within the given solution space (mass customization), but also to develop such a solution space by their own and utilize it by producing custom products. As a result, customers are becoming not only co-designers, but also manufacturers, using an infrastructure provided by some specialized companies.

The webinar will discuss recent trends and case examples of the user manufacturing trend. We also will compare the business models of companies which are building on the user manufacturing trend and which implement and operate the underlying infrastructure ´for creative users to become manufacturers.

Planned session outline:

- A short review of conventional mass customization thinking

- Which recent trends and developments enhance these strategies and how mass customization is related to “The Long Tail” phenomena

- What is user manufacturing, and which trends does this strategy support?

- What are the components of an infrastructure that supports user manufacturing?

- A review of business models of established companies and recent startups which already successfully benefit from the opportunities of user manufacturing

- A discussion of the major challenges and open issues in this domain

- Session wrap-up: Idea for further action

To register, please go to http://www.pure-insight.com/webinars/mass-customization-next-generation and use promotional code aix (case sensitive!) wenn registering for a 10% discount.

Note: You also can download the webinar after its initial live broadcast – but only when joining live, you can interact and ask direct questions.

All further information can be found here.

Context information

- If you prefer to see the content of this webinar in action, a seminar on Fabbing and User generated Manufacturing in Essen, Germany, provides a great opportunity on Nov 22.

- My earlier posts on user manufacturing

- Article in CNN online on the fabbing trend

- Article in New Scientist on the fabbing trend

- Article in Make magazine on how to use a fabbing device

Rethinking Business: Products of tomorrow: Fabbing, personalization & custom manufacturing (Essen, 22. Nov 2007)

A VERY interesting focused event on the new world of fabbing, laser sintering, user manufacturing, and how to make business with this will take place in Essen (Germany) on Nov 22 afternoon & evening. Hosted by Z-Punkt, an innovative trend consultancy, and taking place in the Zeche Zollverein, a spectacular industrial location, the conference promised to become a real eye-opener and point of discussion.

For more information on the theme, have a look on this previous blog post: I will host a webinar on the same topic of user manufacturing on Nov 29 in case you cannot travel to Essen, Germany, for this event.

For a list of all speakers and the detailed program, please download the event flyer.

The event will be in German language, so all the following announcements are in German language as well.

Erfahren Sie, wie neue Materialien zu Innovationstreibern werden und warum der 3D-Druck das Business revolutioniert. Die Konferenz "Rethinking Business #02. Produkte von morgen" findet am 22. November 2007 auf der Zeche Zollverein in Essen statt. Themenschwerpunkte: Neue Materialien und individuelle Produktion.

Und noch mehr Informationen zum Thema finden Sie in einen Interview mit Frank Piller auf dem Z-Punkt-Blog.

Drucken wir in ein paar Jahren unser Geschirr jeden Tag frisch aus unserem persönlichen 3D-Drucker aus? Und werden die Fallschirme der Zukunft aus Nano-Spinnfäden gefertigt? Wie neue Materialien die Produktwelt von morgen prägen und welches Innovationspotenzial in einer individualisierten Produktionsweise steckt – das diskutiert Z_punkt im Rahmen der Konferenz „Produkte von morgen“ am 22. November 2007 in der Zollverein School of Management and Design in Essen.

Die zweite Veranstaltung im Rahmen des Konferenzzyklus „Rethinking Business“ setzt den Fokus auf „Neue Materialien und Individuelle Produktion“ – und schlägt dabei die Brücke von der Vision zur Praxis. Der nach dem Open-Source-Modell „fab@home“ für 2.000,- Euro gebaute Prototyp eines einfachen 3D-Druckers geht während der Konferenz live in Produktion und vermittelt den Teilnehmern einen Eindruck von den zukünftigen Möglichkeiten einer Fabrik im Taschenformat: Mit einem für Endkunden erschwinglichen 3D-Printer könnte das Ausdrucken von Alltagsprodukten nämlich bald flächendeckend zu Hause möglich sein.

„Uns beschäftigt im Rahmen der Rethinking-Business-Reihe die Frage, wie die Wirtschaft der Zukunft funktioniert. Dieses Mal interessieren wir uns für die Produktwelt. Wir fragen: Wie sehen die Produkte der Zukunft aus? Wie werden sie entwickelt und hergestellt? Und wie müssen sich Unternehmen aufstellen, um intelligente Materialien und individuelle Produktion als Innovationstreiber zu nutzen“, sagt Andreas Neef, geschäftsführender Gesellschafter von Z_punkt.

Darauf muss die Wirtschaft vorbereitet sein – wie einst beim Siegeszug des Personal Computers. Dr. Matthias Lüken, Produktentwickler bei Henkel, und Dr. Sigurd Buchholz, Technologieexperte bei der Bayer Technology Services GmbH, berichten aus der Industrieperspektive über Anwendungsmöglichkeiten und Innovationspotenziale einer individualisierten Produktionsweise.

Weitere Infos:
Rethinking Business #02. Produkte von morgen

22 Nov 2007, 16:00 - 21:30 Uhr at Zollverein School of Management & Design, Essen

http://www.rethinkingbusiness.de

Programm-Flyer und Anmeldung online (Studenten können für nur 50 Euro teilnehmen !)

Info: Silke Schneider (schneider@z-punkt.de)

IMB Forum: Open Innovation in the Textile Industries (Cologne, 21 Nov 2007)

IMB is one of the largest trade shows for the textile industry, a showcase not of the latest fashions in apparel but the latest in machinery and software for the industry. The IMB main event takes place in Cologne every three years. IMB Forum is a smaller sister event of IMB, filling the years in between with a focused exhibition and conference.

The fifth event of the series will be held on the Cologne Fair Ground on Wednesday, 21st November and Thursday, 22nd November 2007. This year's conference theme is "Information Technology for the Textile Processing and Apparel Industry", and I have the honor to provide the opening keynote for this event as part of a conference section dealing with open innovation in this sector.

I am speaking together with Ralf Reichwald, my colleague and co-author from TU Munich. Our topic on the morning of Nov 21 is "Open Innovation: Customers as active partners of companies in the textile industry." We will address latest trends and case studies on open innovation with a focus on the textile industries to provide an overall framework of interactive value creation.

Our talk is followed by Andreas Milles from Spreadshirt, who is presenting the leading implementation of open innovation and interactive value creation in Europe. Johann Füller from Hyve, Munich will present the work his company did with BMW to implement open innovation in this company

For the entire program, head to the IMB forum website, here is a PDF flyer for download.

Here is some more information from a IMB press release:

"IMB Forum, the international exhibition with an accompanying congress, which will take place at the Cologne exhibition center from November 21 to 22, 2007, has come to be one of the sector's top annual events. That's why many leading companies regard participation in the IMB Forum as an absolute must. Or, as Holger Klappstein, Managing Director Sales and Marketing of TXTe solutions GmbH in Halle, puts it: "The IMB Forum is one of the most important information platforms for the fashion, garment, footwear, and textile industries."

The success of the IMB Forum is based on the fact that the event perfectly supports direct dialogue between the sector's users and suppliers. This is also an important factor for Dominik Berger, Managing Director of RF-IT Solutions GmbH in Graz: "The IMB Forum offers us an ideal presentation platform for our goods and services in this area, while simultaneously offering us the opportunity to conduct intensive discussions with our customers."

Christiane Klaschik, Head of Marketing for ImPuls AG from Krefeld, is also well aware of this strength of the IMB Forum: "There's hardly any other trade fair where we can meet such a concentration of our target groups. Customer contact is also a very important issue for us."

Jacqueline Kellner, Head of Marketing at Lectra Deutschland GmbH, regards the IMB Forum as "one of the most professional events for presenting yourself to a high-caliber public."

"We believe in the event and clearly recognize the efforts on the part of Koelnmesse to achieve a breakthrough in terms of the degree of international participation, especially with regard to the visitors. The presence of the decision-makers, at least from the immediately neighboring countries, is a crucial step in the right direction," says Yvonne Heinen-Foudeh, Marketing and Communications Manager Europe of Gerber Technology GmbH in Munich."

The IMB Forum 2007 will take place from Wednesday, November 21 to Thursday, November 22, 2007. The exhibition will be open to visitors on the first day from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and on the second day from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Presentations will be held in the morning and afternoon on both days.

Frontend Europe Conference: An expensive but high-profile event on mastering customer focused innovation (Vienna, 28-31 Jan 2008)

This is a conference I always was interested in but feared the heavy price tag. So I am glad that this time I am invited to speak and so do not have to register :-) The second annual Front End of Innovation Conference in Europe is taking place from 28th -31st, January 2008 in Vienna, Austria. It is the European sister event of a large, very well established US conference

Readers of my blog get 20% discount off the standard & onsite rate to join me at the event. Mention the code SPKRM2050FP to have the discount applied (but the price tag still is heavy – it is a typical commercial IIR conference that also uses pricing to create a high-profile crowd).

The Front End of Innovation Europe offers some of the most respected names in Innovation and R&D., including Clayton M. Christensen from Harvard Business School (the guy who showed that most companies fail when being faced with disruptive innovation).

This conference will address many recent innovation challenges, including: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint, Global Innovation: Bridging Cultural Differences With Asia And Beyond, Open Innovation, New Business Model Innovation, Customer Focused Innovation, Generating Breakthroughs While Reducing Risk, Linking Product Life Cycle Management With The Fuzzy Front End… and many others.

I am speaking on Thursday, 31st January, during the "Front End Innovation Management Research Focused Academic Workshop", when I will be giving my presentation: “Bridging the Mass Customisation and Open Innovation”

During this talk, I will share some of the latest research on setting up successful mass customization systems and will discuss recent trends in product configuration systems from the perspective of strategy and marketing. Based on our own study of more than 250 mass customisers in consumer and industrial markets, the session outlines the building blocks of successful mass customisation strategies and provides ideas how to avoid the pitfalls of its implementation.

Remember: Readers of my blog get 20% discount off the standard & onsite rate to join me at the event. Mention the code SPKRM2050FP to have the discount applied.

Full information and registration: www.iirusa.com/feieurope

Or download the official conference brochure with much more information and all abstracts of all presentations.

Public Lecture: Open Innovation and User Innovation (RWTH Aachen, 4. Dec 2007)

What is open innovation? What is user innovation, and what is the real idea behind the 'lead user' concept? What are tools and methods companies can employ to profit from these buzzwords? Why does it make economic sense? When does it make no sense at all? What have we learned from case studies and pilot studies in this field? And how is Webasto, a leading German automotive supplier, profiting from creative users & customers?

These are some of the questions Alexander Lang and I will address in a public evening lecture at RWTH Aachen on Tue, Dec. 4. The event is hosted by the German Association of 'Wirtschaftsingenieure' (industrial engineers)..

Alex Lang and I will also talk about our experiences from a joint research project on user innovation which is co-sponsored by "Stiftung Industrieforschung", a large grant giving institution on Germany.

This is the first public event I am organizing in Aachen at my new university. So a special invitation to come and discuss with us. The regular language for this event is German, but if we will have international guests, we will talk in English.

All information (in German language) and an abstract of our talks can be found in this PDF.

The event takes place on 4. Dec 2007, 7:15 - 9pm, followed by a network reception. Place: RWTH Aachen, Karmann-Auditorium, Room FO 5, at Templergraben 62 (opposite of the RWTH Main Building).

The lecture is free of charge, and no registration is necessary. Just come to the room!

Here is some more information for all of our German speaking readers.

Open Innovation: Neue Ansätze zur Steigerung von Effizienz und Qualität der Produktentwicklung

Eine öffentliche Veranstaltung (Eintritt frei!) in Zusammenarbeit des Verbands Deutscher Wirtschaftsingenieure (Hochschulgruppe Aachen), des Lehrstuhls für Technologie- und Innovationsmanagement an der RWTH, der Stiftung Industrieforschung und der Webasto AG

Vorträge:

Prof. Frank Piller, RWTH-TIM: Open Innovation und Interaktive Wertschöpfung: Prinzipien und Erfolgsfaktoren

Alexander Lang, Webasto AG: "Ideen aus der zweiten Reihe" - Strategien für kundenorientierte Innovationen in der Automobilindustrie

4. Dezember 2007, 19:15 – 21:00 und anschließender Network-Empfang
RWTH Aachen, Karmann-Auditorium, Raum FO 5 (Templergraben 62 gegenüber RWTH Hauptgebäude, 1. Stock

Abstract:
Open-Source-Software ist nicht nur ein technisches oder gesellschaftliches Phänomen, sondern das dahinter stehende Wertschöpfungsprinzip erweitert herrschende Prinzipien im Innovationsmanagement zum Teil völlig – auch in anderen Bereichen jenseits der Software-Entwicklung. Auf dieser Veranstaltung soll anhand aktueller Fallbeispiele diskutiert werden, wie durch eine solche Open Innovation Effizienz und Effektivität der Neuproduktentwicklung gesteigert werden können.

Kernidee von Open Innovation ist, eine Aufgabe nicht an den "besten" bekannten internen oder externen Entwickler zu vergeben, sondern das Problem in einem offenen Netzwerk in Form eines breiten Aufrufs zur Mitwirkung auszuschreiben. Potentielle externe Problemlöser entscheiden dann durch Selbstselektion, ob sie mitwirken oder nicht.

Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei Strategien von Unternehmen, die ihre Kunden bzw. Nutzer nicht mehr als nur passive Empfänger und Konsumenten einer von Herstellern autonom geleisteten Wertschöpfung sehen. Vielmehr treten Nutzer als Wertschöpfungspartner von Unternehmen oder anderen Nutzern auf, indem sie Produkte oder Dienstleistungen mitgestalten und teilweise sogar deren Entwicklung und Herstellung bestimmen oder übernehmen.

Bei allen Potentialen von Open Innovation zur Effizienzverbesserung in der Entwicklung stellen sich jedoch auch neue Herausforderungen. Open Innovation ist nicht einfach ein "Outsourcing" interner Entwicklungsaufgaben an die Peripherie, sondern verlangt eine aktive Beteiligung durch den Anbieter, der hierfür bestimmte Ressourcen und Fähigkeiten besitzen muss.

Dies zeigt eindrucksvoll das Beispiel der Webasto AG, einen führenden deutschen Automobilzulieferer. Eine Neuausrichtung des Webasto-Innovationsmanagements betont entscheidend das Potential von durch Endkunden generierte Produktideen im Entwicklungsprozess. Die so entstehenden Produkte verfügen über einen echten Mehrwert, worauf Webasto als Automobilzulieferer mit überwiegend Sonderausstattungsprodukten eminent angewiesen ist. Generell wird es bei der Vermarktung von Sonderausstattungen zukünftig noch wichtiger werden, einen echten Endkundenmehrwert klar vermitteln zu können.

Dazu entwickelte Webasto zum einen eine umfangreiche Workshop-Methodik, mit der Kunden und potentielle Nutzer in die ersten Phasen der Produktentwicklung einbezogen werden. Zum anderen nutzt das Unternehmen ein interaktives, webbasiertes Tool, mit dem die Bewertung und Speicherung von Ideen vereinfacht und standardisiert wird.

Neben den Ideen, die aus den firmeninternen Quellen sprudeln, ist es hier nun auch möglich, systematisch „Endkundenideen“ mit in die Bewertung aufzunehmen. Dies ist der letzte Baustein, der die Lücke zwischen Zulieferer und Endkunde schließt. Im Vorfeld wurde eine Methode entwickelt, die es ermöglicht, aus einer beliebigen Gruppe von Endkunden mit Hilfe eines eigenen Testverfahrens so genannte "Lead User" zu identifizieren, die dann in mehrtägigen Workshops gemeinsam mit professionellen Moderatoren völlig neuartige Ideen generieren. Der Unterschied zur Gewinnung von Ideen durch die hauseigene Entwicklung besteht in der strukturierten Vorgehensweise, die immer zuerst ein Endkunden-Bedürfnis identifiziert, bevor Funktionen daraus definiert und schließlich in Produkte überführt werden.

Die Veranstaltung basiert auf gemeinsamen Forschungsarbeiten der Referenten, die durch die Stiftung Industrieforschung im Rahmen eines aktuellen Projekts unterstützt werden.

Udate: Crowdlogoing the New Spreadshirt Tagline: New Design Competition Launched -- and finalized

(Update of the original posting from Sept 2007 -- now with the project's final result at the end of this post!).

Hey, you designers of the world. Treat me nice: I am on the panel of the new Spreadshirt Open Logo competition :-). Coined the Open Logo Project (OLP) 1.6, this is the second time that the company has started a crowdsourcing contest for its new logo. Anyone can submit a draft logo for comment and evaluation by an expert panel, other designers and the Spreadshirt community. Each week during the contest, the top entries will win awards and a place in the overall grand final.

The last contest (hosted 1.6 years ago) received over 1000 submissions from more than 600 designers mainly in Germany and France. This time, the entire world shall participate. The contest will run from the 27th August - 14th October. To take part in the contest - with submissions, comments, voting or just lurking - head to http://olp.spreadshirt.net.

Every branding textbook, however, will tell you not to change your logo every two (or even 1.6) years. But “…this is not a publicity stunt," said Jana Eggers, Spreadshirt’s new CEO. "We found a tagline that better represents what we do, and now is the right time to change our current logo to support it".

The new tagline, resulting from working with an international branding firm: "Your own label" shall reflect Spreadshirt's mission to be "the world's creative apparel platform". After deciding on the new tagline, the natural step for Spreadshirt was to turn to its community again for a logo that better supports the new tagline.

The cool thing: Adam Fletcher, who is coordinating the competition at Spreadshirt, even allowed me to pick my own prize. So: I will award a first price for the most innovative design, one, that really demonstrates uniqueness and out of the box thinking. And this price will be truly innovative and unique as well: You can win an entire mass customized outfit. More on the website!

But beyond the innovative prices, also the OLP idea competition itself has some nice features which make it a great example of open innovation and sets it ahead to other design contests on the web:

They have ten different awards and prizes for different categories which also honor not only WHAT, but HOW you design, awarding good competition citizenship. There are prices for community involvement, memorability, branding excellence, etc …

This also allows Spreadshirt to think of those that offer input but can't design (I would be a perfect candidate for this). Anyone who actively contributes to the OLP community by ratings, commenting, offering feedback, starting discussions etc can win one of every shirt that Spreadshirt’s “La Fraise” prints for the next year (should be around 100 shirts – so if you win, buy a new closet).

"We [want] to recognize out-of-the-box thinking, collaboration, community favorites and more," adds Adam Fletcher. "Even if you're not the winning designer, you can scoop a number of other prizes, or just waste a lot of your time, learn a lot from looking at the work of the other designers."

For real winning designers, they also provide more than cash, but help with the most valuable good for artists, recognition. Along with a MacBook pro and €3,000 cash, the winner will be featured with a photo and an interview in he “Computer Arts” magazine, an interview on “Computerlove” and a permanent “thank-you-page” at Spreadshirt.com

So, now get your creative fluids working … and submit a nice logo so that I have something to judge next week !!

------------

UPDATE: The project is over -- and it was an interesting experience for me to be on the panel of such an open innovation competition. Here some observations:

First: The winner: While Spreadshirt selected two first prices for their new logo (see the designs here) and is now working with the community on improving the designs. My personal short list looked a bit different, see it here.

Second: My winner: As written above, I could award my very special price for the most innovative design. My clear favorite was Labelhead, not just a logo but an entire logo configurator. Here is my long description why this is the most innovative (and in any case customizable) logo! (and this posting also gives you a rare view of my living room :-)

Third: Participants of an open innovation project get engaged and personal: The entire competition drew more than 2800 entires, generated millions of hits and views, a lot of postings and good press for Spreadshirt -- and did not cost really too much compared to the cost of getting a professional new logo (and PR campaign) from a regular agency (cost were about 10 K Euro for prices, Adam Fletcher's salary of running the contest, and some web site programming etc ..). The best insight into the enthusiasm and engagement of the participants can be found in the comments to the posts, just browse through some of the winning designs or see the comment on the selection of the winners (example).

For me, it was was interesting to read what people really thought about my selections (more comments here). I think I really do not look like a designer or pretend to know much about graphic design -- my task was to provide a business and customization perspective for the panel. But participants expected my real feedback on their designs ... learning_ pick panelists that really know what they are writing about.

Fourth: I learned a lot about customized toilets :) See comments in the middle of this stream.

User Innovation in the Catholic Church: Dioceses of Cologne launches idea competition platform

This is the last sign that there is something behind user & open innovation: The Catholic Church has started an online open innovation idea competition (well, one could say that the entire church IS a lead user invention anyway).

KJG, the Catholic youth organization of Cologne, one of Germany’s largest dioceses, just launched a web site where young people are encouraged to submit ideas what they want to change at the Catholic Church.

The website aenderwas.de (German for „Make a change“) broadly asks for ideas and suggestions. You can either submit a short idea or comment, or upload a long suggestion (perhaps for a real innovative interior design of a Church that you would like to see; or the tunes of a song you would like to sing …). Interestingly, they also ask one of the easiest but often neglected questions: If you don’t go to church, why?

People who submit the best and most innovative ideas will be invited to a kind of lead user workshop to build on these ideas and to transfer them into more concrete offerings. But the people behind the initiative also know about the limits of this approach and acknowledge in a disclaimer that not all change requests can be incorporated immediately.

It all started, by the way, when one of the organizers was in an Executive MBA class I taught on open innovation a while ago. She immediately saw the opportunities of improving the offerings directed towards younger people by the Church, and later transferred her learning into this project.

I am very curious to see what comes out of this initiative and what will be the experiences of this project. Will such a broad call for input generate real innovative ideas? I will keep you posted – and if you have an idea what to change with the Catholic Church (from the perspective of you, the user), the opportunity is there: www.aenderwas.de (note: While God speaks all languages, you need German language skills for this).

Open Innovation Widget -- Fellowforce creates open line between users and companies

As of today organizations can integrate an widget into their websites to enable consumer-generated innovation, a solution to solicit ideas, suggestions and innovation proposals.

The widget has been developed by FellowForce. Their founder and Head of Marketing, Ruben Robert, will be a presenter at the MCPC 2007 conference.

In a press announcement, Jeff Crites from Fellowforce North America explains:

"We started our platform for Open Innovation two months ago, and since then we've received ideas and suggestions for leading brands worldwide. The idea for this new service is due in large part to a submission in our own innovation box. A Fellowforce 'Fellow', Marcel Heinkens of the Netherlands, suggested we offer an Open Innovation widget for websites. Today, four weeks later, we're introducing the 'Innovate Us' button, enabling any business to welcome ideas from a global force of innovators".

The 'Innovate Us' button is like a 'Digg-this' application for innovation, empowering and encouraging consumers to submit ideas to company controlled (Fellowforce enabled) innovation boxes. "We prefer to call them Innovation Boxes because consumer participation is more than just a feedback tool", adds Crites, "it's a driver for innovation. And for companies, this is like having a souped-up RSS aggregator to manage idea feeds."

What is the effect of such a widget?

Well, I think it is not largest innovation of innovation. But it is a great signal that companies are taking their users more and more seriously. Companies are making a statement that they believe in open innovation and value ideas from the outside. And I am curious to hear on Ruben's MCPC 2007 presentation how this will
work out.

Context: Have a look in the updated MCPC 2007 program to find more then 20 other presentations on open innovation: http://www.mcpc07.com/draft_program_MCPC2007.pdf

Threadless in Numbers

Rob Walker finally reports in his ‘Consumed’ column in the New York Times Magazine on Threadless, and finally I recognize (thanks to Exciting Commerce) this article that already was published on July 8. Rob’s column is one of my favorite pieces of journalism, but since I returned to Germany, I do not find the time to read it every week.

While in an e-mail conversation Rob told me about 1.5 years ago that he does not consider Threadless as a unique phenomenon, he – luckily – changed his mind and brings a nice analysis of the company and shares with us a number of interesting numbers on Threadless. So here is Threadless in numbers (all quotes from Rob's article)

2000: Year of founding Threadless.

125: Number of submissions received by Threadless each day.

“Millions”: Dollars earned by selling T-shirts” not by hiring star designers but by asking anybody to design them.

Hundreds of thousands: Number of user voting each day.

6: Number of new T-shirt offerings per week.

1,500: Typical size of a batch of each new design.

2,000: Dollars paid to winning designers.

“Almost everything”: Number of items that sell out.

1: Number of Threadless stores, the first opened in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago in July 2007.

2.6 or higher: Score of most winning designs (on the rating scale from 0 to 5).

2.0: Lowest rank of a winning design.

x*n/z: “The final decision about which T’s actually get made and sold has always involved a bit of nonpublic number crunching. For example, Threadless looks at how many 0s and 5s a design gets; designs that inspire passionate disagreement often get printed because they tend to sell”.

1: There is a surprising degree of consistency — maybe even similarity — in the designs. “It’s a barometer of what’s going on in art and design right now,” Threadless director Kalmikoff suggests.

17: Number of winning designs submitted by Glenn Jones, a New Zealand designer.

Context:
- Rob Walker’s NYT Magazine article on Threadless.
- My original report on Threadless (includes many more links with reports).

User Manufacturing and Crowdsourcing in New Zealand: How Ponoko enables creative users to create, manufacture, and sell digital products online

Ponoko is a user manufacturing platform based in Wellington, New Zealand, where anyone can click to make, buy and sell digital products. Users upload designs, Ponoko manufactures them for them using rapid manufacturing technology, and send the result to users. If they like and approve the result, users then can start to sell their designs (and products) to others using Ponoko’s online shop and distribution system. And as in many ventures, the initiator of the business was a frustrated user who could not buy what he wanted to fulfill his needs. After reading about the idea of personal fabrication by Neil Gershenfield at MIT, a business was born.

I asked Dave ten Have, Ponoko's founder and CEO, to describe how the company was founded and what the team wants to achieve. With the help of Steven Kempton , Ponoko’s chief blogging officer, the following guest article came in:

Ponoko was founded on the idea that making or buying individualized products shouldn't be so complex, time-consuming and at a high cost, both financially and environmentally. It should be an enjoyable experience, where you can focus on the design and not be overly limited to what resources, materials or tools you may or may not have or know about.

The idea for Ponoko came from software entrepreneurs Dave ten Have and Derek Elley, both of whom have made a number of things where each experience left a sour taste. A particularly disappointing project was Dave's experience in designing some wall art - a skateboard shape made of dark rich wood with mother of pearl inset designs. This small project took way too much time than Dave had anticipated – two years in fact. It took an incredible amount of phone calls and emails to multiple parties (mostly engineers who didn't have an interest in creativity/art). In the end, it cost a huge amount for an unpleasant making / buying experience – and when it turned up, it was wrong and had to be sent back. The worst part was having to go through the horrid process all over again. (You can see Dave's personal blog for pictures). After this and other disappointing experiences in making individualized projects, they founded Ponoko.

Encouraged by the rise of the Internet connected 'creative-class' along with smarter, faster, smaller and cheaper digital manufacturing hardware (laser cutters, CNC routers and 3D printers that connect to your everyday PC), Dave and Derek formed a plan to solve these problems. They started with the premise that the personal computing and the personal manufacturing industries have strong parallels, realizing that one day everyone will be able to create and make any product from their own home. This led to the idea of mass-individualized products created by the Web community and made on a globally distributed network of manufacturing hardware controlled from any PC.

Today's product making and distribution model is financially and environmentally unsustainable. It's also under pressure to digitize like the music and video industries have. Because today's 100-year old product making and distribution system is so ingrained into our every day lives and delivers so much benefit, problems are not so obvious. But when was the last time you made something?

Making products today does not come easy – some major problems exist:

* Making and delivering (individualized) products is a time consuming, complex and expensive process. This pain does not fit well in a world that is increasingly in demand for instant satisfaction from mass personalized and customized products at low cost.

* Product making and distribution is cost prohibitive for new entrants without relatively deep financial reserves. This is stifling mass creativity of real products and the progress of humanity on unimaginable fronts.

* Low cost mass production and global distribution relies upon using lots of cheap energy and labor. But these two resources are running out.

* Product making and distribution is a major contributor to the global warming problem (according to the WRI, perhaps 20% of the problem). Being environmentally unsustainable, the increasing 'carbon currency' costs also make the current model financially unsustainable.

* Finding individualized products is very difficult and buying such products is a time consuming, relatively complex and expensive burden. Why is there no easy to find supplier of low cost personalized products?

These pressing problems illustrate that a new product making and distribution process is required. Our solution is made possible given the rise of the Internet connected 'creative class' along with digital manufacturing hardware (laser cutters, CNC routers and 3D printers that connect to your everyday PC), and production materials.

The idea of Ponoko is to address these challenges and to deliver the future of product making and distribution to the mass market, today. Ponoko shall deliver the following benefits:

Less risk. On-demand design and manufacture is made possible, so work does not need to be commenced until a consumer makes a purchase. And because product designs can be sold to a large global audience from day one, pay back periods can be shortened.

Lower costs. With Ponoko, creators can now ship digital product designs with the click of a mouse, not physical products requiring a pocket full of cash. This is Apple iTunes for products, but with YouTube style user-generated content.

Instant scalability without cost. Ponoko's distributed manufacturing model means the creator's cost and time frame to manufacture a product for 1 customer is the same as for 1 million customers. Creators can sell millions of products on-demand at 'no' extra cost.

Increased control. Ponoko is specifically designed to provide end-to-end visibility & control over the entire product making and distribution process.

Less complexity. By connecting creators direct with consumers, the traditional supply chain complexity involving a manufacturer, distributor, wholesaler and retailer is eliminated.

But also for consumers, the system has a number of benefits. The main advantage are low cost individualized products. Because no physical product exists until purchase, product design collaboration makes it possible for everyone to co-create and personalize 'almost anything' they need & want. As adoption increases, prices for Ponoko's design-to-order and made-to-order commodity type products will become unrecognizably low.

We are in beta phase at the moment, so if you're interested to find out how this all works and to help us make it the best making/buying experience you've had, please sign up.

Context:
- Ponoko Blog
- Previous posts on the user manufacturing trend
- Neil Gershenfield on personal fabrication

Open Design by Ronen Kadushin

Exhibition of his latest open designs in Appel-Gallery in Berlin, May 12-20, 2007

A frequent topic in my public lectures is the “open design” project by Ronen Kadushin, an Israeli product designer living in Berlin, Germany. Ronen created this product line to close the creative gap between product design and other fields, such as music, graphic design, animation and photography that are traditionally more connected to political, social and economic flows and issues. Inspired by the Open Source movement, he released the designs under a Creative Commons license, which means that you are allowed to reproduce them for personal use. Each design can be downloaded along with a description and a 'blueprint'.

“Industrial design is becoming more and more a toy for rich people … dominated by large names and big companies”, Ronen once explained to me in an interview. Industrial design industry is monopolized by a number of large producers (manufacturing and distributing the designs), focusing on the concepts of less than 150 “famous” industrial designers whose concepts are recognized. All the thousands of other well talented designers are just serving the elite. His intuition was that this system was just producing too much “waste”: Even of the more established designers, only one out of twenty design concepts are becoming products, the rest is just creative waste.

As a result, the concept of Open Design was born. The idea is to find a new logical method how design could be working, using open source software as a working model. His designs are two dimensional "cutout" represented as digital information. It relies on the internet's communication resources, to publish, distribute, and copy the designs under a CreativeCommons deed. Coupled with the flexibility of CNC production methods and their broad availability due to new enablers like emachineshop.com, all technically conforming designs are continuously available for production, in any number, with no tooling investment, anywhere and by anyone.

The latest developments and objects of this project will be exhibited in Berlin in a new exhibition in the Gallery “Appel-Design” (Torstrasse 114, 10119 Berlin Mitte) from May 12 to May 20. Meet Ronen during the exhibition’s opening on May 13, 6pm.

For more information on the exhibition, click on the picture or go to Ronen’s website http://www.ronen-kadushin.com.

CNN on User Manufacturing and Fabbing Your Products at Home

Dean Irvine from CNN Online reports in a recent article on a new project, Fab@Home, that wants to provide a machine that can make anything, even itself -- and this in the comfort of your home. What sounds like the dream of a science fiction author is a device developed at Cornell University by Hod Lipson, Assistant Professor at Cornell's Computing and Information Science department, and Evan Malone, a PhD student.

Lipson and Malone's machine is different to conventional rapid manufacturing technologies in several reasons: First, it can use a number of materials, from plastics to metals with a low melting point. "This makes them useful for making parts or components, but not for making complete systems. We're aiming to make integrated systems, including circuitry and sensors," Lipson is quoted in the article.

Second, the machine is not a proprietary technology, but open source machinery.

DIY fabbers have been able to download plans on how to make their own Fab@Home devices from the web site and are able to build it using off-the-shelf components for around $2000, or buy a kit for $3,000. The machines can then be run from software on a desktop computer. Unsurprisingly the current model is more rudimentary than professional rapid prototyping machines.

Lipson: "Since the machine has been out there people have been experimenting with all sorts of materials including food. We've seen a lot of chocolate, cheese and peanut butter-based creations. This might not be the way the machine is used in the future, but it just goes to show how adaptable and open the creative impetus it is."

Lipson thinks that digital fabrication is currently in a similar situation to that of computers in the 1960s, but instead of kits in the hands of enthusiasts and boffins, the fabbing machines can be developed by creatives across the world thanks to the Internet, freeware and open source software.

"It's a project that will be perfected and improved thanks to the online community of designers and creatives. Getting it into the hands of the people is very important. All the software and components are open source so can be changed or modified according to what people want," he said.

While the machine still is in its early stages of development, the article comments on the potential impact of such a machine. This discussion fits into the vision of user manufacturing. In some quotes in the article, I am saying (please excuse this shameless act of self-promotion):

Piller: "It's hard to say if [Fab@home] will be in everyone's home in the next 20 years. It might follow the same trajectory as the laser printer. Who predicted that nearly every home would have one of them 20 years ago? What is certain is that in the long run it's sure to transform the manufacturing process, big companies won't have to focus so much on economies of scale. ... [For consumers], you won't have to wait for products. It will be similar to being your own publisher online, but with an enormous scope of what you can produce."

And how about replicating some Prada shoes or Aquascutum cuff links, Irvin asks in his article. Well, just look on Google Sketch-up and its repository of 3D designs. you will find an amazing number of reverse engineered IKEA furniture here.

"Already people are customizing designs of existing products, like Ikea furniture, using designs tools and these types of machines. It's small scale now, but if this becomes big, then Ikea are going to step in and say:'Hey, you can't customize our designs.' [But] if they're smart then they'll put these machines in their stores," said Piller.

And the basic idea of the IKEA business model of self assembly would become one of self-design (modification) and self production.

Read the full article here: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/04/26/fs.fabmachine/

Context: - The CNN article refers to a fabbed ladies shoe that is wrongly credited to my group. I wrote about the first laser sintered shoe in this blog, but its inventors and designers are Marc van der Zande from TNO Science and Industry and Sjors Bergmans from Concept Design who developed the shoe in a joint EU-funded project called CEC-made shoes.
- Another nice article about the project.

Nike is Trying Threadless' Crowdsourcing Model

More Co-Creation at Nike

Coolhunting has an interesting small report on an upcoming NikeID project: They are offering their top-end (fashion) shoe, Nike Air Force 1, in a special co-design version. Starting 6 March 2007, users can design a custom Nike Air Force 1 using the NikeID configurator (how it works in detail). Designs are exhibited on the web, other users vote on the winning designs, and the winning design will then be specially made only for the winner, complete with bling sneaker jewelry.

For this project, Nike is collaborating with Sneakerplay, a social networking site of sneaker enthusiasts (only Sneakerplay members can particpate). While this sounds a bit like Threadless' collective customer commitment (crowdsourcing) model, it is different:

Nike takes the community, co-creation, and community evaluation idea, adds an easy-to-use toolkit to enable easier co-design (at Threadless, you have to know Photoshop), but then produces the winning design in a custom manufacturing step just for the winner.

[UPDATE: Just after I wrote this post, Bill commented on this post, saying that this is a good old design contest and not a new crowdsourcing model. And I agree! ]

Why not for everyone? Don't ask me ... it seems to be more like a clever PR pilot then a new business model. But at least it is a start and great idea to live their new "The consumer decides" philosophy with a different twist.

InnoCentive launches nonprofit unit: Crowdsourcing solutions for the world's problems

Now this is a good idea: Innocentive, one of the major examples of crowdsourcing innovation using the principles of "interactive value creation", today announced that it has teamed-up with The Rockefeller Foundation to launch a "nonprofit" application of its distributed innovation tool.

InnoCentive should be known to most readers of my blog, even if I never reported extensively about them (as they are not based on the input of customers or users): In brief: Innocentive is a company based here in the neighborhood of MIT that specializes in matching scientists with corporate clients to solve research and development problems.

It has been shown that this "broadcasting" of problems instead of seeking for a problem internally is a highly efficient mechanism. So using it not only for commercial firms, but to generate science and technology solutions to pressing development problems, is a great idea.

The non-profit Rockefeller Foundation area on InnoCentive's scientific platform will bring to bear the talent of thousands of world-class scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs in solving the most pressing and complex humanitarian challenges posed by non-profit entities selected by the Foundation.

Under the agreement announced today, The Rockefeller Foundation will select non-profit entities and others with charitable intent eligible to use the InnoCentive platform under preferred conditions, and will pay access, posting and service fees on their behalf to InnoCentive, as well as challenge awards to those researchers solving the technology problems the non-profits pose. The Foundation will launch a new area on its own Web site, www.rockfound.org, to recruit and screen organizations seeking this subsidy to use the InnoCentive platform.

The new agreement is the first step in a larger Rockefeller Foundation initiative aimed at promoting innovation in a manner that spurs development, and that specifically increases access to proven innovation models for work on behalf of poor or vulnerable populations around the world. In some cases, the initiative will also help to advance access to, or distribution of, specific innovations that can be of important benefit to poor or vulnerable people.

The foundation will screen the problem seeker and pay for that company to register on the Web site. If a problem solver is matched with the seeker, Peter Costiglio, director of communications for foundation said. The foundation would then fund the award for the problem that's solved, provided that it is solved satisfactorily.

"It is difficult for us to give a specific dollar amount in terms of what type of funding we're talking about," said Peter Costiglio. "What we want to do is have problem seekers matched with problem solvers. This is a platform to enable that to happen."

I think this is a very promising new approach for solving social problems. It has been shown that many solvers at Innocentive are motivated by the spirit of solving the problem as much as by the cash reward. Working on a social problem may spur this behavior. This seems a much better model to find answers for fields where commercial solutions will not come up easily (as the market potential is too small, as, e.g., in the field of Malaria treatment) then the usual direct funding structure.

Finally TIME got it: YOU are the person of the year -- and why Chrysler did not get it

Time Magazine annually claims a "person of the year", and this year it is not Bill Gates or Stalin, but YOU – the creative consumer. While the statement of this claim is more than true and indeed one of the main trends in 2006 (and the topic of this blog and newsletter since 1997), it is not too original.

Business 2.0 run a very similar cover story half a year ago, and before, the Economist and Business Week had similar covers stories in 2005. The article in Time about the story has nothing new, so no further quotes required (even if it really generated a lot of excitement in the blog world, and also many other papers reported about it, like this report in the Spiegel).

But what is much more interesting is this side story. If you want to read the Time article online, you can do so for free, but there in an advertising page first. It features a spot by Chrysler that is supposed to be humorous. It's tag line is "You might be not the person of the year, but you still can drive like one with the Chrysler XYZ". So much about fast response and the need for a new kind of advertising ... Very 1990s.

Context:

Exciting Commerce Blog says User Manufacturing is one of the top topics for 2007

Communities Dominate Brand Blog report about the Time story

And this is a great TIME cover creator – show it your grand ma, she will be impressed!