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Recent Studies & Publications The Market for Open Innovation 2013: Completely new study on open innovation providers and platforms.
Praxishandbuch Technologietransfer: Innovative Methoden zum Transfer wissenschaftlicher Ergebnisse in die industrielle Anewndung
The Customization 500: Benchmarking 500 Co-Design Toolkits in MC BtoC eCommerce
Our German book on Open Innovation, Crowdsourcing and Customer Co-Creation. Reichwald & Piller: Interaktive Wertschoepfung
H. Chesbrough & F. Piller (Eds): Proceedings of the MCPC 2011: All slide sets, papers, and 15+ hours videos of the MCPC 2011!
Recent Awards and Recognitions
The past week were a highlight for every mass customization enthusiast as our colleagues from Aalborg University hosted this year's edition of the MCPC Conference. We were there, of course, and, as always, a lot of tweeting and image-sharing took place. We will post more about some hot topics of the conference within the next days. Until then, here are some great impressions and voices from attendees some of you might recognize...
Not too much new, but a nice summary of the field:
Source: ComputerScienceHub.orga>
World Conference on Mass Customization, Personalization, and Co-Creation Aalborg, Denmark February 4 - 7, 2014
News from the organizing team of the MCPC 2014 in Aalborg: Please observe that there is a deadline on November 29th for early registration to reduced price 500€ compared to full price 600€. At the conference web site www.mcpc2014.aau.dk, you will find the registration page with link to online registration.
The planning of the conference is currently going into further detail regarding keynote sessions, academic sessions, and industry sessions with demonstrations of successful business applications, practices, and insights. See the official website for further info.
Hope to see you in Aalborg in 2014!!
The market for 3d-printed goods has a lot of momentum these days. From the simplest of forms to entire houses and parts of space rockets and, unfortunately, even working guns, there appears to be few things that eager engineers can not print - or will not be able to print within the next years. One such thing that, intuitively, is hard to imagine as a physical object is business data.
However, German company MeliesArt from Duesseldorf is offering exactly that: 3d-printed business data, figures, numbers, in colored plastic or even silver-plated for the extra-positive revenue development "chart". In a way these sculptures are, besides nice to look at, another example of innovative mass customized products.
For some nice images and more details please see the official press release (in German language) or the following video: http://youtu.be/UfWiIh_tbN8
On November 21st & 22nd 2013 the “E-Commerce Forum 2020” in Athens will bring together entrepreneurs, pioneers and innovators to discuss e-commerce trends and to learn from experienced international speakers.
Under the patronage of seven institutions, the event is organized by Directions Publications S.A. and neoecommerce.gr, the leading blog for e-commerce in the Greek market.
The conference focusses on different trends in e-commerce that range from shopping clubs to new dialogue channels.
And mass customization will play an important role too. Paul Blazek, CEO of cyLEDGE Media - one of the leading agencies dealing with customization – will give some new insights in his keynote “Mass Customization - Creating Customer Value in E-Commerce” about how the integration of customers and their individual preferences can push the perceived value of products.
And Michael Bruck, CEO of Chocri, will talk about customizing chocolate and Coca-Cola.
The conference is addressed to everyone who has a passion for electronic commerce and innovation, to entrepreneurs of traditional trade and established brands.
Tickets for both days are still available here!
"Discontinuou Innovation", authored by Peter Augsdörfer (Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, Germany), John Bessant (University of Exeter, UK), Kathrin Möslein (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), Bettina von Stamm (Innovation Leadership Forum, UK) and Frank Piller (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) is based on the findings, issues and questions related to an ongoing decade-old research project named the Innovation Lab. The research project focuses on discontinuous innovation in more than thirteen countries, most of which are European, and provides useful insights into its different challenges.
It also raises several questions related to the subject, some of which are: how do firms pick up weak signals on emerging — and possibly radically different — innovation? What should firms do when these weak signals hit their “mainstream” process? What are the criteria for allocating resources to a strategic innovation project? What actions should firms take to avoid being left out by the “corporate immune system”? How should firms organize projects that often break existing rules and require new rules to be created?
This book attempts to provide answers to the above mentioned questions by gathering information from the research project and also from firms that have tried exploring various ideas, models and insights to tackle discontinuous innovation. Written in a simple and accessible manner, this book will be of interest to both practitioners and academics alike.
You can find an extensive sample chapter on the official website!
Contents:
3d printing has developed far beyond a trend by now. Potential applications are manifold, ranging from medical gear to entire houses. And now you can even have a detailed replica of yourself printed in a variety of sizes, a kind of 3D printed Mini-Me, to give it away to your friends or just place on your shelve to keep a memory of your young, energetic self for the decades to come.
In Germany, there are several companies offering this service. I used Doob, or Deep End Productions, located in Duesseldorf, Germany. Founded by Vladimir Puhalac and Torsten Bernasco Lisboa, the companys offers 3D photographs to everyone. While standard sizes go from 15 to 30 coms, you can also get a lifesize figure (for 15K Euro onwards, the 30cm version go for about 300 Euros).
All you have to do is to show up in their studio and be photographed from all sides, simultaniously, by a 50 cameras (this process is called Photogrammetry"). These pictures than are transferred into a 3D model, which then is hand-modelled into the final 3D file. This file then is placed on a standard 3D systems prototyoing machine that can print in full color.
The founders are coming from the medical field and have a strong background in 3d modelling. Their first company is providing replicas of ears, noses, and breasts to unfortunate patients who lost these bodyparts. With this background, they discovered the stereo litography, and developed a quite efficient procedure to develop your "doppelgänger". After the photograph, a 3D model is created that then is manually prepared for the final print. While the later procedure takes about 2 hours, I believe it can be brought down.
They now opened a first store in Duesseldorf, but plan to enter the US and Japanese market, too, within the next months.
The result is really stunning, and while I belive that in general people like to see themselves, it really is a great feeling to have yourself as a mini-figure. But also everyone else found this really cool.
This is why I believe that this kind of 3D printing service may become the killer application that makes 3D printing a mainstream business application:
So when you have the chance and like to experience a reall fun application of 3D printing, then get your doob, too.
Update: Here are some other posts about this technology and the picture taking:
- Captured Dimensions and Twinkind (similar services)
- Report about COKE Israel advertising campaign featuring Mini-figures
Our collegues of Fraunhofer IAO and University of Berkeley (Henry Chesbrough and sabine Brunswicker) have surveyed large firms in the US and in Europe about whether or not they actually practice open innovation. The results are very interesting. Here are some key findings:
There are hot news from our dear collegues at Aalborg University. Preparations for the MCPC 2014 Conference are going along and now you can start submitting your paper to the organizers, using the official submission system via Springer.
So, if you have some interesting research to contribute that fits into the conference's call for papers, follow the link and become part of a great event. Deadline for full paper submissions is September 15th 2013.
Best of luck and looking forward to meet you in Aalborg!
Earlier this year we posted about Big Shot Bikes, a company selling customized single-gear bikes. Now Matt Peterson, CEO of Big Shot Bikes, has informed us about his brand new project. As part of a kickstarter campaign the company is looking for backers to add customizable dutch style cruiser bikes to their portfolio.
We find these to look pretty sweet on concept pictures and would love to see these become a reality. So if you are looking into a new cruiser bike, stop by on their kickstarter page to back them and secure your own very individual new ride.
A little while ago, Austrian media specialist cyLEDGE
Media has released a new market analysis about product configurators and mass
customization. The Configurator Database Report 2013 is a status quo analysis of 900 international web-based product
configurators.
The Configurator Database (www.configurator-database.com) was opened in 2007 to give an overview about the world of product configuration. Since then it has been constantly extended and updated and thus grew to the largest collection of web-based customization tools. A lot of those entries were also used for our mc500 study.
Together with his team, Dr. Paul Blazek, CEO of cyLEDGE Media has now published the Configurator Database Report 2013, which contains information about all 900 mentioned configurators. Every configurator is listed with a full profile, including a screenshot and an evaluation of different criteria. Besides basic criteria like industry, product type or country, the report also contains data about visualization type, tutorial, support and social media usage.
“This report is the result of a long and ongoing journey to understand the future of customer and company relationships in the age of customized products and interactive communication”, says Paul Blazek.
The detailed evaluation of all collected data gives very interesting insights on the market of product configuration. A new approach is the examination of the usage of social media in connection with configurators. The analysis shows that more than two thirds of all companies running a configurator have a Facebook site and over the half uses Twitter. It also shows how this number varies according to different countries or industries. Nevertheless, when looking at the intensity of the usage there are a lot of unexploited potentials.
The Configurator Database Report gives a very extensive overview about the whole mass customization market. It is an excellent source to everyone who wants to start an own configurator business or wants to be informed about the fast-moving world of configurators.
The paperback version of the report is available on www.lulu.com. For a preview and further details visit www.configurator-database.com/report2013.
The MCPC 2014 organizers at Aalborg University have released a great lot of additional information about the next iteration of the most successful conference.
The MCPC Conference engages academics, business leaders, and consultants to participate and become engaged in fundamental discussions through a set of plenary presentations, workshops, discussion panels, and paper presentations. Continuing our tradition, we invite contributions from a wide range of specialists.
MCPC 2014 is looking for contributions in cutting-edge research, as well as insightful advances in industrial practice in key areas and invites you to submit your best work, addressing the listed conference topics. Proceedings from the MCPC 2014 conference will be published through Springer.
Draft Program
4th February (Tuesday) - Welcome party (at 19:00)
5th February (Wednesday) - Conference day 1
6th February (Thursday) - Conference day 2
7th February (Friday) - Industry tour
Important Dates
If you are interested (or know anybody potentially interested) in submitting a paper to the MCPC 2014, please find a the full call for papers with all details by following this link [ Click to Download MCPC2014 Call For Papers (PDF) ]!
We hope to see you at Aalorg in 2014 and will keep you updated on the latest developments and any important news on this channel!
Davis: It depends on what kind of company you are. I’ll boil it down to just PUMA and the wholesale channels because this is a landscape of your retail and wholesale channels; and obviously your wholesalers are partners and clients too. Secondly, the brand has to decide what is the balance between sales and marketing. So it’s a complicated dance to figure out, and there isn’t one right or wrong answer. Further, how do you get these channels to work in concert while still balancing the needs of marketing and brand? Making sure that all of these business interests—everything—work together and complement each other is much easier said than done.
Customers
don’t care or understand the internal conflicts. Nor should they.
Customers simply want what they want, which in our case is our product
and our brand experience. Customers don’t think in terms of business
units or channels. They think in terms of product and buying that
product as easily as possible.
Trying to find that multi-channel synergy is really, really hard because traditional brands like a PUMA or anybody of this size that has grown as a traditional wholesaler aren’t prepared for some of the changes happening in the retail world. Some of the rules for the last 60 or 70 years are breaking down. And what took decades to establish is now being broken down in months as the speed of the digital world is accelerating. Example: Rocket Internet. They are basically copying the Zappos model outside the U.S. and growing their business to billions in revenue in just a year or two, which is x-fold faster than Zappos, which was x-fold faster than traditional wholesale distribution. It’s jaw-dropping how fast everything is evolving, especially outside the U.S. What retail looks like in five or 10 years, who knows? But you’re seeing examples of companies trying to find their way in this marketplace. Some are doing well at it and some aren’t.
Embodee: Speaking of those challenges, how does your vision for e-commerce address them?
Davis: For PUMA specifically, we have to attack the market in a very focused way because the reality of our situation is that we can’t compete on price, meaning we can’t be the lowest price out in the market. That’s just kind of cutting ourselves off at the knees. Further, we don’t have the luxury of running a break-even business, meaning we can’t put all of our operating expenses toward overnight shipping and service. Yet, we are consistently compared to those digital players. But that is the reality we live within, and we have to find creative ways to be relevant.
So I try to look at where can we compete and compete effectively. One is product content. I believe we must have world-class PUMA information about our products (photography, copy, content, digital assets, etc.). We also should have the most comprehensive, user-friendly experience for shopping decision-making in the digital world.
We hope that our PUMA experience will be better than an Amazon’s “shop in shop” presentation for PUMA, and better than a Zappos, for example. Specifically, as a retailer we don’t have much control over the presentation of our products in our partners’ stores/marketplaces. We’re losing brand control, if you will. Search Google for “puma suede” and you will see the varying degrees of photography/presentation. Some good, some bad. Theoretically, we should be able to showcase our products in our store in the best lens possible, and we will aim to do this over the next few seasons.
One of our key strategies is product information management. We’ve spent a tremendous amount of effort and time over the last two years honing these skills internally. Unfortunately, it’s generally a behind-the-scenes kind of project. The only in-front-of-the scenes result of that is really the output of a website and customers interacting with that information.
But I believe that’s a cornerstone of our strategy. The other cornerstone is product selection. If we’re selling the same exact product as Amazon, and if they’re going to beat us on price and service and be comparable on product information, then we’re still going to lose. Probably nine times out of 10. But if we can create a product assortment, develop product awareness, product depth—whether its size, color or make of material—that’s different than what’s in the wholesale channel—then we have an area for competition and a reason for customers to come to our online store.
So between world class product content and offering a product selection that’s different or at least complementary to what is in other channels, that’s where we can play and immediately be competitive.
Embodee: How does mass customization fit in from your perspective?
Davis: When you start thinking about a diversified product strategy in terms of more SKUs, more colors, and more options, you start running into liability. Meaning, you have to front load cash flow to pay for inventory/product that might sit on shelves for weeks if not months before it’s purchased and your return on the investments is recouped. It’s the long-tail game. When you’re trying to keep your margins high and your turn ratios high, it’s a very difficult one to balance. Creating lots of inventory that sits on shelves all over the world is just basically money sitting there that can’t be allocated toward other business-enhancing projects. The turnaround time on product is probably a year lead time for some companies. That’s a long time to tie up money, especially when there’s no guarantee in the world of fashion.
You’re taking physical bets on what the trend or the style will be a year from now, and who knows whether Jay-Z comes out with a new record, Justin Timberlake does something, or Taylor Swift wears a pair of PUMAs in her video. It’s serendipity to some extent (or really good product placement—hah). So when I start thinking about those kinds of constraints I start to look at on-demand products. What’s better than being able to create something on demand and eliminate those upfront risks?
To develop products, colors and/or styles that may mean nothing to the customer a year from now, you end up with excess product. This is what happened in 2008 when we hit the recession and companies were left with shelves full of product which needed to be liquidated. The only way to push that amount of excess product is to flood the market and discount like crazy. That is not sustainable from a business perspective. So I start to look at on-demand or mass customization as a plausible solution for a company like PUMA, which answers a lot of our financial challenges. But it allows the consumer to dictate freely what he or she wants.
That’s liberating for a business owner and also creates desire from consumers, which gives us a great competitive advantage—provided we do something really cool for the brand, that’s PUMA-fied, that the consumers love. I see that as a pinnacle piece of our strategy going forward, and I think it will be so in the retail industry for years to come. Look at the entrants into this new paradigm: Threadless, Zazzle, NIKEiD, miadidas, New Balance, Timberland, Converse, etc. etc. The list grows every month. It’s happening in myriad industries as well, so it’s not just limited to footwear and t-shirts. More examples: Shutterfly, ForYourParty.com, L.L.Bean, the lists go on. Remember Dell Computers? Designing your own computer system was a breakthrough.
I’ll fully admit that PUMA is late to the game. We only recently launched PUMA Factory, our first crack at online customization. Currently, it’s live for the U.S. and Germany. We believe it’s still in “beta” stage, and over the next few months we will determine if we’re on the right track operationally as well as from a presentation point of view. The opportunities are amazing if we get the block and tackling done.
People pay a premium for customization. They expect to have to wait for it to be made, so the immediate gratification may not be there, but it’s still quick and it’s individually driven. Dare I say, a younger generation? They want to stand out, they want to be unique, and that’s just in the U.S. Once you start going global with these ideas, your ability to function with less risk—less cash flow volatility—it’s potential, it’s plausible. It could be fantastic on so many levels for the brand, like PUMA, as well as for the customer.
It still needs to be proven, but I think you’re seeing companies like the NIKEiDs of the world going this way. I think you’re seeing the Zazzles having done really well. Threadless. There are the big retailers trying to do it like H&M or even Zara. This is the way you can close that timeline to market. I think it’s the future—part of the future—of retail at least. I think it has to be.
Embodee: You mentioned young people. They have an expectation that they should be able to order on demand or customize because they’ve grown up with that option in other arenas. Almost everything they do is customized whether it’s music or pick your topic.
Davis: I completely agree. My nieces and nephews are in their late teens and they’ve never known anything different, and that’s only going to become more amplified globally. Their expectations will include the ability to customize as a standard, not an exception. It’s going to get to the point where everything is a showroom. You’re seeing stores go out of business because they try to overstock. I think they should be embracing the showroom aspect and let people customize. “Here are three basic colors in the store, buy them if you want, but if you want the new shiny toy—insert your product—in purple and chartreuse, order it customized and we’ll have it for you next week.”
The question is what companies are going to truly embrace that? If you’re buying a year ahead, you can support putting product on a boat and letting it ship from China to the U.S., and that takes six weeks. That’s all gone when you go to this model, you’re just speeding up the processing chain, but it is completely doable. This may be a reach, but Ford was the first to create the assembly line for cars. This was a drastic and radical step almost a 100 years ago. There is nothing stopping retailers, like PUMA, from making a radical shift in the production pipeline if it will not only solve a company’s cash/investment challenges but (even more importantly) satisfy the customer’s want and need.
I think there is an old adage that says something like, “The customer is always right…” This is truer now than ever in the world of customization.
The original interview and a lot more about embodee can also be found at the embodee website!
Continuing our mini-series on noteworthy research from around the world, today we feature new work by Johann Füller, Roland Schroll and Eric von Hippel who show that usersnot just are the source of most innovation, but also can create powerful brands
User Generated Brands and their Contribution to the Diffusion of User Innovations, by Johann Füller, Roland Schroll, Eric von Hippel
Published in: Research Policy, Volume 42, Issues 6–7, July–August 2013, Pages 1197–1209
Available on: ScienceDirect.com
(based on the abstract)
It has been argued that users can create innovations and also diffuse them peer-to-peer independent of support or involvement by producers: that “user-only” innovation systems can exist. It is known that users can be incented to innovate via benefits from in-house use.
But users’ incentives to invest in diffusion are much less clear: benefits that others might obtain from their innovation can be largely or entirely an externality for user innovators.
Of course, effective distribution of information products can be done near-costlessly via posting downloadable content – for example, software – on the Internet. However, potential adopters must still learn about the product and trust its qualities.
In producer systems, this aspect of diffusion is heavily supported via the creation of trusted brands. It has been shown that brands help to increase awareness, to communicate a product's benefits, and to reduce perceived risks of adoption. The development of brands by producers is traditionally seen as a very costly exercise – unlikely to be thought of as worthwhile by users who expect little or no benefits from the diffusion of their innovations to others.
In this paper the authors explore the creation of a strong and trusted brand by the Apache software community – and find it was created costlessly, as a side effect of normal community functioning. The authors think the costless creation of strong brands is an option that is generally available to user innovation communities. As they propose, it supports the existence of robust, user-only innovation systems by helping to solve the problem of low-cost diffusion of trusted user-developed innovations.
The OUI 2013 conference just started at the University of Brighton. Many of the core people from the community will be presenting their research here during the next three day.
While Joel West probably will cover the event much better than I do, here the entire conference in three graphs, as presented ny host Steve Flowers in the opening talk:
- Top and minor themes in the papers.
- Tags pro-duced from the titles
- The sociale network of topics