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Events & Workshops
Custom Education Programs on OI, MC and Innovation Management. Contact us for info!
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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...
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!!
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!
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!
We have just received this great announcement from our friends at Aalborg University:
The Mass Customization Research Group at Aalborg University is proud to announce the continuation of
World Conference on Mass Customization, Personalization, and Co-Creation
The MCPC 2014 conference will be held in Aalborg in Denmark February 4 - 7, 2014.
The conference web site is opened with further details. Please go to: www.mcpc2014.aau.dk
MCPC 2014 invites you to contribute to make this event unique. Besides the academic sessions, we call for more business oriented sessions too with demonstrations of successful business applications, practices, and insights. Since its beginning, there has been a good balance between practitioners and academics/researchers. We strive to connect MCPC thought leaders, entrepreneurs, technology developers, and researchers. We invite you to submit your ideas and encourage you to participate.
It is really great to see that Aalborg's MC enthusiasts have done such a great job at preparing MCPC2014 in such a short time! It will certainly be a great event (again).
A while ago we posted about the Hands On Workshop Series by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. From what we have been told the events have been great and very well received so far (not that there would be reason to expect anything else, given the hosts).
On May 30th there will be the 6th and last workshop in this series, focussing on the topic of "How to Mass Customize Your Offerings". Knowing you all, this might be pretty interesting to look into if you plan to be in the Minneapolis, MN, area at that time.
Here you can also find the official flyer with all relevant information. Enjoy!
In wenigen Wochen beginnt in Berlin die 16. Konferenz "Effizienter Staat" mit dem diesjährigen Motto: "Moderne Verwaltung: offen, vernetzt und effizient". Am zweiten Tag der Konferenz (16. Mai) findet parallel die 2. Open Government Data D-A-CH-LI-Konferenz (ODG) statt.
Neben vielen weiteren interessanten Referenten wird auch Prof. Dr. Frank T. Piller sprechen und sich der Frage widmen, ob Open Innovation in der öffentlichen Verwaltung als große Chance oder doch letztlich nur Utopie zu betrachten ist.
Das Gesamtprogramm beginnt am Mittwoch (15. Mai) um 9.00 Uhr im dbb forum berlin, Friedrichstraße 169-170 (Anfahrtsskizze unter www.effizienterstaat.eu), endet gegen 18.00 Uhr und wird am nächsten Tag um 9.00 Uhr fortgeführt (Ende gegen 17.15 Uhr).
Weitere Informationen zur Konferenz finden Sie bitte auf der offiziellen Website.
We have been reporting on the format of teh "Seeks Solution" conferences before. The idea is both simple and surprisingly effective: turn a scientific conference upside down: Skip the presentation of successful research and undertakings and focus, together, on what is really interesting for everybody: challenges yet unsolved.
The event in question is, of course, the by now fairly popular series of "Seek Solutions" conferences.
Since the first conference in Quebec, things have evolved and been refined. Christophe Deutsch of En Mode Solutions, the organization now planning and executing solution-seeking conferences in innovative hubs around the world, has kindly agreed to answer some of our questions on the concept, its evolution and the future - and how you can be part of it.
FTP: Christophe, your "seek solutions" program takes a slightly different approach to problem solving than usual. Can you explain in some brief words how it works and what makes it special?
CD: We have developed a 4-Step Process that has given, over the years, great results!
1 -Call for Problems: The promoter of the event asks his community to submit complex problems that defy the standard analyses of his experts in the field.
2 - Formulate Selected Problems: We help the promoter to select the problems most likely to garner interest at the event and to formulate them so that they can be more easily shared. An expert of the problem’s domain, called an ambassador in our case, is put in contact with the solution seeker. Just by asking some basic questions, the ambassador is able to help the solution seeker further define the problem and ensure that the description that will ultimately be posted on a web-based platform is sufficiently clear and broad.
3 - Disseminate to a wider community – Problem broadcast: We disseminate the problems to be addressed to a vast range of specialists in a variety of fields. They can provide a different outlook on the problems raised, ask preparatory questions and participate in the event. Broadcast is done through a web-based platform including as much information as possible, such as figures, references, or details of failed solutions.
Two strategies are employed during the problem-broadcast step. A general broadcasting approach ensures that everyone who thinks they could help has the opportunity to participate. A targeted broadcast to specialists based on expectations about what type of expertise might be relevant to a particular problem is also used in parallel.
4 – Seeking Solutions Events: The last step is what differentiates the Seeking Solutions approach from other open innovation techniques, because it involves a real event where non-virtual collaboration arises. Solution seekers and problem solvers come together during a full-day session to focus on the selected problems. Careful preparation is required to ensure maximum output from the event. The collaboration process is divided into three phases: i) divergence, ii) exploration, and iii) convergence. Our facilitation methods allow for significant and creative interaction with experts who are normally not part of the same networks, and take full advantage of the “cross-pollination” of brainpower effect.
You’ll be surprised to see that creative solutions have been found to your complex problems in environments completely different from your own.
FTP: From your website one can tell that you have been organizing a number of solution seeking conferences in the past. What did you learn from these? (How) did the concept evolve over time?
CD: The call for problems for the first event – Quebec Seeks Solutions (QSS) – was launched in June 2010. Ten problems were submitted by nine industrial companies from the Quebec City area. The problems were broadcasted online in early November 2010. On December 14, 2010, 175 people gathered at the Convention Centre in Quebec City to attend the first problem-solving conference (Quebec Seeks Solutions).
For this first event, the largest perceived gain was:
A second edition of Quebec Seeks Solutions took place in May 2012. Nine solution-seeking companies and 162 problem solvers participated in the two-day event. The outcomes were as good as the first edition with some very nice success stories as a bonus.
In June 2012, we conducted a workshop on the same basis at the ISPIM Conference in Barcelona, Spain. The process was slightly adapted to the duration of the event and the context of the conference. The workshop lasted less than two hours and the call for problems was for innovation management issues only. Thirteen problems were submitted and 5 were selected for the workshop. The solution seekers appreciated the experience even though it only gave them a preview of what could be achieved in a full-day event.
What we first learned so far is that the intellectual-property issues that our detractors raise are not a problem, mainly because the event in itself is an exploration where everybody feels free to contribute. Intellectual-property challenges typically arise "downstream" from this initial exploration.
Secondly, there is a real value in local open innovation. Some people say “Why connect locally when you can connect easily to the world nowadays?” The answer is simple. Because a combination of open innovation and collaboration on a local scale brings most of the benefits… without the potential inconvenience of cultural differences! Often the seeker and the solver need to engage in collaborative research activities to achieve the solution. Here, a regional conference offers much better opportunities than a worldwide web platform.
Finally, it’s the importance of the collaboration process in itself. The animation of such a conference cannot be done in a conventional manner. The animators have to be experimented with large groups and able to adapt depending on what happens.
Our approach is in constant evolution and we still experiment during each event. For example at some point in 2012, we tried a two days event in order to see if the evening could bring some special collaborations or new ideas. And in November this year, we will introduce a technology push through a technology platform that local R&D centers possess in our Quebec Seeks Solutions event. This may give ideas for new problems or technology transfer and generate even more results!
FTP: You have three new conferences planned for 2013, in June, September and November. Can you tell us a bit about these? What to expect? Any big changes?
CD: Yes, indeed, the Seeks Solutions approach is spreading around!
Several other events are in the midst for Canadian cities, industries and conferences! Stay tuned!
FTP: Pretending I was a company with a problem I would like to have solved. What do I do to profit from "seek solutions"?
CD: It’s very easy. You submit your problem to any upcoming event we have on our calendar at www.enmodesolutions.com/en or contact Yahya Baby ([email protected]) to discuss about holding your own event in your area.
FTP: In my understanding you are offering to organize problem solving conferences internationally, not only in Canada. How can communities or administrations contact you for talks about hosting a conference? How does the organizational process work?
CD: Yes our team is ready and eager to work a lot more overseas even though we are very busy as it is. The best way to engage into this process is to contact Yahya Baby via email [email protected] or by phone at 581-996-6778. Once we become involved, we help the promoters organizing a successful event every step of the way.
FPT: From your experiences so far, do you think that this and other forms of open problem solution concepts are already well-accepted? Do they work? Or: what needs still to be done to unleash their full potential?
CD: Open innovation and open problem solving approaches require a change of mindset to reach full potential. A change of mindset most often requires a pain or an enormous challenge to work it’s way. The current economical context in Europe and North America is a good enabler I would think! Because status quo is not an answer for anyone, in any type of industry and in any country right now!
Many problems that the companies are facing today are complex because they mix technical, environmental, social, and political issues. To face this growing complexity, classical problem-solving methodologies are no longer appropriate. The Seeking Solutions approach has the potential to address the complex challenges of the next decade and we believe that it can help us to migrate from a collection of intelligences to a real collective intelligence. The next step is to encourage more and more companies to try local open innovation and to convince local governments to support this movement.
FTP: Christophe, many thanks for these extensive insights into your visions. It will certainly be a plasure to be part of a future solution seeking event again and I wish you all the best for this venture!
If you are interested in more information about En Mode Solutions and the conference format - or want to get in touch about hosting a conference yourself - please see the official website.
Creating an open mindset for collaborative innovation: Dinner Networking & Co-Creation Event - 14 May 2013
The Eindhoven-Leuven-Aken (ELAT) region is one of the most powerful innovative and high tech regions in the world. Enlarge your network and get to know CEOs and Innovation Directors of this ELAT-region by learning about co-creation in an interactive way!
In a joint dinner-workshop event between several industry associations in the ELAT region, we will discuss different approaches to co-create with customers and users.
But beyond implementing some tools, successful co-creation demands a set of internal capabilities of your organization to transfer the external input into successful innovation.
We will hence also discuss how to create an open mindset for collaborative innovation yourself. Tuesday ,14 May 2013, 17:00 - 22:00 at C-Mine 10 bus 2, 3600 Genk, Belgium More: Official Website and Registration Form
Program
| 17.00 | Registration and reception |
| 17.20 | Welcome Wim Dries, Mayor, City of Genk |
| 17.30 | Find your personal innovation challenge Guided by Prof. Dr. Frank T. Piller |
| 18.30 | 3 way dinner |
| 18.50 | Strategic partnerships, the future of innovation Jos Pinte, Director Innovation, Agoria |
| 19.00 | BiELAT, who are we ? Rob Janssen, chairman, Foundation BiELAT |
| 19.30 | Success story of Future Sketching with ELAT partners Stephane Berghmans, R&D Manager, TE Connectivity |
| 20.00 | Co-creation, it is more than you think Prof. Dr. Frank T. Piller |
| 21.00 | Co-creation design challenge, All participants, guided by Prof. Dr. Frank T. Piller |
| 22.00 | End |
From 8th to 12th of April 2013, famous trade show HannoverMesse will take place in Hannover, Germany. Are you going to be there? Great! So will I.
The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will have a large exhibition stand in a prominent spot (hall 2, stand C24) and has invited my research group at RWTH Aachen University to join them. We will present the latest findings from our research project KUMAC which is being funded by the BMBF.
I will be there on Monday, 8th, during the afternoon. Of course, members of our project team will be present throughout the week. So if you are going to visit any the largest industry tradeshow of the world, make sure to stop by!
The objective of the KUMAC project is to develop new methods for mass customization providers in the German retail market. These methods support an increase in productivity and value creation potential of these retailers.
At HannoverMesse we will simulate the prototype of an interactive value-creation process in mass customization, using KUMAC technology to demonstrate its potential to increase both effectiveness and efficiency. In detail we will show and expain:
In February we posted our open letter about the sad fact that we could not organize and host this year's MCPC conference due to capacity constraints. Many of you have contacted me about alternative ways to keep the MCPC alive and today I am glad to announce that the Mass Customization Research Group at Aalborg University has commited to hosting the conference in 2014.
Below please find soem extracts from their announcement letter, including a call to feedback for everybody interested in actively participating in the shaping of this conference.
We are really glad that there is so much dedication to the project within the MC community and hope that MCPC will continue to be a corner stone of the international MC family.
Dear MC Community,
It was with some regret that we received the message from our good colleague Frank Piller and his hardworking team, that he and his organization for different reasons will not be able to arrange and host MCPC in 2013.
We, the Mass Customization Group at Aalborg University, have decided to get more engaged in the current process under certain conditions; therefore we address this formal letter to the MCPC community with support from Frank Piller and Mitchell Tseng.
First of all, Aalborg would be able, willing, and delighted to host the MCPC 2014 in Denmark on Feb 4-7, 2014 to offer the MC community a continuous place to meet and exchange ideas.
We believe that the biannual MCPC conference still has great value for MC researchers and practitioners and we owe our friends a lot of credit for the work done in previous MCPC conferences.
But changes are needed and we believe that this is also what Frank & Co are expressing with their message last week. ...
We will suggest a very simple way of organizing the future MCPC event, by forming 2 committees: (self-nominating):
The International Organizing Committee has the obligation to arrange each conference. This committee has at least 6 members, where 3 members are from the organization/research group hosting the upcoming event, 1 member from past organizer organization, and 1 member coming from the organization to be in charge of the next upcoming event. The members of The Organizing Committee are presented in the closing session of each MCPC conference as well as the location of next conference. The chair of the Organizer Committee is held by one of the 3 "hosting" members.
The International Scientific Committee has a minimum of 9 members, of who 2 members are from the hosting organization and the rest are representatives from the general MCPC community. The Scientific Committee is expected as advisory partner for the hosting organization in selections of topics, keynote speakers and themes for the upcoming MCPC, as well as the members will be asked as needed to assist as chair for sessions, reviewing, chair group of reviewers etc.
And we ask you to become involved:RESPONSE DEADLINE: 19th of APRIL
- Let us know whether you believe in a future global MCPC and the plan sketched above.
- If you would be interested in being a member of the Scientific Committee please let us know.
- If your organization would be interested in hosting the MCPC 2015 conference, please let us know.
Please send your response to: [email protected]
In case we are getting enough thumbs up, positive feedback, and candidates for the Scientific Committee, we will immediately start organizing the next MCPC and keep you informed
Mass Customization RESEARCH groupDepartment of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Aalborg University, Denmark, Kaj A. Joergensen, Thomas D. Brunoe, Stig B. Taps and Kjeld Nielsen
(In German for our German speaking readers: An invitation to the annual conference of our RWTH TIM Group. This year's topic: Busines Model Innovation)
Die Aachener Innovationsplattform ist einer der wichtigsten jährlichen Veranstaltung des Lehrstuhls für Technologie- und Innovationsmanagement (TIM) an der RWTH Aachen. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei der Erfahrungsaustausch unter erfahrenen Praktikern aus F&E, TIM, New Business Development und Strategie.
Die Veranstaltung findet im Rahmen des TIM-Expertenkreises an der RWTH Aachen statt, ein Zirkel leitender Manager und Experten im Innovationsmanagement meist großer globaler Unternehmen.
Die AIP 2013 wird ganz im Zeichen eines der relevantesten und zugleich herausforderndsten Themen einer sich schnell wandelnden Marktumwelt stehen: Neue innovative Geschäftsmodelle erkennen, erschließen und erfolgreich umsetzten.
Unternehmen müssen zunehmend über neue Möglichkeiten zur Erreichung der Unternehmensziele nachdenken und stellen dabei fest, dass das traditionelle Geschäftsfeld nicht mehr trägt. Neben Impulsvorträgen und Praxisbeispielen steht dabei wieder vor allem der persönliche Erfahrungsaustausch zwischen den Teilnehmern im Vordergrund.
Wir freuen uns, Sie im April zur 4. AIP in Aachen begrüßen zu dürfen! Auf der offiziellen Konferenzwebsite finden Sie ausführliche Informationen zu Inhalten, Speakern, Anmeldung und Organisatorischem.
Hinweis:
Aufgrund der hohen Relevanz des Themas bieten wir einem begrenzten Teilnehmerkreis die Möglichkeit, sich im Rahmen des RWTH Zertifikatskurses "Business Model Innovation" mit uns noch intensiver auf die spannende, aber planbare und systematisierbare Reise der Business Modell Innovation zu begeben und anhand aktueller Fallstudien und Good-Practice-Beispiele (aber auch der Analyse von Flopps und Mißerfolgen) ein Instrumentarium zu entwickeln, um erfolgreich die Prinzipien von Business Model Innovation anzuwenden.
Das erste von zwei Modulen findet parallel zur AIP 2013 vom 17.-19.04.2013 statt und beinhaltet den Besuch der Konferenz!
In case you participated at the last MCPC conference in San Francisco (Nov 2011), I believe you had, like me, a great conference experience. In fact, many of you already asked me about the next event.
Hence, I am really sorry to inform you that for personal and capacity reasons, we will be not able to organize and host the MCPC in 2013 at MIT.
Topping the great experience of MCPC 2011 in San Francisco would have been difficult and a lot of work, demanding capacity (time) that we as the original hosts and organizers do not have available any longer.
I am doing many exciting things in Europe and the U.S., but also have many commitments and responsibilities which do not give me the chance any longer to invest in the MCPC as I did in the past. The same holds true also for the core team of people at MIT and HKUST that were instrumental in doing this.
But I believe that this is not the end of the MCPC but just the beginning of more:
Mass customization now is at a transition point where we do not have to discuss it any longer, but just should practice it. This demands a different format of exchange in-between practitioners.
For this reason, we have established an exciting associate membership format for companies in the MIT Smart Customization Group at MIT Media Lab. We believe that such a consortium of trusted members, meeting 2-3 times a year at MIT or in a company, can provide a better way of exchanging experiences and learning from each other.
In case you are interested to join our MIT group, head here: http://scg.mit.edu/people/corporate-members
We will continue to have smaller events or seminars at MIT, and there are the established mini-conferences of the MCPC family and several upcoming special tracks in established conferences.
But I also strongly believe that a large MCPC-alike conference still makes sense!
Mitch Tseng and I are open for any research group that feels empowered and strong enough to do an academic-practice event similar to MCPC. I am happy to support this as far as I can (mainly with publicity), but be warned that this demands at least Euro 100K investment and about 1 person year full time capacity for preparations, the CfP, paper reviews and management, and event organizations (and we never made any profit with the MCPC as we wanted to keep this an affordable community event).
In case you have a realistic plan to host (and fully organize) this conference in the future, let us know – or just do it: We do not claim any ownership or exclusivity of mass customization events. In fact, it really should become more a community organized thing!
So even with a MCPC conference organized by my colleagues and me, I am looking forward to may exciting interactions and meetings.
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 [email protected]
(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 ...
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.
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 [email protected] or on the official event website. All info is also here in the official program brochure.
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.
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!
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
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!
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
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!
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!
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.
Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT
Professor of E.E.C.S., MIT
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!
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!
President & CEO of Ferrari North America
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!
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:
Much more information about the workshops as well as Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore can be found on the official website!
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.
Co-Founder & CEO / Sunglass.io
TED Fellow
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!
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.
Professor of Mass Customization / Aalto University Helsinki
Director of Future Home Institute / Aalto University Helsink
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!
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 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!
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.
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!
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.
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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. |
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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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
[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!
The International Conference on Mass Customization and Personalization
in Central Europe (MCP - CE 2012) is an affiliated conference to the MCPC conference series.
Organized for the fifth time, the biannual MCP-CE meeting would like to emphasize the role and importance of Customer Co-Creation that offers customers a chance to express their differences, and also an opportunity for innovations and new business models such as MC and open innovation platforms, for sharing designs and developments and benefits from the experiences of others.
International response has been great so far, with 45 papers from scholars of no less than 16 countries being submitted until today, many of them dealing with open innovation (40%) and customer co-creation. Organizers are looking forward to at least 60 participants, scientists, entrepreneurs and corporate managers, dedicated to the idea of mass customization and personalization. I am personally happy to support the event as a keynote speaker this year.
For more information on the conference, speakers, participants and booking please see the official conference website!
Unless you started following my blog just now, there is no way you could potentially have missed the announcements, special editions and features about the MC2012. This year's edition of the largest MC conference in German language, hosted by Dominik Walcher, Paul Blazek and myself, took place on 29th of June.
Despite the early time of day, the air already started to flicker from the upcoming heat of what promissed to be a really nice summer day at the marvellously desgined building of the University of Applied Sciences near edge of the Alp mountains in Salzburg, Austria.
About 150 professionals, researchers, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts from all parts of the mass customization landscape in the German experienced a tightly packed day dedicated to the opportunities of customer co-design.
And what a day it was! A buzzing audience followed the presentations of no less than 24 speakers, ranging from young entrepreneurs, telling the tale of their entrance into the MC market, global players and market leaders, giving insight into proven ways and tactics to profit from customer participation, to leading scholars, showing how latest research proves the concept of the integrated customer to be more than a trend.
To not only preach customer integration but actually live up to our words and integrate our conference participants beyond questions and one-on-one networking, we had a special feature in place. Werner Haring, founder and CEO of wallero.us, had contributed to the event's multi media experience by "installing" a social media wall right next to the stage.
This application was a real eye-catcher and various running gags were born during the course of the event - and you still can follow the #MCSalzburg hashtag for a report of the conference.
The day headed off with the introductory panel. After a hearty welcome by co-host Dominik Walcher, my research group's members Dr. Christoph Ihl and Thorsten Harzer outlined results from our research projects and demonstrated some of the numerical "magic" behind Mass Customization and Open Innovation and how it can be utilized to take the right decisions about mission-critical aspects that many companies do not even realize to be of great importance.
As an example: asked about the ideal number of customization options to offer in your configurator (solution space), would your answer have been: "As many as possible, since more choice equals happier customers!"? If your answer to this is "yes" then our latest resarch findings might offer some ways to improve your customer satisfaction.
Following Dominik Walcher's insight into the development and outcome of the MC500, our great study of the most important MC companies from around the world, I had the chance to present on the importance of customer integration and how companies of all sizes can profit from proper employment of the concept, as well as some new MC trends of the future.
Next on the agenda was the market panel in which Franz Blach (IDEO), Franz Hölzl (Kaindl) and Wolfgang Gruel (Daimler) gave really interesting and well-received insight how Open Innovation, individualization and co-creation have changed the way they are conducting their business and the ways they found to profit from it:
Next: the social media panel, moderated by Paul Blazek: For all those planning to integrate social media into their PR strategy as well, talks by Martina Partl and Clarissa Streichsbier of cyLEDGE were as insightful as Catharina van Delden's summary of her company innosabi's (unserAller, anybody?) work. Renate Gruber gave the finishing presentation about how her venture CupCakes made its way from a traditional food company onto the MC market:
During the lunch break, there was time to check the 20+ exhibitors. Some had even set up live demonstrations of their product offers, like Pasterie, supporting us with freshly made pasta or CowCrowd, demoing their lovely wooden pendants, individualized on-location with your own image and/or custom text.
Next: The start-up panel, hosted by MC-blogging colleague Heiko Vogelgesang (egoo.de). Here, Sabine Beck gave an amazing presentation about how her jewlery business Amoonic manages to mix pre-configured and individually customized rings and more in a great portfolio that every manager dreams about: produced entirely on demand, without any significant need for storage space or the risk of wasting materials.
Interestingly, their configurator is not even visible if you enter their website. At first (and actually second) glance you will not notice anything hinting at the possibility to customize a ring. The configuration options do become visible, however, once you have decided upon one of the preconfigured designs. These can then be individualized using a wide variety of options. Possible combinations of gold, silver and gems of all kinds range from 150 to 2.5 million Euro. Certainly something in this for everybody.
However, from my own testing I found it hard to even find out that you can individualize the rings. You have to actually select one before a respective button appears and that could be a serious usability drawback in my opinion as many potential customers might not even recognize the potential of the store. It does, however, explain why about 40% of their sales are actually preconfigured, non-customized rings. Anyways though, with the average customer leaving between 400-500 Euro in their shop, the concept will certainly be profitable - especially since there are very low fix costs.
Next up was Stickvogel, a promissing start-up which specialized in embroiding and etching all kinds of motives into all kinds of goods. Lately they teamed up with major retailer Butlers, offering custom stitching to customers in Butlers' shops. This B2B customization service concept will certainly be exciting to follow over the (hopefully) next years.
Closing presentation of this panel was helt by Carina Schichl and Tanja Sieder, representing their business for unique custom travel guides, Nectar&Pulse, based on insider tips by what they call "soulmates" rather than generalized all-round information. Locals give their best tips for tourists which are then, upon checking, transformed into nicely layouted guides. While this is certainly an interesting idea per se, the issue I see with it is that the product might not be easy to market. As Schichl and Sieder pointed out, their target group originally were younger people. Instead, most of their customers are 30+. While their choice of age clustering is certainly debatable (and lead to one of the mentioned running gags of this conference), this raises the question: do they actually have the right product for the right market? If their average customer's age is above what they expected, they would likely be well advised to adapt to a different kind of information and layout which fits the needs of this target group better.
Next up was the retail panel. Moderator Jochen Krisch (excitingcommerce) did an outstanding job leading through an exciting lineup of big names: Former Bundesliga-athlete Sven Renz showed how his product line of completely customized ski/sports shoes has blessed his company with a yearly growth of 20-50%. However, I expect there to be an even larger potential in this market, seeing how ErtlRenz still "only" sold 2400 pairs of shoe at their peak last year.
Claudia Kieserling, winner of this year's much-noticed Million-Dollar-Challenge by Zazzle, gave a short overview of individual shoe manufacturer selve, showing off some of the models availible to women around the world and giving some interesting insight upon questions from the audience. She especially stressed the importance of the customer's shopping experience, which should be more than just pushing a button and receiving a cardboard box.
A great final presenation in this block came from Max Kickinger. His soundbranding company is known for its work with some major companies like Porsche, Swarovski and many more. Commenting on a truly excellent video he explained how companies use clever sound branding to gain the consumers attention - often without him realizing to be guided towards the "right" shelve - and the checkout counter!
Following another networking break, the final panel of the day: The configurator panel, presented and moderated by Alexander Felfering of Graz University, had the technical side of customer integration covered.
Andreas Falkner (SIEMENS) spoke about the challenges of complex product configuration, especially where multiple dependencies between customizable factors are to be respected (a good example why companies should reffer to an expert instead of just trying to headjump into the MC market).
Marc Herling of Lumo Graphics demonstrated how the use of 3D-configurators can be a blessing for the consumer who can imagine the to-buy product way better than it would be the case with just some images. With more advanced configurators, he says, the concept of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) will more and more be replaced by YGWYW - You [actually] Get What You Want.
On the other hand, developing a really well working, appealing 3D-configurator takes a lot more than the amount of work it costs to "just" shoot said product images. Hence, as with so many cases of exploiting new technological opportunities, its a balancing act and might often not be profitable for small companies.
HYVE's Volker Bilgram was up next. In his "Toolkits for Gamification" speech he explained how and why the aspect of playing - adding features that make the process of configuring/buying a product more fun than just an annoying act of shopping - can contribute to a retailer's sales figures. Again: If done correctly!
To complete this panel, Klaus Pilsl of IndiValue spoke about web based configurators and their part in the customer's shopping experience. His company is about to launch a major new "configurator as a (web) service" -- something that has been tried for many years, but now finally may become true.
My personal conclusions of this year's MC2012:
(1) MC has great potential to significantly improve a company's sales figures and customer brand loyalty. However, to make it work successfully, more is needed than just to put up a fancy-looking configurator and then wait for clients.
Especially the dialog with the (potential) client is and will be even more important in the future, as more and more companies employ easily accessable social platforms like Facebook to communicate with their crowd. And a lot of both promissing start-ups and established companies could profit immensely from experienced coaching since, as Christoph Ihl had pointed out at the very beginning, even the right choice of customization options (not to be confused with as many options as possible!) can make or break your MC business.
(2) Mass Customization needs to be less outcome-driven and to be looked upon from a higher, more meta-perspective to develop it further. I believe we know a lot about nice and perhaps even profitable BtoC consumer products. But what about MC services that tackle some of our true global challenges?
(3) Finally, the German MC community really is a nice crowd of great individuals, very eager to collaborate, to share ideas and experiences, and to network!
Looking back on a fantastic conference I truly want to thank everybody who made this possible, may it be as a speaker or a guest, an exhibitor or supportive staff member. Special thanks do go to my dear co-hosts Paul Blazek and of course Dominik Walcher, who did an outstanding job organizing this large event with his team at Salzburg University!
Our major event of June, the MC2012 in Salzburg, Austria, was a great success. As you can see in my other wrap-up post, we had a tremendous amount of great speakers, presenting the latest and greatest in Mass Customization and Open innovation.
What I did not cover in great detail so far is the business workshop that has been helt by my fellow co-hosts, Dominik Walcher and Paul Blazek as part of the EU AlpineSpace Project ("Open Alps"), coordinated by ITG Salzburg.
Following an introductory overview of the development of MC, Dominik Walcher and Paul Blazek presented to and debated with the attending enthusiasts (the workshop was already fully booked ahead of time):
Following this tightly packed bundle of knowledge, participants were invited to apply the new insights to their very own fields of work in a small-group mentored workshop.
From the feedback we have gotten so far, the business workshop was as much of a success as the conference. We received a lot of positive comments and will be glad to offer workshops like this as open or on-request inhouse events in the future.
Last week I attended what might have been one of most profilic gathering of leading OI scholars in the last decade, the OI2012. In the halls of Imperial College 60 attendees from around the world listened to and vividly discussed the papers presented by the 34 plenary authors.
The conference was organized to prepare for a special issue of Research Policy, entitled “Open Innovation: New Insights and Evidence".
My dear collegue Joel West has covered the entire event in great detail on his blog so instead of repeating most of what he has already posted I recommend you head over there to read more about this really productive and colloquial event.
Overall, my impressions of this event:
- Finally, no one talks about "why to innovate openly" anymore, but it was all about "how". Especially the topic of governance of open innovation was really strongly there.
- The open innovation community is very much still focused on traditional forms of collaboration and networking. More recent, informal forms of collaboration do not really play a major role, and also the role of user innovators was not really strongly present at the event.
- We finally get much more empirical, large scale data on open innovation -- helping us to explain patterns and broader "promising practices" in the field.
- And on a personal side: The OI community is really a very nice group of scholars, and the four hosts, Henry Chesbrough, Joel West, Ammon Salter, and Wim Vanhaverbeke did a great job in preparing the conference and providing detailed feedback on each paper. A great and very much appreciated service!
What a week! After the great Open Innovation summit at the Imperial College in London, hosted by my dear colleague Prof. Joel West on Monday/ Tuesday and the TTC mid-term event on thursday, last Friday was the great day: The MC2012, greatest MC/OI conference in German language took place in Salzburg, Austria!
It was a wonderful event with a lot of members from the MC/OI "family", friends and experts from many fields of mass customization. And, of course, we were amongst them, too!
Accompanying Stefan Thallmaier (representing Leipzig Grad. School of Management in our cooperative research project KUMAC) and myself, our research group's members Dr. Christoph Ihl, Wolfgang Gruel, Thorsten Harzer, Evalotte Lindgens, Moritz Wellige and Christian Gülpen assembled at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg to speak, listen, network, and exchange on the latest and greatest in MC and UI.
Christoph Ihl, Wolfgang Gruel and Thorsten Harzer also contributed to the agenda, speaking about new findings from our MC/ OI research, the Customization 120 and how Daimler develops customized mobility services as a new offering.
More about their presentations and, of course, the entire conference will follow in another post really soon -- so stay tuned!
Few weeks ago I wrote about the then-upcoming mid-term even of the Top Technology Cluster, an initiative started by companies and institutions from the Euregio Meuse-Rheine to foster cross-border colaboration between SMEs (and potentially additional larger consortia partners).
Last friday the event headed off here in Aachen. About 130 participants representing companies, academia and NGOs from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany came together to follow the presentations which were charmingly moderated by Simone van Trier.
After the official welcome and interoducing words by our city's mayor, Marcel Philipp, my dear guest Prof. Joel West gave a comprehensive overview over the term "Open Innovation", it's roots and implications.
Following his presentation I helt my own talk about how OI can impact the research and development opportunities of SME and help them to discover completely new solutions to problems they might have never been able to solve without the crowd.
The first block was completed by Jingshu Du's discussion of the impact of OI on SMEs in the Euregio.
In the following interview that Simone van Trier conducted with AGIT representative Ralf Meyer and Theo Hommels from the Industriebank LIOF it became obvious which great opportunities the TTC initiative offers to SME in the Euregio.
Companies having promissing ideas for cooperative business and research but lacking sufficient funds to kick off can apply for innovation vouchers, worth 5.000 Euro each. Furthermore, more though-out consortial cooperation projects can receive grants up to 250.000 Euro under the Bordercrossing Cluster Stimulus program.
Walking the talk, two innovative companies were awarded the very first two vouchers live on stage.
After a short refreshment break we headed into the second part of the conference. Five innovative companies from the Euregio each got 10 minutes on-stage to present their business and it's revolutionary idea as well as problems they are facing in bringing the product to market.
These five managers (Jeroen Rondeel, Pulseform, Rolf Call, Irmato Industrial Solutions, Edwin Currie, Kriya Materials, Ulrich Wirtz, WSE ltd. and Dirk De Keukeleere, AnSem) then assembled on stage to get into a lively discussion with Simone van Trier and the audience.
During this debate it came across that many companies do already use OI to support their business growth (even though they do not necessarily recognize that there is an actual term, OI, for their activities).
However, one issue entrepreneurs are often facing appears to be the cultural differences between people in the three neighbouring countries. While these can be overcome in most cases, language and different levels of openness towards new, external cooperation proposals do at least cause a certain delay and require dedicated work before would-be partners can actually dive into the core materia of their potential common venture.
The TTC vouchers and grants have been seen as a great help to get some new initiatives started and up to speed. The combination of the easier to get vouchers, fostering research of possibilities, and the actually incubating stimulus grant are perceived as an incentive and support to look into new possibilities cross-border.
Overall it was a successful, very nice event in a familiar atmosphere. Despite the unusually sunny weather and the heat that came with it, many good and interesting points were debated with a cold head and in the concluding get-together, lots of new contacts were made, opinions exchanged and new ventures discussed.
I am certainly looking forward to the next TTC event and to see how the program will develop until then. If you happen to work for an SME in the Euregio, the TTC website might be worth to stop by for you for further information.
Today's expert workshop marks the beginning of the MC2012, largest OI and MC conference in German language. If you have been following my tweets and posts over the past weeks you can tell that we are all really excited about this event, and from the registrations we can tell that we are by far not the only ones.
This year we will be more than glad to welcome MC/ OI enthusiasts from the most different of branches, all coming together in Salzburg to speak, listen, discuss, learn, teach and network. Amongst our guests this year will be the following companies and institutions (alphabetical order):
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We are looking forward to a really great conference with all of you who will be there. And those who can not attend this time, worry not: I will give an overview over the MC2012 here within the next days.
Here another preview of our exhibitors at this year's edition of the MC2012, the upcoming German language conference on mass customization and co-creation.
Since the conference will be entirely in German language, so will be this post.
Neben der eigentlichen Konferenz und dem Expertenworkshop bietet die MC-Conference Unternehmen die Möglichkeit, ihre innovativen Konzepte einer breiten Fachöffentlichkeit zu präsentieren. In den Räumlichkeiten der FH Salzburg stehen dafür großzügige Räumlichkeiten zur Verfügung, in denen wir auch in diesem Jahr wieder eine Reihe interessanter Aussteller begrüßen dürfen.
Für alle, die sich immer schon gewünscht haben, ihr soziales Netzwerk auch in der "wirklichen Welt" repräsentieren zu können, haben wir in diesem Jahr ein besonders interaktives Angebot. Die Wiener Agentur cyLEDGE wird im Ausstellungsbereich eines ihrer gewohnt innovativen Projekte vorstellen: CowCrowd, eine Möglichkeit, die Brücke zwischen virtueller und realer Welt zu schlagen, und das natürliche Bedürfnis nach Individualität mit Vorzügen des Online-Networking zu verbinden.
Im sozialen Netzwerk der Wahl ist man mit seinen engsten Freunden mittlerweile ständig vernetzt, Verbindungen sind für (fast) alle Nutzer jederzeit sichtbar, neue Bekanntschaften ergeben sich nach dem "ich-kenne-jemanden-der-jemand-kennt" Prinzip beinahe von allein.
Doch was, wenn man den Computer ausschaltet, das Netz verlässt? Ohne das digitale Frontend verliert sich der Kontakt schnell. Und wenn man nicht sieht, wer wen kennt, kann das der Kontaktfindung nur abträglich sein.
cyLEDGEs einfache aber geniale Idee: wenn man schon den Computer zurück lassen muss, sollen wenigstens die besten Freunde mitkommen. In Form wunderschöner Anhänger aus hochwertigem (und fair biologisch gewirtschafteten) Holz in der Silhouette eines sympathischen Kuhkopfes ("CowTag"), mit individuellen Bildern der (virtuellen) Bekannten zu einmaligen kleinen Kunstwerken veredelt.
Die Transformation von Bits und Bites zur Realität übernimmt dabei der Laserschneider. Auf der CowCrowd Website lassen sich die CowTags ganz einfach gestalten. Neben dem manuellen Hochladen von Bildern können auch individueller Text und eine Vielzahl lustiger Symbole auf dem Anhänger frei platziert, verschoben, skaliert und gedreht werden.
Besonders innovativ dabei: auf Wunsch verbindet sich der Konfigurator mit dem eigenen sozialen Netzwerk und lässt den Nutzer die Bilder seiner Freunde direkt von dort aus übernehmen.
In wenigen Minuten entsteht so ein ganz persönliches Schmuckstück, mit dem sich von der Zugehörigkeit zum Sportverein bis zur ewigen Liebe zum Partner alles ausdrücken lässt.
Wenn das Konzept in der Realität den Erfolg hat, den die Idee verspricht, werden sich vielleicht bald ganz neue Bekanntschaften schließen, in der realen Welt, der CowCrowd.
cyLEDGE und viele weitere spannende Aussteller präsentieren sich auf der MC2012. Mehr zu Ausstellung, Workshop und Konferenz auf der offiziellen Konferenzwebsite.
Three day left and counting: June 28th our major event of this month, the MC2012, largest conference on Mass Customization and Open Innovation in German language, will head off with the - already sold out - business workshop. There are still tickets left for the conference/ exhibition on friday, though! So if you are going to be in (or near) Austria on the 29th of this month, get your reservation here and meet us in Salzburg!
We would also be glad to exchange with you on all topics MC and OI via the official conference Facebook page!
And even if you can not come visit us in person you can still stay in the loop by following @MCSalzburg, the offical conference Twitter account.
Looking forward to see you on the MC2012!
Another interesting contest by German technology major Siemens: The Siemens Student Award 2012 has just headed off.
Siemens has a tradition of trying to find solutions for major problems that our society is already or might be facing soon. These are usually questions concerning the entirety of the global population, like identifying sustainable resources or how the city of the future could be more resource efficient. With this global relevance in mind it is obviously a good idea to have those concerned participate in the finding of a solution.
One such attempt to create new, future-ready concepts for our planet is the Siemens Student Award, a crowdsourced idea contest to find and discuss new thoughts to solve old (yet relevant than never) questions by the help of students.
After two very successful iterations in the Middle East and Brasil, where a total of nearly 12.000 registered users gave input on and discussed over 1.000 unique ideas, this year Siemens has decided to put the focus of their third contest, realized in cooperation with German crowdsourcing expert HYVE, on its country of origin, Germany.
From now on until the 15th of July, students enrolled in German universities are invited to take on the challenge to find answers to one of the most pressing issues of our times:
How to upgrade our aging infrastructure to help create a zero emission society?
Urban infrastructures, factories, buildings and networks do not meet the energy efficiency needs of the future. How would you design creative and innovative solutions to meet these challenges?
The entire contest is hosted on a dedicated contest website where all ideas can be submitted, reviewed, commented and discussed by the community. Siemens experts will pick the best 10 ideas who's creators will be invited to present their concepts infront of a jury at the award ceremony in Berlin, Germany.
Prizes for the three winners are really generous: 20.000, 10.000 and 5.000 Euro for places 1,2 and 3, respectively. Furthermore, these contests are usually a great opportunity to impress the human resources department and maybe get one of the much sought-after internships or trainee positions at Siemens...
All details about the contest can be found on the official website.
Here another preview of our exhibitors at this year's edition of the MC2012, the upcoming German language conference on mass customization and co-creation.
Since the conference will be entirely in German language, so will be this post.
Neben der eigentlichen Konferenz und dem Expertenworkshop bietet die MC-Conference Unternehmen die Möglichkeit, ihre innovativen Konzepte einer breiten Fachöffentlichkeit zu präsentieren. In den Räumlichkeiten der FH Salzburg stehen dafür großzügige Räumlichkeiten zur Verfügung, in denen wir auch in diesem Jahr wieder eine Reihe interessanter Aussteller begrüßen dürfen.
Besonders freuen wir uns über den Besuch der Münchener Innovationsagentur HYVE, die die Konferenz neben einem Vortrag zum Thema "Toolkits with Gamification" auch um eine eigene Ausstellung zu Kundeninteraktionssystemen bereichern wird.
HYVE unterstützt seit nunmehr 12 Jahren Unternehmen unterschiedlichster Branchen dabei, neue Lösungsansätze und Innovationsideen zu finden, in Worten greifbar zu machen, weiterzuentwickeln und in reale Produkte zu verwandeln.
Dabei ist der Name Programm: Hyve bedeutet Bienenstock und kaum ein Wort charakterisiert die größte Ideenbörse der Welt treffender als dieses. Das Internet vernetzt nicht nur Computer, es verbindet Menschen. Menschen mit Träumen, Wissen und konkreten Ideen zu allen nur erdenklichen Lebens- und damit Geschäftsfeldern. Die Chancen stehen also gut, dass die Lösung vieler Probleme, die Ihrem Team gerade Kopfzerbrechen bereiten, irgendwo im Netz bereits existiert - und sei es nur als Expertenwissen, das lediglich mit Ihrer Herausforderung in Verbindung gebracht werden müsste.
Die Größe und Komplexität des Internets erschwert aber leider auch die Kontaktaufnahme mit denjenigen Nutzern, die das benötigte Wissen oder innovative Ideen zum eigenen Produkt beitragen könnten.
HYVE bietet als Mittler zwischen den Bedarfen der Industrie und Wirtschaft sowie der Kreativ- und Wissensbasis der Internet-Community Lösungen, um die Intelligenz (und Emotion) des "Bienenstocks" zu filtern, zu verdichten und zu einer Problemlösung zu formen. Dabei stellt das Unternehmen alle notwendigen Dienstleistungen zur Lösungsfindung bereit: von der klassischen Marktforschung über Ideenwettbewerbe und -Management, Lead User Ansätze, die Arbeit mit Communities, spezialisierte IT-Konzepte bis zum Industrial Design.
Nach einer Vielzahl erfolgreicher Projekte für und mit internationalen Partnern aller Branchen verfügt HYVE über einen enormen Erfahrungsschatz und umfassende Kenntnis der besten Methoden zur Unterstützung des Innovationsmanagements. Unternehmen, die für aktuelle oder zukünftige Projekte auf wirklich kompetente Unterstützung zurückgreifen wollen, finden in HYVE einen hervorragenden Ansprechpartner.
HYVE und viele weitere spannende Aussteller präsentieren sich auf der MC2012. Mehr zu Ausstellung, Workshop und Konferenz auf der offiziellen Konferenzwebsite.
Did you already book your ticket for this year's edition of the MC2012, the upcoming German language conference on mass customization and co-creation? I am looking forward to meeting you again (or for the first time, respectively). To help you pass the time until the conference heads off on June 28th, here is another little preview on one of our exhibitors.
Since the conference will be entirely in German language, so will be this post.
Neben der eigentlichen Konferenz und dem Expertenworkshop bietet die MC-Conference Unternehmen die Möglichkeit, ihre innovativen Konzepte einer breiten Fachöffentlichkeit zu präsentieren. In den Räumlichkeiten der FH Salzburg stehen dafür großzügige Räumlichkeiten zur Verfügung, in denen wir auch in diesem Jahr wieder eine Reihe interessanter Aussteller begrüßen dürfen.
Für alle, die kleine (Enkel-/Paten-/Adoptiv-...)Kinder haben, gibt es 2012 eine besondere Empfehlung. Die Pariser Agentur Typlume & Graphine bietet mit dem Projekt "Mein Kuscheltier-Tagebuch" allen Kindern die Möglichkeit, ihr allerliebstes Kuscheltier in lustigen Geschichten allerlei Abenteuer erleben zu lassen. So wird die Gutenachtgeschichte - mit dem Kuscheltier fest im Arm - zu einem ganz besonderen Erlebnis.
Eltern und alle, die mal wieder auf der Suche nach einem ausgefallenen Geschenk für die lieben Kleinen sind, können auf der Projektwebsite in einfachen Schritten ihr Wunschbuch konfigurieren. Neben dem Vornamen des/der zu Beschenkenden, einer persönlichen Widmung und dem Namen des Lieblingstieres (optional) werden dazu nur drei Fotos des plüschigen Spielkameraden benötigt.
Nach Abschicken der Bestellung wird das zuvor ausgewählte Buch individualisiert. Dabei werden neben dem Namen auch die hochgeladenen Bilder integriert und durch schön umgesetzte Photomontage in die Geschichte eingefügt. Das Ergebnis ist ein hochwertiges Buch zum Blättern, Vorlesen und Immerwiederanschauen, mit dem jüngere Kinder, je nach gewähltem Thema, spielerisch die Tierwelt, die Natur, den Bauernhof, die Pariser Innenstadt und viele weitere Motive kennenlernt.
Alle Bücher können vor der Bestellung online durchgeblättert werden, für die sichere Abwicklung der Transaktion steht PayPal als Zahlungsweg zur Verfügung. Und um das Warten auf das persönliche Kuscheltiertagebuch etwas zu verkürzen, stehen auf der Website viele schöne Tiermotive zum kostenlosen Ausdrucken und Ausmalen bereit.
Mein Kuscheltier-Tagebuch und viele weitere spannende Aussteller präsentieren sich auf der MC2012. Mehr zu Ausstellung, Workshop und Konferenz auf der offiziellen Konferenzwebsite.