Mass Customization & Open Innovation News

ISPM Seeks Solution: Problem Conference in Crowdsolving Innovation Management Challenges

One of the most innovative approaches to open innovation is coming again this year: The Problem Conference.

Here: For Management Challenges!

The core idea: Turn a conference upside down. Instead of presenting "solutions" and "best practices" to impress the other participants with your successes, present your hardest challenge. Present what you could not solve, and ask openly for help! The (beginning of the) solution then will be co-created with the participants.

Due to the great success of the first problem conference in 2010 we are proud to announce to you the 2013 edition of the ISPIM Seeks Solutions Conference!

Taking place 16:00 – 17:30, June 18th, at the ISPIM conference in Helsinki (Room: 304 - 3rd floor). The ISPIM 2013 conference offers the unique opportunity to engage in this new form of "local open innovation".

Call for problems: What is your problem with managing innovation?

You have a problem related to innovation management and want to use the intelligence of experts from all around the world to solve it? Here’s how you can do it!

Submit your problem to ISPIM Seeks Solutions and if your problem is selected your problem will be treated during the one hour and a half workshop on June 18th at the ISPIM conference in Helsinki.

To submit a problem, describe it using here

The process is based on the open innovation problem broadcasting approach. Problems can be submitted until March 29th. The “best problems” will then be selected and broadcasted on the web few weeks prior the event. Problem seekers will also get some support from ISPIM experts to well define the problem prior to broadcasting it. During the workshop in itself, ISPIM delegates participating to the workshop will collaborate around the selected problems and help you in understanding it better.

If you need more information: contact conference staff at ispim.helsinki@enmodesolutions.com

New book: Intelligent Non-hierarchical Manufacturing Networks

A recently released book presents a number of results from a few related, EU-funded research projects on agile and flexible manufactuing networks. It combines the work by a large number of scholars. Amongst these, my colleague Frank Steiner and myself have provided a chapter on "Mass Customization as an Enabler of Network Resilience". A full table of contents can be found here (external link).

Intelligent Non-hierarchical Manufacturing Networks
Editors: R. Poller, L.M. Carneiro, T. Jasinski, M. Zolghadri, P. Pedrazzoli

Published by and availible from: ISTE Wiley

ISBN: 9781848214811

 $: very (too) expenise, I am afraid.

The editors' summary of the book describes its content really well so there is not much point in rewriting it all from scratch:

This book provides the latest models, methods and guidelines for networked enterprises to enhance their competitiveness and move towards innovative high performance and agile industrial systems.

In many markets, competitiveness and economic growth rely greatly on the move toward innovative high performance industrial systems and agile networked enterprises through the creation and consolidation of non-hierarchical manufacturing networks of multi-national SMEs as opposed to networks based on powerful large-scale companies.

Network performance can be significantly improved through more harmonious and equitable peer-to-peer inter-enterprise relationships, conforming decentralized and collaborative decision-making models.

Traditional hierarchical manufacturing networks are based on centralized models, where some of the actors involved must adapt themselves to the constraints defined by those who are most dominant. Real-world experiences of such models have revealed some major problems due to the centralized vision of the supply chain and the sub-optimal performance of centralized decision-making. For the current highly dynamic markets, this generates major inefficiencies in operation throughout the supply chain.

This book collects the latest research regarding non-hierarchical manufacturing networks and provides enterprises with valuable models, methods and guidelines to improve their competitiveness.

Featured Companies from the MC500 (Part 23): Caseable: Protect Your Device Your Way

In our series of postings introducing companies that performend very well in our Customization 500 study, we are introducing the next mass customizer. Remember:  The order of these feature postings is more or less randomly!

 

Today: Individual cases for your favorite electronic device

There is no shortage of cases and bags for all sorts of electronic mobile devices. Electronics stores offer a vide variety of both colorful or elegant protection for your cellphone, tablet or laptop, but in case the given designs are just not individual enough, German vendor caseable might come to your rescue just in time.

On their website you can order cases and bags for a vide collection of different phones, ipads, kindles, laptops and more. These can be turned into the unique of your dreams by chosing colors, adding graphics and/or text. The configurator appears to be user friendly yet powerful enough to ensure that, after you have ordered and received your device's new best friend, you will most likely never confuse it with that of the person on the seat next to you.

 
Note: Please see this post for detailed information on how to interpret the above data.

Featured Companies from the MC500 (Part 22): Allmytea: Custom Tea for Individual Relaxiation

In our series of postings introducing companies that performend very well in our Customization 500 study, we are introducing the next mass customizer. Remember:  The order of these feature postings is more or less randomly!

 

Today: What mymuesli is to cereals, this is to tea

Sometimes, relaxing just works best with a cup of hot quality tea. Unfortunately, mixtures avalible in local supermarkets may not always be just exactly what one is looking for in terms of taste or effect. For all these cases (or just the experimenters amongst you) German online shop Allmytea might be worth a visit.

Utilizing an efficiently designed configurator the website guides you through the process of picking a base sort of tea and enriching it by adding all kinds of herbs. The end product will be sent to you in a package with an individual name (chosen by yourself) printed upon it. If you are into good tea this could be a nice replacement for or addition to your local grocery store. 

 

 
Note: Please see this post for detailed information on how to interpret the above data.

Lego CUUSOO: How Lego Turns Your Ideas Into Cubic Reality

LEGO's Factory (later called "LEGO Design by me") has been one of the pioneers of mass customization.However, times change and Lego closed this "build on demand site" about a year ago and focused entirely on customer co-creation in the innovation process.

For this, they are partnering with CUUSOO; the mother of all crowdsourcing sites for product development (we described them in our 2006 paper on Threadless already!).

The project is called Lego CUUSOO and wors fairly simple: Everybody can submit an idea of what he would deem a great Lego product. Customers get to vote online and if the proposal gets sufficient buyer pledges the company turns it into reality and produces the toy.

Noew, there is a nice video giving more detail on this idea, it makes you instantly grab a pen and paper and start drawing your own powertoy idea...

 

MC2012 Tagungsband erschienen: Profitieren von Kundenintegration

(Sorry, German posting on German book) Die MC2012 war die größte Konferenz zu den Themen Mass Customization (individuelle Massenfertiung) und Kundenintegration im vergangenen Jahr. Wir berichteten an dieser Stelle ausführlich sowie via Twitter live aus dem Konferenzzentrum.

Nach dem großen Erfolg der Veranstalung in Salzburg und der angeschlossenen Fachbesucherausstellung ist nun der offizielle Tagungsband erschienen. Auf 139 Seiten werden neben den Originalpräsentationen aus der Konferenz die zentralen Themen von Prof. Frank T. Piller (RWTH Aachen), Prof. Dominik Walcher (FH Salzburg) und Dr. Paul Blazek (cyLEDGE Media) zusammenfassend besprochen, die mit der MC-Konferenz 2012 bereits zum zehnten Mal ein Forum für internationale Fachteilnehmer aus Wirtschaft, Industrie und Forschung präsentierten.

Der Tagungsband "MC2012 - Profitieren von Kundenintegration" ist ab sofort als Downloadedition über Lulu sowie in Kürze über Amazon verfügbar.

 Aber hier schon ein paar Photoimpressionen der Veranstaltung ...

 

Our M-Prize Hack Made It to the Finals, Now We Need YOUR Help Again!

End of the last year TIM Group posted about our group having been invited to participate at the the HBR-McKinsey M-Prize . Back then we asked for your support by liking our "hack", the solution proposal we submitted.

With your tremendous help, our hack has made it amongst the finalists in round one as announced by the jury!!! Thank you to everybody who liked it!

Now we are of course more than enthusiastic to win the challenge. This will, again, only be possible with your help!

One of the key criteria in the final judging for the winners of the Innovating Innovation Challenge will be how finalists further develop their entry in response to the comments and questions from their peers (thats you). Self-evidently, to do this, we need your ideas and comments. These do not have to be extremely elaborated, just give us your thoughts.

Therefore, if you like our proposal and would like to see it win the contest and maybe become a reality, please give us your support one more time by going to the official website and posting your comments and questions in regards to our hack*. We will do our very best to improve our proposal based on your input in this great example of academic open co-creation.

Thank you very much in advance and wish us luck!

* You will have to register on the website to be able to post a comment, it only asks for a name and an email address. This is just to prevent automated spam and increase credibility of the process. Of course it is free and without any strings attached. If you are not already registered on the MIX website, you can do so here and then just head over to our hack, scroll down and add your comment.

Featured Companies from the MC500 (Part 21): Choiceshirts: Individual Upper Bodies

In our series of postings introducing companies that performend very well in our Customization 500 study, we are introducing the next mass customizer. Remember:  The order of these feature postings is more or less randomly!

 

Today: Known concept, nice execution

Customized T-Shirts are nothing new to the mass customization enthusiast, indeed, there are more than 100 online vendors in this category. But at the same time, tshirst are one of the most well-known individualized products and certainly one of those that will always have their fans and buyers. Customized shirts are usually affordable and useful in a variety of situations.

One competitior on this crowded market is Choice Shirts. Their slogan "wear what you think" is pretty much program for them as they give you the tools to create a shirt with more or less any motive you could want to wear.

A simple yet solid configurator lets you chose from either a large variety of cliparts, a custom text or your own uploaded image - or a combination thereof. Whatever print you choose will be applied on the shirt you selct from different models of shirts and shipped to your doorstep. Alternatively, if your creativity does not serve you just today, the company also has a huge variety of pre-configured shirts for many different themes.

 
Note: Please see this post for detailed information on how to interpret the above data.

[Featured Research] Study Backs Long Term Claim with Hard Data: User-Generated Products Make More Profit

Since years we argue that customers / users not just have good ideas for new products & services, but that products with roots in user innovation are actually more profitable and superior to inhouse-developed products. There has been some anecdotal evidence to prove this claim, and lots of case studies, but not hard data. But now a study provides hard evidence:

User-generated versus designer-generated products: A performance assessment at Muji, by: Hidehiko Nishikawa, Martin Schreier, Susumu Ogaw, in: International Journal of Research in Marketing (2013)

Our colleagues Hidehiko Nishikawa (Hosei University), Martin Schreier (WU Vienna University) and Susumu Ogawa (Kobe University) show that user-generated products perform better on the market than their (professional) designer-generated counterparts. Their idea is to systematically compare actual market performance of user-generated products with firm (designer)-generated ones.

The authors present a unique data set gathered from the Japanese consumer goods brand Muji, which has drawn on both sources of ideas in parallel in recent years. They demonstrate that user-generated products in the furniture category, which are found to generally contain higher novelty outperformed their designer-generated counterparts on key market performance metrics.

Specifically, in the first year after introduction, sales revenues from user-generated products were three times higher and gross margins were four times greater than those of designer-generated products.

These effects also increased over time: after three years, the aggregate sales revenues of user-generated products were, on average, 1.25 billion yen (approximately 16 million dollars) higher, or five times greater, than the sales of designer-generated products. The corresponding average margin was an impressive 619 million yen (approximately 8 million dollars) higher, or six times greater, than the margin for designer-generated products. Finally, user-generated products were more likely to survive the three-year observation period than designer-generated products (i.e., were still on the market three years after introduction).

These findings clearly favor the paradigm shift identified in marketing research and appeal to managers considering the integration of user ideas into the process of new product development. In their paper, the authors discuss the study's limitations and identify important avenues for future research.

I find this study especially interesting as MUJI is world-wide admired for their great inhouse design team! Also, the study shows that this is more than a novelty effect: Customers did not know whether a product was user designed or not, they just liked (and purchased) the product!

Featured Companies from the MC500 (Part 20): Photobox: Gifts and Decorations From Your Images

In our series of postings introducing companies that performend very well in our Customization 500 study, we are introducing the next mass customizer. Remember:  The order of these feature postings is more or less randomly!

 

Today: Make something special from all these holiday photos

The holidays are over and many of you will have put your new digital camera or 20-megapixle-smartphone to good use by documenting all the joy and pleasure of the christmas and new years celebrations.

Images are conserved memories and hence best shared with those who shared the documented moments, too. And while just uploading your pictures to facebook would probably do, why not take it one step further and surprise your friends and loved ones with some personalized books, cards, decorations and other kinds of gifts, individualized with the best photos from your celebrations (or last holiday).

German company photobox offers a wide range of individualizable products, from classical photo books, cups, puzzles and stickers to cellphone and tablet covers, calendars, magnets, the unavoidable mousepad and a lot of others. This is one of the most crowded and largest categories in BtoC mass customization on the web in general.

Their website and configurator appears pretty modern and seems to work fine so if you are looking for something to thank your holiday party host for a wonderful evening, this might be for you.

 
Note: Please see this post for detailed information on how to interpret the above data.

Competivation Consulting Founded to Meet Innovation-, Technology- and Strategy Consulting Needs of Industry

I frequently receive requests by companies for innovation counseling and consulting on open innovation, mass customizuation, and technology management.  While we do not perform any consulting for individual companies with our RWTH-TIM institute, there are a number of opportunities for consulting.

To meet the needs of industry, together with an experienced executive consultant, Prof. Hans-Gerd Servatius,  we have founded Competivation Consulting, a dynamic innovation and strategy management consulting company from innovators for innovators. 

Combining decades of innovation research, teaching and consulting, COMPETIVATION's team of experts supports your company with

• Management consulting in innovation and technologymanagement,
• Strategy and innovation workshops,
• Strategic and technology roadmapping,
• Trend analysis and strategic foresight,
• Technology, market and benchmarking analysis,
• Implementation counseling,
• Networking with intermediaries and IT-partners,
• Executive education programs and corporate speaking

Special areas of expertise are open innovation, customer co-creation, mass customization, but also the development of comprehensive strategies for innovation and technology managememt.

Prof. Hans-Gerd Servatius has met our Editor in Chief for a brief interview, outlining the USPs of Competivation Consulting and what can be done especially for the open innovation strategist.

CG: Some of our readers will know you as the author of your latest book, touching a pressing matter of our times, Smart Energy. Can you tell a bit about yourself and your experience in technology and innovation management consulting?

GS: We created the term technology and innovation management in the early 1980s at Arthur D. Little, where I led the German TIM practice. For me this was a great opportunity, to put the concepts, which I had developed in my Ph.D. thesis on strategic management of technology into practical work. During the following decades I tried to anticipate the next TIM waves like corporate venture management (which has a lot in common with open innovation), process and business model innovation, knowledge management as well as sustainability, to mention some examples. Today I think technology and innovation management is more important than ever and looking back to its roots helps to better understand the future.

CG: You have over 30 years of experience as a professional consultant, having been anywhere from an entrance position to partner level and managing director in internationally reknown firms. What sets Competivation apart from the existing competition?

GS: I would like to mention three points. First: Competivation is a young firm with very experienced founders. This helps us to create a unique culture. Second: The founders have an excellent reputation as scientists and management consultants. We have a strong international network. Based on these competencies we can be more innovative in our field than many others. And third: Our combination of executive education with consulting offers possibilities for differentiation that satisfy the needs of many clients, who are looking for more sustainable results.

CG: Our readers are especially interested in open innovation. Do you see OI to be the method of choice to solve many of the (technical) problems that companies usually struggle with solving on their own? Why?

GS: Open innovation has proven that it can generate great ideas and solve many problems. Roughly ten years after the term has been created the experience of leading firms with different OI methods is growing. One of the reasons for this success is the increased connectivity potential of a company, its stakeholders and non-obvious others, who can play a role in the innovation processes. A challenge many companies are still facing today is the integration of open integration into an emerging enterprise 2.0 concept. This means that both internal and external innovation must become more cooperative.

CG: Do you think that corporate culture is key element in (remodeling) innovation management, as part of an integrated approach? If so, can you give some examples from your experience?

GS: Corporate Culture is clearly a key element for innovation. It always was and new forms of innovation require cultural adaptations. The cultural challenge today is to find the right balance between closed and open innovation, individual talents and cooperative success as well as trust in others and securing intellectual property. The answer is not black or white. Success formulas are more complex and need to be tailored to specific situations. In our assignments we help organizations and their managers to improve the specific competencies needed to compete in this new era of innovation. An example is an international automotive company, which we support on its way to become a provider of mobility solutions. This requires new business models combining open and closed innovation as well as improved leadership skills as orchestrators of different partners.

CG: Can you give a little insight into your network? What is Competivation`s special competence mix?

GS:  Our network consists of partners in the academic world, complementary service providers and experienced practitioners, who work together in a trust-based way. One example is the Business Transformation Academy, which is sponsored by SAP. On their international conference in October in Budapest we presented our new study of a changing energy sector based on innovative IT enabled business models. If I have a special competence it perhaps is to put technology and innovation management not only into a strategic, organizational and cultural context but also to translate new findings from complexity theory into practical solution sets. In a volatile world this is what many clients are looking for.

 

While Competivation Consulting´s core market is the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), we are also open for assignments beyond these ountries. You will find more informationen on Competivation and our service portfolio at www.competivation.de (in German language only!) or contact us directly!

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[Featured Research] Designing the Organization for User Innovation

Our series on featured research articles continues. Today I want to recommend a paper by fellow researchers Peter Keinz, Christoph Hienerth and Christopher Lettl. In their paper they focus on the paradigm shift from producer-centered towards user-centered processes.

Designing the Organization for User Innovation

By Peter Keinz, Christoph Hienerth & Christopher Lettl

Availible at: Journal of Organization Design

 There is increasing consensus among practitioners and academics alike that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift from producer-centered and internal innovation processes toward user-centered and open innovation processes.

This paradigm shift induces significant changes to the design of organizations. Even though the research field of user innovation has been developing over a period of more than four decades, there have been only occasional intersections with the research field of organizational design. In this article, the authors aim to provide an integrated perspective of the two fields. Therefore they first identify major user innovation strategies and then derive the implications for each user innovation strategy on key dimensions of organizational design.

After outlining existing user innovation approaches, the authors continue to explain the need for organizational (re-)design when employing user innovation strategies. They then present design principles for companies employing user innovation strategies, followed by a detailed discussion of their findings (so far). 

In this video, Christopher Lettl explaines the central topic of their research for this paper. 

Designing the Organization for User Innovation from JOD on Vimeo.

Read the full article at Journal of Organization Design, Vol. 1, No. 3 (2012)!

TIM in the MIX: Vote for Our Hack at the HBR M-Prize: Global solutions, local failure: Overcoming barriers in implementing open innovation

Our group has been invited to participate at the HBR-McKinsey M-Prize . Now we need your support! If you want to see our proposal outlined below become a winning idea, please head over to the official website and "like" our idea: Global solutions, local failure - Overcoming barriers in implementing open innovation For those not familiar with the M-Prize, here is a short summary from their official website:

The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The MIX is based on the premise that management is nothing less than the technology of human accomplishment and that, after 100 years of incremental tweaks, it now needs to be reinvented for a new age. The M-Prize is the MIX’s call to management innovators (and aspiring management innovators) around the world to make a real difference when it comes to improving management thinking and practice.

Here is a short summary of our submission: Many companies today pilot open innovation (OI) and crowdsourcing, but only few are making it a permanent practice. A consortium of six German SMEs finds that OI can radically improve the productivity of technical problem solving, but demands strong internal promotors and dedicated processes to overcome resistance and barriers. You can find the full proposal here! Thank you for your support!!

PS: The topic of implementing open innovation in an established firm also is the theme of our upcoming European Open Innovation Practicioner Program.

Conference Report: Observations and Conclusions from the MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012

Over the past months we have reported a lot on the latest preparations of one of the most important meetings of the customization community in 2012: Smart Customization Seminar, hosted by Smart Customization Group, MIT. Now that the event has taken place and we got some time to breath again we want to take a look back and share some of our experiences with you. 

With the general topic being Micro | Macro | Customization it has been a really broad range of experts giving insight and views on customization from the point of view of their respective field of profession or research. From internationally renown scholars like Joseph Pine, Eric von Hippel or Alex Pentland to experts for (custom) architecture, food individualization or top-notch sports cars: This years lineup of speakers brought some centuries of combined experience into one room. 

Overall there was a great agreement that customization will continue to and play an even more major role in implicit and explicit design of our all's common living space, especially in large cities, and the way we interact, produce, buy and consume. 

One highlight of the seminar was when Marco Mattiacci, CEO of Ferrari North America, presented what could be called the glass ceiling of automotive individualization: A Ferrari 599XX EVO, in red, of course. Unfortunately we could not take the 1.500.000 USD car for a short test drive around Boston highways, but at least many auto enthusiasts got the chance to get photographed with this little gem of the four-wheeled world. 

Of course, the car did not just serve as a background for nice souvenir photos. In fact it did underline one very important message: the desire for individualization is an important part of human psychology. While a car for
10.000 USD would get you from A to B just fine, one for over a million Dollar will still leave room for individual desires. And to fulfill these, be it in regards to admittedly exclusive sports cars or "just" individually produced nutrition bars, is not only a big step towards a new age of consumerism but also a business opportunity that could revolutionize many branches. 

As Mattiacci explained in his keynote speech, implementing (the right kind of) customization in an established company is not necessarily an easy undertaking. But once you have overcome potential barriers and worked out a system that fits your product and corporate philosophy, you can majorly benefit from your entrepreneurism: Ferrari managed to increase orders of individualized elements on their cars from a few thousand to about 80.000 USD per new car that is being bought, "just" by tweaking the way they offer customers to personalize their car in Farrari showrooms. That is rather impressive. 

Another great example of how the future of both retail and urban planning could potentially look like was outlined by Prof. Alex Pentland of MIT. He demonstrated how data mining can be employed to optimize shopping experience for customers, making it more convenient to find what you (likely) want to buy, making the process less tiresome and more efficient at the same time. 

As Alex Pentland showed, using a large enough database of location data from cell phones, one can make actually rather precise predictions of the buying behavior of customers, what they are interested in, individually, and which product offer might be benefitial to them. 

Of course, this is a really double-edged sword. Not everybody is comfortable with his location data being used for marketing purposes (or even stored). And while privacy concerns are very much understandable, this technology still has a lot of potential, certainly not against the will of customers but, with their agreement, advertising could see a real revolution. Imagine only seeing product ads about things you really care about on television. No more generalized campaigning but specific offers for every individual, fitting his or her interest and needs. This kind of customization will need a lot of further development until it will become as universally accepted as today's broad-range advertising, but it at least has the potential to play a big part in tomorrows retail world. 

Also very interesting was a finding presented by MIT's Ryan Chin: Employing modern RFID technology his group could prove in a research scenario that mass customized dress shirts are being worn more often or used over a longer period of time as compared to non-customized shirts. This is certainly explainable with not only a better fit but most importantly the customer's increased affection to a product he individualized himself. 

This, and other presentations, deliver a clear message: customization is far more than a trend for those with a special interest in personalized products. It will be one of the most important aspects of living and conducting business in the coming decades. And while we are still far from a fully customized world, this is an excellent time for innovative entrepreneurs to get into the market and secure themselves market shares, like Anthony Flynn did with his venture YouBars, producing custom nutrition bars. And sometimes, its just a small idea that sparks something large. 

But customization is not only a matter of business opportunities. At least evenly important, it will be part of our future society. More individualism will change the face of urban living, personal traffic, media consumption and many more fields of life forever. And while this development will be driven by consumers and supported by industry, it is also academia and administration who is asked to get a custom world into their focus of attention and do their part to make the future fit the nature of humans better by creating an enviroment that allows individuals to do what makes them individual: Taking and living their choice. 

[Interview] Anthony Flynn & Emily Flynn Vencat, Authors of "Custom Nation"

As promissed in our recent book review of Custom Nation, authors Anthony Flynn and Emily Flynn Vencat, participated in our interview series with MC&OI entrepreneurs to share their experiences in the customization market, their book and who could profit most from reading it.

 FTP: Can you tell a little bit about yourself? What do you do and where did/do you get your experiences with mass customization from?

ANTHONY: I’m the founder and owner of YouBar, the world’s first customized nutrition bar company. I started the company in 2006 after feeling frustrated by my inability to find an off-the-shelf nutrition bar that met my – admittedly very specific – health and taste needs. So, I started custom-making bars for myself, and I thought there would be a huge market for bars made to meet individual consumers’ own unique needs and, out of that, YouBar was born.

Since then, I’m extremely proud to say that I’ve grown the company to seven-digit annual sales, and now employ 30 people in an 8,000 square foot facility in downtown Los Angeles. Thanks to my success with mass customizing, several years ago I started being invited to give talks on customizing to universities around the country (from UCLA to MIT), and have become a consultant to companies looking to add an element of customization to their existing mass-production based business models.

There has been so much interest – and this extended to the press too: I’ve given interviews to hundreds of news organizations, including the New York Times, Good Morning America and NPR – that I saw that there was a real need for a book to be written about how customization is changing the way we do business in the 21st century. But I’m not a writer, and that’s where Emily came in…

EMILY:  That’s right. Several years ago, Anthony – who in addition to being my co-author is also my brother – came to me with the idea for this book. At the time, I was working as a business journalist in London – I was Newsweek’s London-based business writer and, after that, was a business writer at the Associated Press -- and Anthony told me he wanted me to write this book with him. At first, I was extremely sceptical (and also very busy!), but the idea was so compelling that it didn’t take long before I was convinced and we signed with our publisher last year.

FTP: On the early pages of your book you tell us that "outline exactly how you too can use customization to launch a successful new business, or exponentially increase sales in your existing business". That sounds like a pretty ambitious promise. Have you found the holy grail of retail?

ANTHONY: I don’t think we’ve “found” the holy grail of retail. I think it’s been there all along. If you think about the way that the very rich have always consumed goods, you’ll see this. The wealthy have never really bought into the idea of consuming mass-produced stuff en masse – they’ve always had everything important custom made-to-order – from their furniture to their homes to their suits.

What’s new, and what I think we’ve “found” in our book is that – thanks to new technologies, like the internet’s ability to connect producers directly to retailers, the advent of online configurators and new production methods – high quality custom goods are now affordable to the average person (and not just the super-rich) for the first time in history. Because this shift is so new, however, many companies haven’t yet embraced it or figured out how to do it right. Our point in the book is to provide a guide for how to do exactly this.

FTP: You also write about a shift from DIY (Do It Yourself) to CIY (Create It Yourself). What exactly do you mean by that?

EMILY: Before the Industrial Revolution, custom goods were actually the norm – even for the very poor -- because Americans did everything themselves, like cook their own dinners, make their own furniture and sew their own clothing. What’s new about today’s customization is that it isn’t Do-It-Yourself (DIY); it’s Create-It-Yourself, or what we like to call CIY. Create-It-Yourself is when you get to do all the fun parts related to making something new, like designing the flames emblazoned on the side of your Mustang or choosing the exact ingredients in your gluten-free nutrition bars, without having to do the hard work of stencil painting or wheatless cooking yourself. Using online configurators, consumers can now participate in the high-level design of their products without having to get their hands dirty.

FTP: Without revealing too much from your book: Where do you see the most critical failures companies make when implementing or maintaining an MC strategy?

ANTHONY: The number one problem that I see and hear about again and again when companies begin customizing is that they start off giving their customers too many choices. Just because you run a customizing company, and want to give your customers choices to match their exact needs, doesn’t mean that you need to offer a million different colors or sizes or whatever. Earlier this week, I spoke to an executive at Nike who told me that it’s actually Nike’s goal right now not to add more customization to its excellent custom sneakers platform, NikeID, but actually, rather, to make it “simpler.” When you give your customers too many choices, they can find it overwhelming and difficult to engage with. What’s more, from a business perspective, if you offer too many choices you can end up painting yourself into a corner financially.

FTP: And how do you think these shortcomings could be prevented?

ANTHONY: In Chapter Nine of the book, we outline the “Seven Lessons” for how to get customization right, which we derived from our interviews with the CEOs and founders of many of the world’s most successful customizing companies, including Vistaprint’s Robert Keane and Shutterfly’s Jeff Housenbold. I think all of these lessons are absolutely crucial, but – as implied by my previous answer – one of these lessons is that, even in the customizing model, a business should never give consumers too many choices. We give concrete details, examples and advice in this chapter about what exactly that means. Here’s just one basic example of limited choices in action: on the Ford Mustang Customizer website, consumers can choose from dozens of hood designs and paint jobs, but they don’t pick the materials used in the engine.

FTP: In your book you talk about the "automated expert". What do you mean by that?

EMILY: One of the most important technological developments that has made mass customization possible is the advent of online design tools – also known as “configurators” – which allow customers to go on websites and create their own products without needing the help of a human expert.

In the 20th century, one of the main reasons that customization was the preserve of the ultra-wealthy was that if you wanted to custom design something, you needed an expert at your elbow to help you turn your idea into real image. If, for example, you wanted to design a suit, you needed a tailor. If you wanted to design a ring, you needed a jeweller… and so on. Imagine, for example, trying to sketch your perfect suit or ring without expert help. For the vast majority of us, our basic drawing skills and lack of knowledge about how materials work would make this utterly impossible.

And human experts are expensive. But now, configurators allow even the non-expert consumer to go online and use automated tools to create-their-own suit or dress or jewelry or interior design – this list goes on and on – without needing an expert on hand. The configurator is, in essence, the affordable automated expert.

FTP: Can companies save themselves from some painful experiences if they read your book before acting? 

ANTHONY: Absolutely. Our lessons for how to customize identify pitfalls, like the problem with too much choice or the potential difficulty with choosing a price-point for your custom good, that are extremely easy to navigate once you know they’re there, but almost impossible to avoid if you don’t know about them. Honestly, I wish that someone had written this book seven years ago so that I could have read it before starting YouBar and avoided making so many of these costly mistakes myself in the first year of my business.

FTP: Where do you think mass customization is going? And what does still need to be done to make it an even more successful movement?

EMILY: In the next ten years, we are going to see a shift in what’s considered ‘normal’ in retail. In dozens of important industries, the ‘normal’ thing we buy is going to go from being a mass-produced item to being a made-to-order customized item.

The shift is actually already heavily underway in the auto industry, and its quickly coming in apparel, accessories and entertainment. For proof of this, you only have to look at the way young consumers – those under the age of 30 or so – are already buying things. Young consumers no longer see customization as a luxury in many parts of their lives, they just expect it. Instead of listening to entire mass-produced CDs, they tune into completely customized playlists care of iTunes or the popular custom radio station Pandora.

Instead of watching pre-set television channel line-ups, they watch on-demand digital recordings on Netflix and YouTube. Instead of driving identical cars -- like the Baby Boomers once did with their one-size-fits-all 1960s VW Beetles – they purchase custom, built-to-order Scions on the company’s customizing website. In fact, Scion isthe most popular car brand in America with buyers aged 18 to 27, and I’m sure this is because of its great, and affordable, customizing platform. If you look closely, there isn’t a single aspect of young consumerism that isn’t starting to be customized.

The Millennial generation gets custom dating recommendations from matchmaking websites, like Match.com, they have custom sneakers on our feet (from brands like Nike and Converse), custom sweatshirts on their backs, custom cases for their iPhones and custom newsfeeds from social networking sites like Facebook.

FTP: Is mass customization for everybody?

ANTHONY: Yes. There isn’t a single industry that won’t be transformed by the shift to customization within the next decade. Already, we’re seeing every major company – even the most classic mass-producers -- target their advertisements in customized, individualized ways online. This is the first large and important step towards thinking about consumers as unique individuals and not a single mass with homogenous tastes and values, as was the 20th century norm. 

FTP: Thank you both for this really insightful interview! 

[Book Review] Custom Nation: Why Customization Is the Future of Business and How to Profit From It

"Customization of products is one of the most important business trends of this decade!" We hear this a lot when asking business folks about their opinon on the mass customization market. And we wholeheartedly agree.

"Offering customized goods is mainly a technical question, your product is either suited or not, and if it is suited, there is not too much more to it than having the right production processes!" We hear that a lot, too. And, probably not much to your surprise, we have a really hard time agreeing here.

Starting a successful customization business or expanding an existing business onto the customization market is nothing to take lightly (unless you want to join the 20+% of mass customization businesses that vanished from the market relatively fast, as we found in our MC500 study). Having the right product is only one of several important aspects, amongst which some are really suited to ruin your business plan if you do not consider them beforehand. 

Thank god there are some good books about customization to help you get up to speed and avoid all the little (or big) obstacles on the path between your ideas and a successful MC venture. And another pretty good one has just joined their ranks!

Custom Nation: Why Customization Is the Future of Business and How to Profit From It

Anthony Flynn, Emily Flynn Vencat

Availible via Amazon Paperback or Amazon Kindle

 Coming from Youbars founder Anthony Flynn and business journalist Emily Flynn Vencat, "Custom Nation: Why Customization Is the Future of Business and How to Profit From It" brings some high quality information and expert insights in the form of a well-written, convenient to read book. 

Split into two parts the authors go in depth on the history and quirks of the customization market, their prediction for its future development and a lot of practical advise about how to start a successful customization venture, or roll out an expansion onto the customization market with your existing company. 

In my opinion this book is really worth reading if you are (planning to go) in the customization market. It is full of interesting insight with actual relevance and is easy and fun to read even for non-experts. My conclusion: Finally a kind of field-book and "how to do" approach that perfectly supplements the existing conceptual and academic texts.

Anthony Flynn and Emily Flynn Vencat also kindly agreed to participate in our series of MC&OI entrepreneurs! Please find the whole interview here!

A lot more information about the authors, their book and research can be found on their official website.

[Participate!] European Open Innovation Practitioner Program

Summary: Executive Masterclass and Consortial Benchmarking on Open Innovation for executive OI practitioners. Additional information and the full program can be found in the official program flyer (click to download) and on the official event website.

Implementing Open Innovation

In collaboration with RWTH Techonology and Innovation Management Group, NineSigma offers a unique practitioners program on open innovation. The program helps open innovation leaders to implement open innovation practices and capabilities within their organization, enabling them to boost their productivity of innovation. 

The program provides the first certified training for open innovation practitioners and is a unique combination of a master class and a consortial roadmap initiative that will provide value for the participating open innovation champions and their organizations.

As part of the course, participants will jointly develop a roadmap for implementation of open innovation. With relevant experts from companies, best practices are shared on key subjects using insights from academics, industry, and participating companies. The sessions are organized on location at one of the participating member companies.

The program targets corporate innovators who are actively involved in running Open Innovation practices at multinationals. To ensure exchange of experience from all participants, the required participants level is on the executive level in general (e.g. director level and higher).

The program consists of 4 full days workshops and lectures, 3 online webinar sessions of 1,5 hour and great opportunities for networking. The webinar sessions will be recorded for participants to be able to revisit. More information in the program brochure.

A registration form and all information can be obtained from Mrs. Diane Schepers at NineSigma Leuven by writing an email to schepers@ninesigma.com or on the official event website. All info is also here in the official program brochure.

[Market Watch] CowCrowd: Wear Your Friends On Customizable Wooden Tags

In conjunction with the MC2012 conference on mass customization in June we reported on CowCrowd,  a customization project by Viennese media agency cyLEDGE. Since our posting back then was in German only (as was the conference), here is what CowCrowd does. 

CowCrowd.com is an online configurator where users can create small wooden pendants with individual messages. These messages contain text or symbols and even photos, which can be uploaded an placed on the „cow tags“. As a special feature, users can directly connect to Facebook to engrave the profile pictures of their friends and family onto the tags.

cyLEDGE, being an innovative media agency, also does its best to make the project as customer-interactive as possible.  Users are invited to share their designs and use cases on Facebook to inspire others and spark new ideas. Via social networks the company stays in close contact with its fans and posts regularly on new infos and funny internet memes, most of them cow themed.

Now, part of being a customer-centric venture is to closely listen to customer wishes and to adapt one's own processes and portfolio to make the one individual happy that really counts: your client. Hence, for the holiday season CowCrowd created two new shapes to give the users more alternatives for their individual pendant. The new shapes are a Christmas tree for last minute presents and a simple round tag to meet the user's demands for more neutral forms than the classic „cow tags“.

Provided, when we first heard about CowCrowd, we were a bit hasitant about wearing a tag formed like a cow's head. However, when we got a chance to see and feel them live on the MC2012 conference, we were all charmed by their cuteness and surface quality. They certainly make a nice gift and there is no real risk in giving it a try yourself since the customizable pendants are available for under 5 EUR.

More about CowCrowd on the official project website. 

Interview with German handbag customizer Project OONA

Not long ago we reported about OpenRunway, a mass customization venture enabling customers to personalize women's shoes and handbags.

For those (female) readers who can not get enough of customized bags, here is another very neat company from Germany: Project OONA. 

Project OONA features a nicely done configurator which lets you customize most aspects of your bag, after selecting one from a number of base models. 

 

Maru Winnacker, CEO of Project OONA, kindly agreed to give us some insight into the venture, what makes it different and how she sees the future of mass customization. 

FTP: Maru, can you tell a bit more about Project OONA? What exactly are you offering?

MW: Project OONA is a brand development company offering customization of handbags online. On our website customers will be able to customize their handbag. They start out with a design from our collection and then choose from different types of colors, linings, materials, etc. 

FTP: Personalized (Hand-)Bags are not exactly a new idea. What sets your company apart from the competition in this field?

MW: I agree that "personalization", i.e. the imprint of names or signatures, of fashion items has been around for quite some time. However, offers are rare, seldom integrated and mostly provided by high margin luxury brands. One prominent example is "Mon Monogram" by Louis Vuitton. 

However, "customization" as a means of giving customers full access to the production decision is a new phenomenon. The production and distribution processes involved are quite complex and we are experiencing a steep learning curve. There is only a small group of competitors online, all of which for less than 24 months and non supported by a global player. 

We researched all available offers online. However, these websites target either a very young audience or the mass market. We strongly believe that consumers deserve a recognizable brand to engage with: A logo, a specific style, excellent materials and perfect quality. That's how we try to distinguish ourselves. We are also targeting a premium customer segment focusing on internationally traveled business women who have an elaborate sense of value.

FTP: So far you are offering bags of different kinds (including iPad cases) from fine leather. Are there any plans to expand your business in the foreseeable future? Do you plan on diversifying your portfolio?

MW: Yes, of course! We started with handbags and fine leather accessories. We will quickly introduce additional handbag styles and materials. In the medium term new business segments (e.g. travel bags) will be added. In the long run, you will certainly see us experimenting with other customizable fashion categories.

FTP: What are your current markets? Do you offer exclusively for German customers or is Project OONA a world wide venture?

MW: As mentioned, Project OONA has an international claim. We started our service in Austria and Germany due to our local home field advantage. We will soon launch our English website and start shipping within Europe.

FTP: Where do you see your venture five years from now?

MW: Five years from now is a long time. I hope to be selling worldwide by then, with 2 - 3 more fashion product categories.

FTP: Do you think that mass customization in general is a long-lasting new paradigm that will change the face of retail significantly? Or is it just another trend?

MW: If there has been a paradigm shift towards mass customization it has happened years ago! The automotive industry has been adapting to this for years. The fashion industry will need to adapt quickly due to increasing customer demands as well as complete product and product value transparency. There are a myriad of innovative experiments currently online (e.g. virtual reality measuring, affiliate marketing etc.) that should leave not customer demand unfulfilled. Why should a customer shop around when she can design her fashion item herself? It is easy to get hooked to this kind of luxury!

So yes! I strongly believe that mass customization in the fashion industry is here to stay. It offers huge potential both online and offline. It brings customers and retail closer together. And I also believe that the current divided on- and offline retail chains will merge into one channel soon. Customers should be able to choose online and pick up offline and vice versa. 

FTP: Are you currently recruiting or looking for partners? Who would you want to work with if given the choice?

MW: Currently we are looking for more software engineers. Anyone interested?

 FTP: Thank you very much for this interesting interview! Im looking forward to see your venture grow and become an established brand on its market.

[Interview] Joe Pine on Mass Customization, His Hands-On Workshop And His Newest Project

Last week we hinted you at a great series of hands-on workshops by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. Now we had the chance to get some of Joe Pine's precious time for a short yet insightful interview on Mass Customization, his workshops and what the new project he is working on right now.  

FTP: Joe, with Mass Customization being the business trend of the decade (at least!) there are a myriad of workshops by a lot of more or less qualified experts. While you are without doubt one of the best to learn from, can you go into detail a bit about what sets your workshop apart from the competition?

JP: My "How To Mass Customize Your Offerings" Workshop on May 30, 2013 -- the last of a series of six "how to" workshops my partner Jim Gilmore and I are doing -- is based on the ideas and frameworks that I have developed over the past 20 years since Mass Customization was first published. So one is this grounding in my core frameworks. The second differentiation is the how to part; it will be a workshop where participants (not attendees) actually get to wrestle with those frameworks and develop ideas for their own businesses. And finally, it will be solely focused on mass customizing goods; those who wish to mass customize services and especially experiences will also gain great value!

FTP: You are one of those with a hand on the pulse of MC-Development. Not to take away from your workshop of course, but are there any exciting new developments or trends that you can give our readers a little exclusive hint at?

JP: One new framework I have -- never published -- shows that mass customizing down to the individual, living, breathing customers is not the end goal! It's not just about serving markets of one, where every customer is his own market. No, we need to reach further and recognize that every customer is multiple markets. We need to recognize what market an individual customer -- and this applies especially to business customers -- is in before we can hope to mass customize to meet that customers' needs at this moment in time.

I also believe the rise of digital manufacturing in general and 3D printers in particular opens up huge new avenues for Mass Customization now and into the future, something I actually get into in my first workshop, How To Stage Engaging Digital Experiences, on December 6, 2012. 

FTP: You have been following the MC idea for a long time now. While the idea certainly evolved from a niche concept to a mass(!) movement, what do you think will the future hold for MC and its implications especially on the retail landscape?

JP: I fully believe that Mass Customization will be as important to 21st-century businesses as Mass Production was to 20th-century businesses. And if you think about the fact that Ford Motor Company did not pull everything together into the first Mass Production assembly line until October 1913, we still have long way to go! And one direction to go in is to bring Mass Customization into retail stores themselves, such as we already see with companies such as Build-A-Bear, Paris Miki, Lenscrafters, and the like. Absent that possibility, retailers need to put design tools into their stores to form the core of a design experience, such as done by Nike, adidas, Bloomingdales, and so forth.

FTP: You are well-known for a number of great books on MC. Are you, by chance, working on something new for those eagerly awaiting a new volume from your hands?

JP: But of course! I am always thinking and working on something new, and in this case it is working with my Infinite Possibility co-author, Kim Korn, who has developed some compelling insights and amazing frameworks around what management needs to become to meet today's corporate needs. As Mass Customization is supplanting Mass Production, we al2so need to supplant the old command-and-control ways of managing, yielding what Kim calls "regenerative managing," the goal of which is simple: to thrive indefinitely. 

Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Updated Agenda

Over the past weeks we have given a lot of updates on agenda and  speakers of this year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar. In case you just found out about our seminar and dont feel like reading through all these posts, here is a convenient update on what expects you on SCG 2012!

The MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012 is a unique opportunity for a deep dive into one of the most intriguing trends shaping our economy today: the move towards personalization and the customization of products, services, health care, mobility, and urban infrastructure. The seminar's foremost idea is to connect CEOs, new business developers, consultants, corpo-rate entrepreneurs, innovators, the investment community, and researchers from MIT and other leading institutions in peer-to-peer interactions to foster intense discussions and to co-create an agenda for the Personal Economy. This year’s event will kick off with keynote presentations by world-renowned representatives from consulting, academia and industry, followed by a number of sessions, each dealing with a specific field of customization, held by some of the most experienced experts. 

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's updated agenda here for information on all keynotes and sessions!

Some changes have taken place over the past weeks so if you have not checked for a while, consult the updated agenda above for all new content like Joe Pine's updated keynote speech on "The Multiverse: Finding the Next Opportunities in Mass Customization" or Marco Mattiacci agreeing to be our third keynote speaker!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Meet the Speakers: Fabrizio Salvador

Continuing our little mini series on speakers of this year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar, here is some more information on who will be there on stage to share his expert knowledge with you.

Fabrizio Salvador

Professor of Operations Management, Inst. de Empresa, Business School
Adjunct Professor, MIT-Zaragoza Logistics Program

Personal Website

Fabrizio Salvador is Professor of Operations Management at Instituto de Empresa Business School and an Adjunct Professor at the MIT-Zaragoza Logistics Program.

Fabrizio received a Ph.D in Operations Management from the University of Padova, where he also graduated in Industrial Engineering. His research focuses on how operation strategy and organizational design can support the simultaneous achievement of efficiency and flexibility. 

He has been investigating such topics as mass customization, concurrent product-process supply chain design and organization design to cope with input uncertainty. His research has been published in leading journals and he co-authored the book “Information Management for Mass Customization: connecting customer, front-end and back-end for fast and efficient personalization.”

Besides his academic appointments, he has worked with numerous companies, such as John Deere, Electrolux, DHL, IBM, etc. in addressing operational problems associated with customization and product proliferation.

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Meet the Speakers: Kent Larson

Continuing our little mini series on speakers of this year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar, here is some more information on who will be there on stage to share his expert knowledge with you.

Kent Larson

Director of Changing Places Research Group, MIT Media Lab
Head of House_n Research Consortium, MIT Dept. of Architecture

Personal Website

Kent Larson is the director of the Changing Places research group at the MIT Media Lab. He also runs the MIT House_n Research Consortium at the MIT Department of Architecture.

His current research focuses on strategies for creating responsive places of living using new design/fabrication strategies, defining system level standards for an open source approach to building design, new urban vehicles, and developing ubiquitous sensing/computation technologies that do useful things for people related to proactive health, energy conservation, personal mobility, and learning.

Larson practiced architecture for nineteen years in New York City with work published in Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Global Architecture, A+U, and Architectural Digest.  His book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks was selected as one of the Ten Best Books in Architecture 2000 by the New York Times Review of Books.

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Kendall Square Association to Become Co-Sponsoring Partner

The closer we get to this year's Smart Customization Seminar the more exciting news drop in from our team organizing the event. And the one we have today is really amazing: Kendall Square Association, the non-profit group working tirelessly to improve Kendall Square, where the MIT campus is located, for all residing entities, has agreed to co-sponsor the event and help to promote it amongst their members to get even more customization enthusiasts to participate in the seminar. We are really grateful for this tremendous support! 

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Meet the Speakers: Marvin Minsky

Continuing our little mini series on speakers ofthis year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar, here is some more information on who will be there on stage to share his expert knowledge with you.

Marvin Minsky

Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT
Professor of E.E.C.S., MIT 

Personal Website

Marvin Minsky has made many contributions to AI, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. In recent years he has worked chiefly on imparting to machines the human capacity for commonsense reasoning. 

His conception of human intellectual structure and function is presented in two books: The Emotion Machine and The Society of Mind (which is also the title of the course he teaches at MIT). He received the BA and PhD in mathematics at Harvard (1950) and Princeton (1954).

In 1951 he built the SNARC, the first neural network simulator. His other inventions include mechanical arms, hands and other robotic devices, the Confocal Scanning Microscope, the "Muse" synthesizer for musical variations (with E. Fredkin), and one of the first LOGO "turtles".

A professor with MIT’s Media Lab and AI Lab, he is a member of the NAS, NAE and Argentine NAS. In addition, he has received the ACM Turing Award, the MIT Killian Award, the Japan Prize, the IJCAI Research Excellence Award, the Rank Prize and the Robert Wood Prize for Optoelectronics, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal.

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Additional Keynote by Marco Mattiacci, President & CEO of Ferrari North America!

Truly great news! After we could already commit inernationally renown experts Joseph Pine and Alex Pentland to hold opening keynotes at this year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar, news just came in that we got another really exclusive speaker to share some insights with us!

Marco Mattiacci

President & CEO of Ferrari North America

Linkedin

 

Marco Mattiacci was appointed Chief Executive Office of Ferrari North America, Inc. in January 2010. He oversees the largest market of Ferrari, which beyond the US included Canada and all Central and South America.

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

Hands-on workshops from the authors of The Experience Economy, Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore

A great opportunity to broaden your horizon on experience staging is the upcoming series of hands-on workshops by  Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. They are personally hosting a How-To Workshop series of six sessions intended to skill you and your business around the powerful concepts of experience staging – outlining practical steps for accelerating the adoption of these ideas into your company. 

The How-To Workshop series features day-long sessions that will highlight content, facilitate exercises, and outline applications for you to go beyond the concepts and into real planning and tactics. And one of them is on Mass Customization!

Topics and are going to be:

• Workshop 1:  How To Think Innovatively About Experiences (and more) [NOV 13th 2012]
• Workshop 2:  How To Stage Engaging Digital Experiences [DEC 6th 2012]
• Workshop 3:  How To Theme Experiences [FEB 13th 2013]
• Workshop 4:  How To Create A Sense Of Place [APR 4th 2013]
• Workshop 5:  How To Direct Human Performances [MAY 2nd 2013]
• Workshop 6:  How To Mass Customize Your Offerings [MAY 30th 2013]

Much more information about the workshops as well as Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore can be found on the official website!

[Market Watch] Open Runway: A Women's Customization Paradise

Certainly, vendors offering individualized shoes and handbags are not a truly new concept. But some do it better than others, at the very least in terms of configurator-usability.

One such example is Open Runway, a company founded by Monika Desai, one of the strong members of the Boston mass customization community.  Open Runway lets you crate individual shoes (soon) and handbags (now) and have them manufactured from scratch.

The web-interface is, as said, really convinient to use. You pick one of several base models, represented as silhouettes, decide which material and color individual parts such as heels, trims, straps etc should be in and see the results of your decisions in realtime on your screen.

As you can tell from the two images below, the process of designing is fairly simple even for men. Manufacturing time is announced to be 8 weeks, but if you have the chance to get the shoe or handbag, you have always wanted, what is two more months? (even if we know from our research that a delivery time of two weeks really improves the turnover rate .. so here is room for improvement for Monika).

More about Open Runway on their website. I am curious to see how this develops and fits into teh recent trend of strong investments into custom fashion sites.

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Meet the Speakers: Kaustuv De Bisvas

Continuing our little mini series on speakers ofthis year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar, here is some more information on who will be there on stage to share his expert knowledge with you.

Kaustuv De Bisvas

Co-Founder & CEO / Sunglass.io
TED Fellow

Personal Website

Kaustuv De Biswas is a TED Fellow (2011) and Co-founder/CEO at Sunglass.io, a cloud based 3D design platform to collect and deliver micro-innovations through a low barrier and ubiquitous channel for designers across the globe.

His core expertise is in design computation and his PhD dissertation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology investigates computational frameworks for large distributed systems and the economics of collaboration.

Leveraging his expertise in technology, Kaustuv has previously been a consultant/advisor to several international architectural practices, and has been a research associate at Bentley Systems.

Kaustuv has also taught numerous workshops and seminars in leading universities/schools such as MIT, Harvard, Architectural Association (London), Columbia, and Georgia Tech introducing advanced computational techniques.

 

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Meet the Speakers: Jarmo Suominen

Following up on our last preview post in which we already geve away details about the keynote speakers ofthis year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar, here is some more information on who will be there on stage to share his expert knowledge with you.

Jarmo Suominen

Professor of Mass Customization / Aalto University Helsinki
Director of Future Home Institute  / Aalto University Helsink

Personal Website

 

Jarmo Suominen conducts Mass Customization research at the Aalto University A! (the former University of Art & Design), Helsinki, where he is a professor and the director of Future Home Research Institute. 

He is studying the engagement process and customer behavior within the interaction with high-interest and high-involvements products and goods.  By addressing the existing research paradigm from activity theory to behavioral sciences and product concept creation methodologies, Professor Suominen also develops further current design paradigms in architecture.

In addition to his position at Aalto University, he is the owner of Suominen Architect and has won numerous prizes in architectural competitions in Finland an in Europe.

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Meet the Speakers: Eric von Hippel

Following up on our last preview post in which we already geve away details about the keynote speakers ofthis year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar, here is some more information on who will be there on stage to share his expert knowledge with you.

Eric von Hippel

Professor of Technological Innovation in the MIT Sloan School of Management, Professor in MIT's Engineering Systems Division.

Personal Website

 

Eric von Hippel is a Professor of Management of Innovation and Engineering Systems at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

His research discovers and explores patterns in the sources of innovation and develops new processes to improve the “fuzzy front end” of the innovation process—the end where ideas for breakthrough new products and services are developed.

He is currently leading a major research project to discover how these user innovation communities work, and how and whether the same principles might extend to many areas of product and service development.

In addition, von Hippel is working with governmental and academic colleagues in the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom to develop new and modified governmental policies appropriate to the newly emerging innovation paradigm of user-centered innovation.

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

Lumographics: 3D Configurators in Mass Customization [Interview]

Seeing is believing. This old yet certainly often correct phrase describes one of the phenomena of human psychology: No matter how great your product is, no matter how well you describe it in text, one subpar image can ruin the entire impression and make your would-be customer decide against the purchase.

This is especially true when it comes to products for which buying decision is mainly based on aesthetics. Customers usually (more or less) instantly recognize what they like but are often bad at describing it with words - or transforming a product description into a mental picture of the product.

Mass customized products add to this by putting the "burden" of design into the customers hands, enabling him to decide which combination of design factors looks best - and, forcing him to do so.

 3D visualizations as part of a configurator is one option companies have to make life a bit easier for their clients and increase chances to sell a product. Well visulized products give an instant idea of what one will gain for his money and how it will change with different options selected. As with most configurator-related things, though: If it is being done the right way.

Since 3D modeling and the required software coding is certainly not easy, seeking professional help is usually a good idea. One such company to assist mass customization ventures in presenting their products in the right light is LumoGraphics.

Being in the business of professional-grade 3D configuration systems since 1998, the German company works for industry mayors such as Mercedes-Benz, helping them to visualize their line of buses in full 3D.

Marc Herling, CEO of LumoGraphics and speaker at the MC2012 conference in June, was kind enough to answer some of our questions about 3D modeling as a service, as a business model, as an enabler and how mass customization companies can profit from it.

FTP: Marc, your company Lumo Graphics offers completely individualized 3D products visualization, which is a good example for service customization. What kinds of services and products do you offer and how far can they be individualized to each client of yours?

MH: Lumo Graphics offers solutions for 3D visualization and configuration based on our standard platform LumoLogic. With LumoLogic users can combine their complex product structure and variants with the configuration logic and a real-time 3D visualization. Besides the services for project management and support Lumo Graphics also offers additional tools like LumoLogic DataPreparator for process integration and LumoVis as a 3D visualization engine.

FTP: Can you tell a bit about what you have in store for companies?

MH: Lumo Graphics works for a lot of customers especially in the complex B2B area. They all like the integrated and complete solution of Lumo Graphics with 3D visualization, configuration management and data integration. With Lumo Graphics companies can avoid failures in the implementation of a 3D configurator, because of our one stop shopping approach.

FTP: In your presentation at the MC2012 you used the term YGWYW (You Get What You Want), as an evolvement of the classical WYSIWYG (What You see Is What You Get). Can you tell more about how 3D imagery changes the product/buying experience for shoppers when using online configurators?

MH: It is widely known that seeing is believing. We also quite often talk about that an image is worth more than 1000 words. So if a customer decides for a complex and often expensive product he needs a qualitative decision support that is given by 3D visualization. Products are not only being sold by a rational decision process but quite often by an emotional aspect, especially in aesthetical design decisions. 3D visualization also helps customers to understand the overall possibilities of a product and its variants. So at the end the customer will get a compelling impression of its own product and forces a correct and a comprehensible decision.

FTP: Getting a really professional 3D visualization is most likely more expensive than having a photographer shooting my products. For which companies do you think these additional costs are outweighing by the added value of 3D imagination? In other words: For whom are the costs worth it?

MH: If a company sells products with no or only limited variants than it may be cheaper to hire a photograph. But in a case that your products have a lot of variants then it is impossible for a photographer to cover all of them in a given timeframe and budget. And you always need to wait until the product exists. With software like that of Lumo Graphics you will be able to manage thousands of variants and their graphical representation quite easily.

FTP: Do you think 3D product demonstration is especially suited for MC companies because of the fact that consumers (= non-professional designers) are integrated into the product design process?

MH: Absolutely. You have millions of possibilities for a 3D visualization especially in e-commerce. MC companies need to have a graphical representation of their products because it makes the customers decision so much easier. Why? In Mass customization the customers always have a fear of a wrong decision because the product does not exist before he orders it. So he does not know if it will work (Functional failures) and if it will look like he is expecting (Aesthetical failures). So the 3D visualization  assists the customer in his decision process.

FTP: Can you tell more about the (emotional) importance of presenting the consumer a more realistic image of what he’s going to buy?

MH: Think about dating sites or Facebook. Why does every user of these sites choose an excellent or a funny picture? The eye believes realistic pictures. And the pictures create involvement. It’s the same with product visualization. I want to buy the best looking and working product. If the visualization of a product is nearly perfect the involvement goes up!

FTP: Do you have figures or specific customer feedback on how implementing 3D visualizations improved sales or customer loyalty?

MH: Franz Rapp, Designer of Mercedes-Benz Buses told us: "We introduced the 3D interior configurator in order to give our customers reliable support in making decisions about our highly complex products. After well over 1000 successful consultations, we have demonstrated that we're right on track with Lumo Graphics".

Other customers told us that they reduced the failure rate and the cost of change by more than 20%.

FTP: How does cooperating with you work in practice?

MH: As I said before we are a solution company. So if a company identifies the need for 3D visualization we advise them based on our expertise and technology. After the decision for an implementation we need to find and prepare the product data (geometries, dependencies, and so on). In that step we also generate the 3D models and visualizations of all products parts. After that we install LumoLogic and build the rules for the real-time visualization. If the customer uses a configuration toolkit we integrate it. And of course we support the customer in all questions.

FTP: Pretended I was a medium sized MC company asking for assistance to set up a 3D configurator for my online store. Which services/products would you recommend to me and how would the process evolve from there?

MH: First of all you need to ask what kind of value do you expect from using a 3D configuration process. Will your product fit and do you have all the product data? Just a simple example. Would mymuesli.com sell so much more by using a 3D configurator?

If you think and believe that the 3D configurator will help you to get more revenue or to cut costs or to increase the efficiency of your processes, than we will advise the customer based on our solutions. And we also talk about the investment in Hard- and Software. If all checkings  generate a positive ROI than we will offer the customer the LumoLogic and LumoVis products.

FTP: How easy is it to maintain a 3D configurator in my online store?

MH: The main part in maintaining a 3D configurator is the administration of the product logic. So do I need to stay flexible to change parts in the product database or does it take long periods of time to get updated 3D models whenever I want to change something?

With LumoLogic we offer a very easy administration tool to combine product parts with 3D images and configuration rules.

FTP: Can you talk about business figures at all, how well-received are your services on the MC market?

MH: Depends on your definition of the MC market. We have a strong position at B2B MC companies that sell complex products. We don’t have such a strong position in the B2C segment of the market. But with our strategy we grow approx. 40% per year in the last years.

FTP: Do you have more traditional or mass customization companies, and how is the trend there?

MH: We serve nearly 100% traditional mass customization companies. By that we mean companies that sell traditional products but with the mass customization approach. But quite often they don’t name it Mass Customization.

FTP: Obviously most MC companies are still relying on classical 2D images for their product presentation, while rendered 3D models have been available since many years. Why, in your opinion, do they still hesitate to change to the third dimension?

MH: 3D has quite often not a good reputation because many people believe that it is complicated and expensive. But with the enormous boost for the 3D technology in the last years the use of 3D became very easy. And with the enormous boost in bandwidth we believe that the usage of 3D models in marketing and sales is going to increase.

FTP: What do you think of mass customization in general, will it be "just a trend" or become (one of) the major retail models of the future?

MH: Mass Customization is in the B2B Segment a huge part of the technical solution concept to deliver technical and design variants, so it is not a trend it is reality.

FTP: Having worked with MC companies before, which advice do you want to give to them, especially in regards to the importance of and proper setup of visual product presentation?

MH: Start small with only one product or product line but work on the process. 3D visualizations are only one part of the complete configuration process. The full configuration of the product is represented in a configuration management tool. But also look at a tool based administration for 3D visualization and use standard software. Also have in mind that you want to sell across more than one channel. Use 3D models for configuration and real-time visualization but CGI (computer generated images) for printed offers. With that you will be prepared fort he 3D configuration future.

FTP: Marc, thank you very much for these insights! I am looking forward to see more (MC) products being represented in a more realistic way, using professional 3D technology, in the future.

The MC Graveyard: Ideas that did not make it: Kidlandia strikes colors

Last week we gave a short insight into the work of personalized kid`s goods producer Kidlandia.

Unfortunately, it has just been announced on their website that October 22nd, 2012, has been the last day to order any of their products.

Sad truth appears to be that Kidlandia - like about 20% of startup companies that we analyzed as part of our MC500 study - could not establish itself well enough on the market to become a long-term success story.

This is perfect prove that a well-built configurator and a nice business idea alone are no guarantee for a successful mass customization venture. More factors play into it and, as we detailed in the MC500 study, solid knowledge about both these factors and their proper combination is key to make the difference between a good idea and a good business.

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Meet the Speakers: Edward S. Boyden

Following up on our last preview post in which we already geve away details about the keynote speakers ofthis year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar, here is some more information on who will be there on stage to share his expert knowledge with you.

Edward S. Boyden, Ph. D.

Benesse Career Development Professor of Research in Education

Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

MIT Media Lab

 

 

Ed Boyden is the Benesse Career Development Professor, and associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences, at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute, respectively.

He leads the Synthetic Neurobiology group, which develops tools for controlling and observing the dynamic circuits of the brain, and uses these neurotechnologies to understand how cognition and emotion arise from brain network operation, as well as to enable systematic repair of intractable brain disorders.

He was named to the "Top 35 Innovators Under the Age of 35" by Technology Review in 2006, and to the "Top 20 Brains Under Age 40" by Discover magazine in 2008. He has received the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, the Society for Neuroscience Research Award for Innovation in Neuroscience, the NSF CAREER Award, the Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, and the New York Stem Cell Robertson Investigator Award. In 2010, his work was recognized as the "Method of the Year" by the journal Nature Methods, and in 2011 he delivered a lecture on his lab's work at TED.

Boyden received his PhD in neurosciences from Stanford University as a Hertz Fellow, where he discovered that the molecular mechanisms used to store a memory are determined by the content to be learned. Before that, he received three degrees in electrical engineering and physics from MIT. He has contributed to over 250 peer-reviewed papers, current or pending patents, and articles, and has given over 140 invited talks on his work.

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Keynote Speakers

As promissed, here is some more information about this year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar. Today we can give details on  our esteemed keynote speakers, the well known Joseph B. Pine II and Alex Pentland.

B. Joseph Pine II, Strategic Horizons, LLP Internationally acclaimed author, speaker and management adivser. A visiting Scholar with the Design Lab at MIT, he co-founded Strategic Horizons LLP to help businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings.

Alex "Sandy" Pentland, MIT Media Lab Human Dynamics Group Professor Pentland is a pioneer in organizational engineering, mobile information systems, and computational social science. Pentland's research focus is on harnessing information flows and incentives within social networks, the big data revolution, and converting this technology into real-world ventures.

And of course there will be many more experts sharing their knowledge. Just stay tuned for more details over the next days!

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

[Interview] One Just One: Unique 3D Printed, Very Individual Jewelry by Generative Design

Sivam Krish, one of the veterans of the mass customization movement, is back with a new venture, building on generative design. HIs idea: a new toolkit to customize individualized jewelry.

This is not a new category In the old days, wealthy people went to their jeweler of choice and ordered a piece of earrings or such, matching their individual taste. With the concept of mass customization, customized jewelery has become a bit more affordable and accessible to "the masses". Usually, customization in this sector happens by picking a base model (online) and then changing materials, gems, color and so on. A number of high-profile startups have been busy in this domain.

Now, there is a new approach on the market, though. One Just One has just published their new concept on kickstarter where they hope to raise some investment capital to make their ideas reality. 

The idea sounds fairly interesting. Instead of altering a few numbers of typical base designs for a ring or a necklace, they apply a technology which they call gererative design to generate 3D printed jewelry which is as unique as possible: they only sell one piece of each variation. 

We were lucky to get Sivam Krish of One Just One to give us an online interview and tell more about the idea behind the venture and how it is different from the existing competition.

FTP: Sivam, can you give some general outline of what One Just One is, and why it stands out from competition?

SK: Ok, we are trying here to reverse the influenced of the industrial revolution - which commodotized products. Before that, ladies would go to a family jewellery and say I want something like that but made like this. The jewellery himself would have some prototype types in his mind. We call these prototypes genetic models - but they are computable models.

One of the great disadvantages in design is that there is no way to map design information except in terms of geometry color or texture. Genetic modeling allow us to map products parametrically - which then means we can map at a very high level as what people desire, so it is going to open up new possibilities.

We should be able to do what amazon does with books, in terms of not only what customers are likely to like, but be able to generate from previous purchase patterns designs that are they are more likely to like; that is, generate designs within the envelope of consumer preference.

Before mass production a wide variety of designs emerged from the craft tradition, and it evolved. Only mass production created a fetish about  a single representation of design. We take a genetic view of design - in that we look at designs as belonging to families, as biologist do.
 
FTP: Can you go a bit in depth about the technical side of the design process? Can the potential customer influence the design process? If so, how much?

SK: We think that designers have a new role. That is to create genetic representations of designs rather than a single instance of it. Once this representation is made, we use genoform to create 1000s of variations, but many of them may be not manufacturerable or desirable. We leave it to the designer to use their expert judgment and taste to set the bounds of variations.

The buyer then selects within such bounds. One just One is a designers brand - and we believe that a good part of design is about selection.Evolutionary biologist would agree with us here. So the role of the designer is critical here. But unlike before within a larger range of design possibilities buyers may choose according to their own taste.

We are not in favor of customers designing. The rest of the 3D printing community may be into that, but we are not. We belive that the next generation of designers have a role to give designs form and meaning but gentic form not static immutable form.
 
FTP: You are getting your starting capital through a kickstarter campaign. What are your plans for the future if the business model heads off?

SK: We have set a very small maximum amount of 3000$ and a maximum number of products to 400 - which we can meet. I am a great believer in lean bushiness model and not wish to subject this little venture to the trauma that capital brings. Yet we need to raise some amout of capital. The less investment we have the more we can share with out design community. Out intention is to make it the most attractive platform for the most enlighten and talented designers who are willing to take leaps that others cannot contemplate.

How we are going to do this, I really do not know.

FTP: Thanks a lot for the interview, Sivam! I am sure you do already have some ideas how to approach these rather ambitious goals and I am looking forward to keep our readers updated about its future development.

More Information about One Just One can be found on their official website as well as from their ongoing kickstarter campaign.

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Micro|Macro|Customization: From Custom Genes to the Personalized City

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For up-to-date information and registration please also head to http://scg.mit.edu
and follow our conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

European Commission is Funding Research on Mini Factories for Customized, Decentral Production

As part of the Factories of the Future Call, the European Commission is focusing on mini factories for customized products using local flexible production.

This is a topic that I have researched for a very long time, staring with a large research cluster during my old times at TU Munich (here some old paper: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-27367-0_27), and continuing with more recent research.

So it is very interesting that the EU Commission now also is taking up this topic and proactively is asking for proposals. In their call, they formulate future needs as follows:

Advanced production equipment and innovative systems are needed to enable ultra-fast and cost effective manufacturing of fully customised products on the spot and exactly at the required time. Innovative production solutions must be developed to bring manufacturing operations closer in time and space to the final customer. In addition, new factory concepts need to be developed like on-site factories or factories-in-a container, which provide instant manufacturing and customisation services in retail environments.

Those mini-factories, addressing adaptation to customer needs at or near the point of sales or use, will be characterised by fast ramp-up, small footprint and reusability, and will be easy to handle and to set-up. Those production systems should also include related new technologies for supply chain management, product distribution and direct end-user interaction.

 

The call expects project results to have the following impacts:

• Increased ability to rapidly follow the market dynamics by means of fast production and delivery of personalised final products.
• Reduction of the time to market by 50%.
• Cost reduction (around 30%) by decreasing lead times in product and process development.
• Set-up and ramp-up time reduction (around 30%) for new processes and plant designs of the mini-factories.

This is a really interesting field, and if anyone is searching for a scientific partner from a business school eager to join a consortium, please let us know :-)

Featured Companies from the MC500 (Part 19): Beaniebees: Custom Shirts, Sweatters, Ties, Bags...

In our series of postings introducing companies that performend very well in our Customization 500 study, we are introducing the next mass customizer. Remember:  The order of these feature postings is more or less randomly!

 

Today: Nice Idea, Slightly Limited Solution Space

Personalized fashion is a great way to express yourself. It's also very well suited to add a touch of "I really though about it" to any gift you give. And especially for children it's a good opportunity to break out of the usual spiderman-look.

Amongst others, German online-customizer Beaniebee has exactly that approach covered for you. Offering fairly easy personalization of everything from t-shirts for kids and adults, ties, sweathsirts, bags, even teddy bears.

Their easy to use configurator lets you place both custom text and images on your product of choice, however - and this is where I find the process to be lacking - the amount of images that they offer is relatively limited. There are some theme groups like animals, seasons and so on but each one has a fairly small number of actual images, and the ones availible are often not too creative.

Of course, you can upload your own photo to place on your child's new t-shirt. But from a technical point of view, their configuration space could have contained a little more diversity.

 
Note: Please see this post for detailed information on how to interpret the above data.

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Full Agenda and Additional Information Released

Wrapping up our previous posts and adding a lot of extra information about this year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar, the full agenda has just been approved for release! 

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Session 4: Making, Open Hardware, User Entrepreneurship

Conitnuing our little mini series on year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar's agenda,  it's all about user design and making, and the tools to be successful at it:

Session 4: December 4th, 3:45pm - 5:00pm
Making, Open Hardware, User Entrepreneurship

Designing and making is no longer only done by experts with years of training.

Many of the digital design tools that were once available to professionals are now in the hands of consumers. Desktop 3D printers are popping up everywhere, sophisticated design software is freely available online, and the boundary between physical and digital is quickly blurring.

What is being made by these non-experts? How are they designing and making it? What new design processes are we finding with such easily accessible design tools? From the bottom up – including start-ups, DIY fabricators and at-home designers; and from the top down – software behemoths and construction giants, we are seeing dramatic transformations in design technologies and platforms that enable mass customized products like never before.

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

Featured Companies from the MC500 (Part 18): Kidlandia: Mass Customization Conquering Your Kid's Room

In our series of postings introducing companies that performend very well in our Customization 500 study, we are introducing the next mass customizer. Remember:  The order of these feature postings is more or less randomly!

 

Today: Great Individualized Gifts for the Young Ones

It's the time of the year again: With christmas fastly approaching (hey, just 2 1/2 months left!) the usual question arises once again: What do I bring my little nephew/niece/grandchildren as a gift when I go visit them? Tough question if you are an adult and hence a bit out of the loop on what the kids do and dont like these days.

Kidlandia might have something in (online-)store for you if you refuse to buy the standard plastic hero or DVD: Nicely individualized stuff that will certainly stick out.

From mugs to puzzles, mousepads, posters and growth charts to even some comics featuring the famous Marvel heros: There is something in it for about every age and interest. I especially like the idea of their blanket configurator (which is also, technically, well done): After deciding for one of several pre-designed adventure-map themed blankets you are given the tools and freedom to customize it by adding, removing, repositioning, renaming (...) various (sea-)monsters and other typical elements from that adventure book your boy loves to read under his blanket.

Certainly an example of a nicely done configurator.

UPDATE: Kidlandia has just announced that today, October 22nd, 2012, is the last day to order any of their products. Sad truth appears to be that Kidlandia - like about 20% of startup companies that we analyzed as part of our study - could not establish itself well enough on the market to become a long-term success story.

This is perfect prove that a well-built configurator and a nice business idea alone are no guarantee for a successful mass customization venture. More factors play into it and, as we detailed in the MC500 study, solid knowledge about both these factors and their proper combination is key to make the difference between a good idea and a good business.

 
Note: Please see this post for detailed information on how to interpret the above data.

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Session 3: Personalized Cities

The new week starts with some news from the planing team of  this year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar. Today it's about a matter relevant for most people reading this blog: The city of the future:

Session 3: December 4th, 2:15pm - 3:30pm
Personalized Cities

In the future, cities will account for nearly 90% of global population growth, 80% of wealth creation, and 60% of total energy consumption.Developing better strategies for the creation of new cities is therefore a global imperative.

Our need to improve our understanding of cities, however, is pressed not only by the social relevance of urban environments, but also by the availability of new strategies for city-scale interventions that are enabled by emerging technologies, taking a holistic approach over all of a city’s functions – water, food, waste, transport, education, energy.

This session will explore new data-driven approaches to urban design and planning with the ultimate goal of a 100x reduction in CO2 emissions, a 10x reduction in traffic congestion, a 5x improvement in livability and a 2x improvement in creativity.

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Session 2: Digital Biology and Personalized Medicine

And here is another exclusive insight into the preparations of  this year's MIT Smart Customization Seminar's schedule and speakers! Today we tell a bit about session two:

Session 2: December 4th, 12:00pm - 1:15pm
Digital Biology and Personalized Medicine
Speaker: Ed Boyden, http://syntheticneurobiology.org/

Personalization and customization have a long-standing tradition in health care, where treatments and prescriptions have always been tailored to individual patients’ needs.

Over the last decade, further personalization efforts were made by offering customized implants and diagnostics that adapt to physical features of patients. New technologies will extend this much further by building on an individual’s genetic predispositions to better predict treatment outcomes.

In addition, selective control over specific areas of neural circuits for the first time enables a thorough analysis of how behavior patterns and experience come about. On the other hand, from a more practical perspective, those behavioral patterns and underlying neural circuits can be readjusted using advanced mental techniques, ensuring optimum performance in critical situations. In this session, we will explore both new technical developments as well as the surrounding ethical debate and its implications for technology.

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Session 1: Responsive Consumption from Personalized Hedonism to Sustainable Choice

As promissed we will share more details about this years MIT Smart Customization Seminar's schedule and speakers as they get ironed out. Today we can already give you a brief preview of the very first (non-keynote) session of the day:

Session 1: December 4th, 10:30am - 11:45am
Responsive Consumption from Personalized Hedonism to Sustainable Choice 

In this session we explore how personalization and customization is changing our understanding of consumer choice and behaviors. Consider the example of apparel: Over one-third of the value of textile industries is wasted on traditional mass production processes including warehousing, shipping, and retailing. Mass customization offers potential to not only reduce waste in back-end processes, but also to help consumers make more informed and sustainable decisions. At the same time, real-time data tracking and new devices for self-measuring are becoming the foundation of new business models and retail formats.

For more up-to-date information and registration please head to http://scg.mit.edu or follow the conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012: Micro|Macro|Customization: From Custom Genes to the Personalized City

This December will have a lot in store for the customization enthusiasts amongs you. The MIT Smart Customization Group will host another edition of the Smart Customization Seminar on December 4th (following a welcoming and networking event on December 3rd), with its central topic being

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

Micro|Macro|Customization

From Custom Genes to the Personalized City: Emerging Strategies and Technologies for the Personal Economy

The MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2012 provides a unique opportunity for a deep dive into one the largest trends shaping our economy today: the move towards personalization and the customization of products, services, health care, mobility, and urban infrastructures.

The seminar's foremost idea is to connect CEOs, new business developers, consultants, corporate entrepreneurs, innovators, the investment community, and leading researchers from MIT and other leading institutions in peer-to-peer interactions to foster an intense discussion and to co-create an agenda for the Personal Economy.

Conventionally, mass customization has been seen as the efficient creation of products and services meeting the demands of each individual customer. But this still emerging development on the micro level – the level of the individual firm-customer relationship – has recently been supplemented by a strong application of customization and personalization principles on the macro level. Enabled by new methods of imaging and analytic testing, personalized medicine is replacing the blockbuster approach that has dominated the health industry. Anonymous cities with mass scale infrastructures are getting personal by real-time data apps, personal mobility, and a stronger participation of citizens in the planning process. Mass production is being supplemented by a distributed and local infrastructure of digital manufacturing and open hardware.

These and other applications are strong drivers of disruptive innovation and value creation in many industries. We are at the advent of the Personal Economy that changes the dominant logic of business from a mass society characterized by homogeneous customer segments and mass production of products and services towards a value system that creates profit opportunities from the reality that all people are different.

The objective of the SCS 2012 is to educate and inspire critical thinking on the Personal Economy on the micro and macro level and to set an agenda for future debate and value creation in this domain. This event offers great networking opportunities for everyone interested in mass customization, personalization, and customer co-creation – inspired by the creative environment of MIT and the MIT Media Lab.

The presenters of the SCS 2012 will share their latest research and business insights of trends, strategies, business models and enabling technologies that are the foundations of profiting from personalization and customization on the micro and macro level.

The 2012 agenda will present divergent and complementary voices along four of the core areas where personalization today is shaping our economy and society most:  Consumables, Health Care and Medicine, Urban Living and the City, and the new production system based on digital technologies and easy access to hardware and data.

We will publish more information on the event, the agenda, its topics and speakers here as they become availible, so stay tuned!

You can download this year's Smart Customization Seminar's agenda here!

For up-to-date information and registration please also head to http://scg.mit.edu
and follow our conference twitter hashtag, #SCG12!

Symposium: Aktuelle Trends bei der Käuferansprache am POS, 25.10.2012, Frankfurt [Event in German]

[The following article refers to a conference in German language and is hence entirely in German, too]

Über den Kauf eines Produktes entscheidet der Kunde häufig erst am PoS. Auf dem markenartikel-Symposium zur viscom zeigen Ihnen namhafte Referenten auf, wie Sie sich am (realen und virtuellen) PoS über Innovationen Vorteile gegenüber Wettbewerbsprodukten verschaffen können.

Am ersten Messetag, 25. Oktober 2012, wird in sechs Vorträgen von 9:30 – 13:00 themenspezifisches Wissen praxisnah vermittelt. Themenschwerpunkte sind u.a. ‚Verkaufsimpulse durch Social Media’, ‚Veredelte Druckprodukte’ und ‚Sustainability’. Abgerundet wird das Symposium mit einem gemeinsamen Mittagessen und einem anschließenden (einstündigen) Rundgang über die viscom frankfurt 2012.

Erwartete Teilnehmerzahl: 80 – 100 Personen

Ausführliche Informationen zu Inhalten und organisatorischen Rahmenbedingungen finden Sie bitte hier!  

Interview: Glubal: A configurator for university-level education to solve the complexity of choice of study programs

Whether that be as a regular student, starting to dive into a chosen field of knowledge, or as a professional, taking the next career step by gaining additional skills, creating a matching a student`s very own situation of life  is very important.

However, there always have been a dis-connect: too many offers, and too much confusion. Since more than ten years, I am talking about the idea of an "education configurator".

Now this configurator finally came true.

Glubal wants to make flexible, individual university-level learning happen . The venture is just about to go live with their online configuration system and represents an educational network, connected to an online configurator.

Very simply put, learning interests (to-be students, professionals seeking promotion etc) will be enabled to configure a list of academic programs by the means of the configurator frontend. The programs offered are provided by the universities and other education facilities connected to the glubal network. The opportunity to filter avilible offers to match one`s own life situation best sounds like a compelling idea in theory.

 

Glubal Configurator: Beta version. Click to enlarge

 

Professor Marc Drüner, glubal CEO and partner at trommsdorff & drüner consultants, kindly agreed to engage in an online interview and explain the concept in more detail.

FTP: Professor Drüner, first. Congratulations to this great idea and realization! You have created glubal as an intermediary to support a new kind of individual studying. Can you tell our readers a bit more about the concept behind glubal and what makes it unique?

MD: Our brand glubal stands for global university network. We provide an online platform (www.glubal.com ) making accredited study and training opportunities available online to students and business in collaboration with international universities.

The idea of glubal derives from the background of the Bologna Reform ten years ago. The establishment of the common credit point system (ECTS) and the three-cycle-degree (Bachelor, Master & Doctor) in Europe makes a more flexible and more international study possible.

As professor at the Steinbeis Hochschule Berlin for ten years and director of an international management consultancy, I have gained insights into economic as well as academic life. There is a problem on both sides: Even though the employment market demands increasing flexibility from employees and employers in terms of education and training, the current mainstream educational system is just too rigid for many people and does not support life-long learning. With glubal, we want to tailor study programs to people’s individual, unique lifestyles. This is the way to ensure a smooth entry into the jobs market and to guarantee chances of promotion by combining working with studying for a qualification.

glubal’s USPs are individuality, flexibility and internationality. The unique feature of our concept is the glubal study configurator (https://www.glubal.com/en/glubal-configurator ) . Dependent on a student’s personal requirements, fields of interest, personal budget and chosen method of study, every course component of our global university network can be combined flexibly and individually with other components from elsewhere to create a study program lasting as long as personal circumstances dictate. We ensure that the module combination selected by a student will lead to a recognized degree.

FTP: Do you consider glubal’s target group to be more the regular student, trying to go a more flexible way of studying or the “lifelong learner”, the professional aiming to get additional qualifications?

MD: There is no conflict between students and professionals for glubal in terms of the target group. Our service is aimed, above all, at graduates and employees interested in promotion. We also offer an attractive alternative for current students who need more flexibility and individuality in their study.

Besides potential students, companies and colleges can also benefit from our service. For companies, glubal offers not only a whole new way to access the talents of tomorrow, but also the connection to the university sector. For colleges and universities, we make it possible to take on a growing number of students, to fill more places on existing modules, to increase international brand recognition and improve access to business.

FTP: Establishing a network that allows to (more or less) freely combine courses from different universities and nations with each other sounds like a really challenging task, especially given the fact that the awarding of academic degrees is regulated by national law. How do you ensure compatibility between all these different modules?

MD: The given background of Bologna Reform I mentioned before is the corner stone of mutual recognition of credit points and academic degrees between colleges and universities in different countries. People have been working on a more transparent and compatible education system in the international context since more than ten years.

I think we have reasons to believe that this trend will carry on and evolve further in the future and that glubal will be able to promote this process. However, glubal will not interfere with the given administrative and approval processes for academic modules at our glubal partner universities. The degree-granting universities stay in the driver-seat and stay completely free to define, which modules of other universities they do accept under their given examination regulation.

FTP: The Bologna Process intended to do what could become a reality with glubal: Allow to study internationally, not just in your country, and in a way that works best for your interests. Yet, many politicians, academics and students say that the ideas of Bologna have not been implemented well enough to really work. What makes the glubal approach more promissing to achieve better results in comparison?

MD: Of course there are still dozens of problems to solve even after ten years reform, especially in terms of the compatibility between the qualities of modules in different universities. But you cannot deny that the mobility of students inside Europe has greatly increased at the Erasmus program for instance. We believe in the vision of a more tolerant education system in the future in the scope of Bologna Reform. With glubal as an educational initiative we would like to contribute to the process of harmonization between universities and help shaping a more flexible education system in the future.

FTP: The idea of highly customized academic learning is not new. Until today one of the great bottlenecks has been the lack of a well-designed configurator, allowing (future) students to select the right modules for their individual life situation and learning goal. Can you tell a bit about the process in which your clients will select their individual courses? Are they being guided or just presented with a configurator?

MD: We have been working the whole time on the more simplified and clearer configuration process. Basically, a student only needs to visit our online platform, choose his preferred subjects and other options in our configurator and he will get the suggested study combination from the system. Of course we also offer personal study consultancy through free hotline with our professional study advisor, who will accompany the applicants along the whole way of application.

Our first course begins this autumn and the application has already started. Our glubal team will do the best to cover the individual needs of our applicants. With the further expansion of our global university network, we will be able to offer even more flexible configurations in the future.

FTP: Developing a system that, if it works, could do a lot to make flexible life long learning a reality is certainly no easy process. Can you tell a bit about how you worked on designing the system? Did you work closely with students and lecturers to get an idea of what they really desire in a sort of customer co-creation?

MD: I am director of an international management consultancy and professor at the Steinbeis Hochschule Berlin for ten years. This kind of career combination enables the possibility to exchange opinions with students, lecturers and companies for me. I have realized that there are huge demands from both economy and academy in increasing flexibility of the education system. The idea of glubal derives exactly from these demands.

FTP: Studying for a master's degree takes about five years, often more. glubal is a private profit venture and as such is subject to the laws of the market. How can you guarantee that students will be able to complete their studies as planned in case of, say, glubal (or HighEd Solutions) becoming insolvent?

MD: glubal is an aggregator of studies and does not grand degrees. glubal students will enroll in and enter study contracts with the chosen universities, and earning real credit points as every other normal student. In this sense, they don’t carry any market risks in terms of the possible fluctuation of glubal’s profitability.

FTP: Can you tell about your network of educational institutions (universities, online course academies,...)? Which and how many partners does glubal have so far and where are they from, geographically?

MD: glubal stands for global university network. We have been in contact with universities from the USA, Great Britain, Australia, Turkey, France, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Chile and of course the so-called DACH countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). Many of them are already official members and many other have given very positive feedback. We are optimistic that our network will successfully expand to these regions. We have also planned the market entry in BRIC countries in the future, starting with Asia in 2013.

FTP: glubal offers scholarships as well. Can you tell a bit more about these?

MD: We have already announced the first three scholarship students for a bachelor’s, a master’s and a doctoral degree at one of our first partner universities, the Steinbeis School of Management in Berlin. With the growing membership of our university network, applicants can expect more attractive scholarships at glubal in the future.

FTP: What are your plans for the future? Where do you see glubal heading in the next 10 years and what do you think can (and should) still be improved about the system/process as it is right now? Can we expect more integrated services in glubal in the future?

MD: Like I mentioned before, we are now already active in many countries. The intention of internationalization will increase in the future. We have already planned the market entry in the BRIC countries (Brasil, Russia, India and China) in 2013. Of course there are still a lot to improve in every aspect, for example a bigger university network, more personalized configuration, more optimized platform usability and so on. The driving force in our team is to provide high quality education with unprecedented flexibility to all students of the world.

FTP: Professor Drüner, thank you very much for the insights into the concept on glubal. Much success!!

Build-A-Bear in Numbers: 110 million animals, $400 million sales, 8 new technologies in stores

In an extensive article in the NYT, Elizabeth Olson reports a number of interesting details on Build-A-Bear Workshop. This company is one of my favorite examples of mass customization, as it not just invented a new category and value preposition based on mass customization, but also is one of the premier examples of delivering process experience in an in-store environment.

Here are some interesting numbers on Build-A-Bear, according to the Ney York Times:

Corporate Data

• 1997 founded
• 110 million plush animals sold since it started
• 296 own stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, plus several franchise outlets abroad
• $394 million in revenue (2011), with a $17 million loss due to weak economy
• $7.8 million of advertising spending in 2011, and $2.7 million in first six months of 2012 

Customer demographics

• 8-year-old girl is core customer
• 30 percent of customers are boys
• 2-3 visits of average customer per year to create customized animal or to buy outfits.
• 500 lost bears are returned to kids every year as bar code allows a lost animal to be tracked and returned

New store concept

• 1st new store introduced this week in St Louis
• 2 years of development for new store layout, working with Adrienne Weiss Corporation, a Chicago advertising agency that was part of the original brand development
• Microsoft Kinect movement technology will allow customers to play games at large screen at the front by waving their hands in front of it 
• 8 new technology stations in each store will increase hands-on engagement New “love me” touch screen where child can choose a heart for his or her stuffed animal. Other new options include customized sound chip and scents like chocolate chip or cotton candy that can be embedded in the stuffed animal!!

Context:

My last article of Build A Bear's European Operations is here.

[Book Review] The Innovation Machine - a practice-focused way to implement a corporate innovation management system

Rolf Wentz has been a C-level manager and CEO in many large corporations, mainly in the field of FMCG. Today, he worrks as an active investor in start ups.We have the privilege to have him in our ranks of lecturers of practice at RWTH Aachen.

Dr. Wentz has been author of a successful German book on innovation management. Now, this book has been translated into English, in a new and updated version with plenty of case studies.

The Innovation Machine, by Dr. Rolf Wentz. Published by CreateSpace, 2012.

In order to launch successful innovations on a sustainable basis in frequent order, most companies have to transform themselves. What they need is an innovation management system whose components are consistent and, preferably, self-reinforcing. Vision, objectives, strategy, culture, process, structure & systems and competencies must be aligned.

In his book Rolf Wentz demonstrates how the world´s best innovators such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Toyota, Amazon, GE, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, BMW, 3M etc., which the author calls innovation machines, succeed at this. By means of various case studies and based on his own practical experience, Wentz describes how the use of the innovation management systems will make a company successful, and he lays out the change management to transform firms into innovation machines.

In doing this, he uses storytelling and the vivid language of a practitioner. The conclusions and main indicated actions at the end of each chapter plus worksheets and checklists support the practitioner in the implementation.

In an online interview, we asked Rolf Wentz some questions about his new book -- and innovation management in general.

FTP: Innovation as a critical element of any future-ready corporate strategy is not new to most companies. Likewise there is a large number of more or less useful books on that topic. What sets “The Innovation Machine” apart from the myriad of already existing innovation guides?

RW: "The Innovation Machine" differs from other books on innovation management in three major aspects: (1) I take a holistic view, i.e. do not only deal with some selective aspects of innovation management but cover all relevant components that make up the innovation management system such as vision, objectives, strategy; culture; process; structure & systems and competencies.

(2) The "Innovation Machine" makes use of a large number of extensive international case studies of top innovators in order to illustrate the key points about the innovation management system. Although the case studies of  U.S. companies still constitute the majority, the book also offers various case studies of European (Zara, Nestlé, BMW, SAP) and of Asian innovation champions (Sony, Toyota, Samsung, Hyundai).

(3) Based on my long experience working in leading managerial roles inside multinational companies like P&G, SC Johnson and Campbell´s, and now as a business angel, I focus on the practical challenges of innovation management.

FTP: In your book you demonstrate successful innovation based on cases like Apple, Google, Microsoft and other certainly successful but also rather large multinational corporations.  Are the implications drawn from these cases relevant (or, useful) for SME as well?

RW: Absolutely. Most of the implications such as those concerning vision, innovation objectives, innovation strategy, innovation culture, innovation process and innovation structure are also very relevant for SMEs which typically have limited innovation resources and, in particular, a limited innovation budget. 

Just to illustrate this by means of one example: major progress can be achieved by SMEs by e.g. starting a radical innovation effort with a tiny two-person team (e.g. one engineer, one commercial person) with the two team members being co-located and fully dedicated to the project. The required resources and budget will be manageable for a SME. There are only some few recommendations that, because of their more elevated cost, are more useful for larger corporations than SMES such as the acquisition of competencies via the acquisition of other companies.

FTP: How did you adopt your book from your earlier German boon into a new English edition?

RW: Although “The Innovation Machine” (in English) builds on the same conceptual foundation as “Die Innovationsmaschine” (in German) ,it hast been vastly updated and modified in some major aspects.

In particular, I have added a completely new chapter about innovation competencies (Chapter 11), majorly enriched the chapter on structure and systems for managing innovations (Chapter 10), and added many new case studies such as those of Amazon, BMW, Hyundai, IBM, Nestlé Nespresso, Samsung and Zara. Furthermore, I have added worksheets and checklists to many chapters in order to increase the value for the innovation practitioner.

FTP: Thank you! I hope that the book will sell well and, first of all, help many practicioners to become better innovation leaders.