Mass Customization & Open Innovation News

[Featured Research] User Generated Brands and their Contribution to the Diffusion of User Innovations

Continuing our mini-series on noteworthy research from around the world, today we feature new work by Johann Füller, Roland Schroll and Eric von Hippel who show that usersnot just are the source of most innovation, but also can create powerful brands

User Generated  Brands and their Contribution to the Diffusion of User Innovations, by Johann Füller, Roland Schroll, Eric von Hippel

Published in: Research Policy, Volume 42, Issues 6–7, July–August 2013, Pages 1197–1209

Available on: ScienceDirect.com

 

(based on the abstract)

It has been argued that users can create innovations and also diffuse them peer-to-peer independent of support or involvement by producers: that “user-only” innovation systems can exist. It is known that users can be incented to innovate via benefits from in-house use.

But users’ incentives to invest in diffusion are much less clear: benefits that others might obtain from their innovation can be largely or entirely an externality for user innovators.

Of course, effective distribution of information products can be done near-costlessly via posting downloadable content – for example, software – on the Internet. However, potential adopters must still learn about the product and trust its qualities.

In producer systems, this aspect of diffusion is heavily supported via the creation of trusted brands. It has been shown that brands help to increase awareness, to communicate a product's benefits, and to reduce perceived risks of adoption. The development of brands by producers is traditionally seen as a very costly exercise – unlikely to be thought of as worthwhile by users who expect little or no benefits from the diffusion of their innovations to others.

In this paper the authors explore the creation of a strong and trusted brand by the Apache software community – and find it was created costlessly, as a side effect of normal community functioning. The authors think the costless creation of strong brands is an option that is generally available to user innovation communities. As they  propose, it supports the existence of robust, user-only innovation systems by helping to solve the problem of low-cost diffusion of trusted user-developed innovations.

Just Released: Completely New 2013 Edition of Our Open Innovation Market Study

Fresh from the press! For the second time, our open innovation study explores that market of open innovation accelerators (OIA), organizations that help their clients to include external experts in all stages of an innovation project.

Open innovation today has become a core tool in innovation management. But which is the right method for open innovation? Which are the criteria to plan an open innovation project? Which intermediary or service provider has specific knowledge and expertise in, e.g., crowdsourcing, the lead user method, Netnography, idea contests, technology scouting, or broadcast search? This totally updated, 2013 edition report provides a comprehensive analysis of the providers and platforms for open innovation.

We take a detailed look on the methods, cost, project and community structures, and market size. Our purpose is to support strategic decisions when planning an open innovation venture. Managers will gain an overview of the intermediaries available for open innovation and will get advice how to identify partners for their project.

We invited more than 160 intermediaries to join our survey investigating the OIA’s business model and environment, productivity, services offered, project specifics, and characteristics of their participant pool. In addition, we asked about estimates for the development of the open innovation market. Besides a lot of highly interresting findings about the market for open innovation in general and the intermediary's role in it, we were also able to compile 188 detailed accelerator profiles.

In the following weeks, we will post a series of articles with selected findings from the market study!

The study is available via Lulu.com in both a paperback and an ebook version.

A preview can be found here.

Mass Customization at HannoverMesse - Project KUMAC Featured in #HM13 Science Hall

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:

• The Live-Help-System connecting online-offline configuration,
  
• The Tablet Configuation Software,
• 3D-Scanner and Softwaretools as well as
  
• RFID-Technology for mass customization.

 

Aalborg University to Host Next MCPC in Feb. 2014

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

1. Let us know whether you believe in a future global MCPC and the plan sketched above. 
2. If you would be interested in being a member of the Scientific Committee please let us know.
3. 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 group

Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Aalborg University, Denmark, Kaj A. Joergensen, Thomas D. Brunoe, Stig B. Taps and Kjeld Nielsen

 

 

The group currently consists of four senior researchers including Kaj A. Jørgensen, Stig B. Taps, Kjeld Nielsen & Thomas D. Brunø and three Ph.D. students, Steffen N Jørgensen, Simon Haahr Storbjerg and Tufail Habib.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The call expects project results to have the following impacts:

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

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

[Participate] 5th International Conference on Mass Customization and Personalization in Central Europe

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!

The next big trend in innovation management: Reverse Innovation: A book review and how does this relate to open innovation

Reverse Innovation as seen by Google Image Search

I am sometimes asked what is the next big trend in innovation management. Given a number of recent discussions and observations, I would now bet high stakes that "Reverse Innovation" will be the idea that will shape our understanding of innovation management a lot in the next years.

 

The term reverse innovation, in short, describes how innovations made in the so-called developing countries can often lay the foundations for product innovations in the "developed" world. More often than not, these are relatively cheap yet efficient new concepts which can seriously callenge products on an existing "western" market -- they often are a source of disruptive innovation.

Developing countries are catching up on the knowledge- and technology gap and with that comes an increased chance for major innovations to be born in these countries. And this is where open innovation thinking comes into play: 

• First, we know from lead user research that lead users often develop novel innovations under extreme conditions. Developing countries often provide these extreme conditions (budget, but also climate or working conditions) -- hence leading to a high incentive to innovate in a functional novel way.
•  Second, a core idea of OI is to get input from unobvious others -- this is where broadcast search helps a lot. And developing countries offer a great potential for "unobvious" sources of ideas.
• Third, when established companies develop a product for a new market that demands a "good enough" solution that only costs 10% of the comparable established "western" product, they are often forced to look into very new fields and approaches -- input that often only can be acquired by looking beyond the firm's borders.

Hence, for established companies, reverse innovation offers both a source often "open" thinking and input for the own innovation process, and at the same time demands new approaches and networks.

 If you want to learn more about reverse innovation, there is one book to read:

Reverse Innovation: Create Far From Home, Win Everywhere

Written by: Vijay Govindarajan, Chris Trimble, Indra K. Nooyi (Foreword)

Availible at Amazon: Hardcover Edition, Kindle Edition

Prof. Vijay Govindarajan ( Tuck School of Business ) is the leading scholar researching this field. Together with his collegue Chris Trimble he has recently published his new book about the topic which I read in my recent summer vacation.

The book is an easy read: In part one, Govindarajan and Trimble describe in rather brief form how major companies are beginning to realize that the popular concept of glocalization is not necessarily the best approch to conquer new markets. They describe the flaws on the concept and why reverse innovation promisses better results in many cases.

Glocalization refers to the business concept often associated with the saying "Think Global, Act Local", in practice realized by taking an already existing product and adapting it to new target markets. If the target market is part of the developing world, these adaptions are usually severe downgrades.

Govindarajan/Trimble explain that these downgraded products are in fact often not what the target market needs - or even wants. Each market requires products fitting it's specific needs and given resources. And that is something that can often no be achieved by just stripping product features to allow a cheapter retail price.

The authors show how reverse innovation can help to overcome this barrier. By inventing locally, right at the target market, instead of at home, far away from the conditions and actual customers, companies can be enabled to develop the exactly right product for the market - not a stripped down version of an existing good.

While reverse innovation is the more risky, more pricy alternative at first glance, and many internal and external obstacles have to be overcome, the described advantages are remarkable: Not only can a company better tackle local markets in the developing world. Products invented abroad have a high potential of being cheaper, offent radically innovative and can potentially be engineered to become suitable alternatives for existing products on the companie's home market as well. The innovations made abroad come back home: Reverse innovation.

Part two of the book has eight business cases in which the conecpt is applied and explained why it is advantageous over other approaches. These include companies like Logitech, P&G, EMC, Deere, Harman, GE Healthcare and PepsiCo.

So, in conclsuion, a very interesting concept, and important idea, and a good read!

Featured Research: Open Innovation in the German Automobile Industry

German cars are the best in the world. While I can see this statement instantly being challenged by some, the international reputation of and demand for German cars, especially in the high price segment is pretty high.

A brand new study by German innovation expert Ili Consulting shows that the advantages of open innovation have been understood by managers of German car manufacturers and their suppliers.

While companies like BMW, Audi, or Daimler have been forrunners in customer co-creaton via ideation contests, I did not see much OI on the technical level in German Big Auto.

This 2012 edition of the study "Open Innovation in der Automobilindustrie" is the second iteration after a similar survey in 2009. Comparison impressively shows that more and more of the asked managers on the middle, higher and top level follow the trend to get their company's research from a closed to an open one, thereby laying grounds for the harvest of the great innovation potential that the crowd of consumers is.

 

Comparison chart of manager's answers from the 2009 and 2012 iterations of the study. Clear shift towards open innovation

As has been said by many participating mangers, highly innovative ideas are short in supply. These are, however, one of the most valuable goods a technology company can have, and also the most important advantage Germany has on the international market.

The understanding that the old credo of "we have all the experts we need in house" no longer works in todays fast, interconnected markets and that flexibility and openness for external input, both for criticism and ideas, is crucial to mission success, has finally gotten a solid foothold in headquarters of majors and SMEs alike.

Open innovation is, however, not as easy as putting a website up, asking for ideas. There is much more to it to successfully tap into the wisdom reservoir of the crowd, and without competent guidance by experienced innovation consultants, opening oneself's knowledge stock up to the masses can be a risky venture.

For those of you engaged in businesses where your market share and revenues depend on technological advantage and satisfied customers (not only car-industry specific), the  study may hold some very interesing findings regarding the market, the progress from open to closed innovation, sources of innovation and their rating by practitioners as well as actual obstacles one will face when opening innovation.

The study can be obtained by contacting Ili Consulting directly. For contact information please refer to the contact section of their homepage (while writing about open innovation,, they were not open enough to provide the study as "open access").

Conference Report MC2012: The German Mass Customization Community Meeting

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.

Panoramic audience shot. Click to enlarge!

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.

Social Media Wall, Courtesy of wallero.us. Click to enlarge!

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:

• An interesting attempt at improvement of working culture were IDEO's working ethics, as Franz Blach outlined them. They are meant to be pretty much contrary to what we are used to in most larger companies these days. Instead of perfectionism and pressure, IDEO deems a culture in which close teamwork, prototypical work (things do not have to be perfect in their first iteration, can evolve and develop), error tolerancy and more fun are the key principles. While there is certainly more to a successful innovation company, this is certainly an approach favorable by many employees.

• Franz Hölzl demonstrated how Kaindl was able to offer a totally new way to produce wooden flooring, printed with individual patterns and colors, in great looking quality. Because of their production technology and business model, they can deliver a much more customized product at a significantly lower price.

• Wolfgang Gruel finally brought up the question if/why it is necessary that privately owned cars are often used in a really inefficient way, standing in the driveway most of the time and usually being too large for most of the time they are used. Daimler has been working on models to counter this development by employing car sharing, car pooling and affordable renting models. Nothing revolutionary new, you will say, but this time it is being done large-scale, by an international company, and not your small start-up next door. It will be interesting to observe whether Daimler can actually change something about the status quo or if the highly valued status symbol "car" will remain untouched by the means of sheer efficiency.

 

Some captures of our speakers. Click to enlarge!

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:

• Partl and Streichsbier pointed out that, while social media in regards to mass customization was nothing new anymore, the combination of social media and open innovation are a perfect match. This is certainly true in so far as open innovation per definition relies on participation and hence any media that is suited to increase awareness is potentially supportive for any OI initiative.
  
  Interestingly they chose Facebook as an example for a customizable information source. The important role of facebook as a customer relationship tool was stressed by all speakers in this panel. Certainly will be interesting to see if/how companies think of now ways to even better employ the platform for their needs. 

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.

Some captures of the exhibition. Click to enlarge!

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.

Coffee-Break is over, back to the conference room, Alp-Style!

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!

(Most of) our speakers! Click to enlarge!

Wrap-Up: MC2012: The Business Workshop

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):

• Content and results of their latest Delphi-Study "The Future of Mass Customization"
• Long Tail Business in practical application (case studies about Spreadshirt and Lulu)
• Hard MC vs. soft MC
• The MC500 study and the Configurator Database (findings and numerous case studies)
• The 3 most important aspects of successful MC
• Exclusive cases: CowCrowd and Build-A-Bear
• The interaction with the consumer: What makes an MC customer want to pay for your product
• Introduction into Open Innovation
• Lead-User method, toolkits, idea contests and netnography as key-tools for successful OI
• Successful OI business models (cases of Threadless and Quirky)

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.

Some interesting figures on MC. Click to enlarge!

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.

Featured Research: Collaborating with Customer Communities: Lessons from the Lego Group

Our series on featured research articles continues. Today I want to recommend a paper by fellow researchers Yun Mi Antorini (Aarhus University) and Albert M. Muñiz, Jr. (DePaul University, Chicago) as well as Tormod Askildsen (LEGO Group). They tell the story of how LEGO learned to use sophisticated crowd interaction for mutual benefit and explain some core rules of co-creation.

Collaborating With Customer Communities: Lessons From the LEGO Group

By: Yun Mi Antorini, Albert M. Muñiz, Jr.and Tormod Askildsen

Availible at: MIT Sloan Review

 

Lego users have a long tradition of innovation and sharing their innovations with one another — activities that the Internet has made much easier.Long before evreyone was talking about co-creation and user  communities, LEGO fans had "Lugnet", a universe of niche communities of people sharing their creations in LEGO.

As Lego managers became more aware of innovations by the company’s adult fans, the managers realized that at least some of the adult fans’ ideas would be interesting to the company’s core target market of children.

Historically, Lego was an extremely private company that tightly controlled its products and intellectual property. The company’s public position was “We don’t accept unsolicited ideas.”

However, things began to change in the late 1990s following the introduction of a new line of kits called Lego Mindstorms, which contained software and hardware to create small customizable and programmable robots. Sophisticated users found ways to hack into the code and adapt the new products; they talked about their innovations on independent websites.

This presented Lego management with a choice: either pursue legal action against the hackers or invite users to collaborate on new products and applications. The company concluded that litigation would be difficult and costly — and also that there could be significant advantages to collaborating with users.

Through trial and error, Lego has developed a solid understanding of what it takes to build and maintain profitable and mutually beneficial collaborations with users.

In their paper, Antorini, Muniz and Askildsen examine the emergence of Lego’s user communities, how management’s involvement with user groups has evolved and the five core principles that Lego has formulated for successful interaction with its user groups:

• To be clear abour rules and expectations
• To ensure a win-win
• To recognize that outsiders are not insiders
• Not to expect one size to fit all (different approaches/ platforms might be needed for different audiences) and
• To be as open as possible

Read the full article at MIT Sloan Management Review!

Mass Customization Explained - The Full Series from Innovationmanagement.se

I have been tweeting about it during the past weeks as more episodes have become availible:

Together with my colleagues Fabrizio Salvador and Dominik Walcher, we have been given the opportunity to provide an extended overview on eight parts of various aspects of mass customization on the well-known innovation blog Innovationmanagement.se .Finally, the last episode has been published.

The series consists of 8 parts, starting here.

In the series, we tried to shed some light onto:

• Part 1: Introduction: Competing in the Age of Mass Customization
• Part 2: The Market for Mass Customization Today
• Part 3: Solution Space Development: Understanding where Customers are Different
• Part 4: Robust Process Design: Fulfilling Individual Customer Needs without Compromising Performance
• Part 5: Choice Navigation: Turning Burden of Choice into an Experience
• Part 6: Choice Navigation in Reality: A closer look into the Customization500
• Part 7: Overcoming the Challenges of Implementing Mass Customization
• Part 8: A Balanced View: Conclusions and Key Learnings

Featured Research: From Social Media to Social Product Development: The Impact of Social Media on Co-Creation of Innovation

For our series of featured research on open innovation and mass customization, today -- in another act of shameless self-promotion -- a new paper from our group at RWTH Aachen University in which we discuss the impact of social media on co-creation of innovation.

From Social Media to Social Product Development: The Impact of Social Media on Co-Creation of Innovation

By Frank Piller, Alexander Vossen, Christoph Ihl (RWTH Aachen University)

Published in: Die Unternehmung - Swiss Journal of Business Research and Practice, Volume 66, No 1 (March 2012), pp. 7-26.  Free download at nomos.de

 

In this paper, my fellow researchers Alexander Vossen and Christoph Ihl discuss with me the impact of social media on customer co-creation in the innovation process.

Customer cocreation denotes an active, creative and social collaboration process between producers and customers (users), facilitated by a company, in the context of new product or service development. We propose a typology of co-creation activities in order to develop conceptual arguments how social media can impact the relationships among customers involved in co-creation as well as the relationship between customers and the hosting firm.

Interestingly, the impact of social media on customer co-creation may be two-sided: Social media can make economic- exchange relations more collaborative and social, but may also turn relations formerly based on social-exchange into “money markets” with strong competition among actors.

As a result of this paradox, we develop a set of questions that can lead future research in these regards. Read the article for our full argument.

Invitation: The Personal Economy - Free Seminar Talk at MIT Media Lab. April 10, 2pm

Great chance for anyone in the Boston area to reconnect!

THE PERSONAL ECONOMY: From Custom Sneakers to Personalized Medicine
A strategic framework to turn heterogeneous customer needs from a thread into a huge profit opportunity

MIT Smart Customization Group Seminar Series

2-4pm, Tuesday, April 10, 2012
New MIT Media Lab (E14), 6th floor Lecture Theatre

Location: http://whereis.mit.edu/?go=E14 (street parking is very limited)

What started with customized jeans, personalized sneakers, and engineer-to-order machine tools has become the core element of disruptive industry development: personalization and customization of products and services. Credit card contracts are being customized to a consumer's spending profile, broadcasted radio changes to a media stream fitting just our mood and preferences, blockbuster drugs are being replaced by personalized medicine based on real time data tracking, and instead of a "world car" we just buy mobility when we need it where we need it how we need it.

But what are the fundamental elements of a successful mass customization enterprise? Over the past decade, we have studied mass customization in more than 200 different organizations. Recently, we finalized the MC500, the world's largest benchmarking study of mass customization companies in the consumer goods industries. We found that mass customization is a strategic mechanism that is applicable to most businesses, provided that it is appropriately understood and deployed.

To do so, we have identified three core capabilities that allow companies to profit from mass customization: robust process design, choice navigation and solution space definition.  This presentation will use a mix of case studies and empirical data from the ongoing MC500 research initiative to show the relationships between these capabilities and their impact on firm performance. We will comment on implications of our research for entrepreneurs, managers in established companies, investors and VCs, and for future scholarly research.

The seminar talk is a free public event -- just stop by!

Featured Research: Whom Should Firms Attract to Open Innovation Platforms? The Role of Knowledge Diversity and Motivation

Our series of featured research on open innovation and mass customization continues. Here is a great study by my colleague Chrsitian Luethje and his co-authors on open innovation platforms.

 

Whom Should Firms Attract to Open Innovation Platforms? The Role of Knowledge Diversity and Motivation

By Karsten Frey, Christian Lüthje and Simon Haag

Published in: Long Range Planning, Volume 44, Issues 5–6
Download full article here: ScienceDirect.com

 

My dear colleague Christian Lüthje, one of the German pioneers of open innovation research, has just published an interesting study that looks into a different side of open innovation: Design parameters of an OI platform for technical problem solving.

Together with Simon Haag and Karsten Frey he looks into the question how a open innovation platform can attract the right participants into a technical problem solving contest.

The researchers use the Switzerland-based open innovation platform Atizo, which, like InnoCentive, NineSigma or Yet2.com, acts as a virtual knowledge broker between firms seeking support to solve innovation challenges, and skilled external contributors willing to contribute to solving those challenges. Founded in late 2007, Atizo now employs nine people and recently acquired 1 million Swiss francs of venture capital to accelerate its internationalization strategy.

However, compared to its large US competitors, Atizo still is rather focused. Atizo’s innovation platform today consisted of about 8,000 members. A distinct feature of Atizo however is that it offers its participants the option of developing solution proposals not just individually, but also collaboratively.

The majority of the participants who contributed to the challenges investigated in the Frey et al. study chose to work collaboratively via Atizo’s website. Teams working on a proposal for a given innovation challenge are generally formed by contributors who either have similar ideas or who possess the complementary knowledge necessary to advance an elaborate proposal.

At its basic structural level, Atizo resembles most Internet discussion forums: the postings to all solution threads are visible to all other participants, and participants may contribute to whichever thread interests them. There are no means for actively hindering someone from posting on a particular solution thread – but new posters are usually only accepted as discussion partners if existing team members see their contributions as valuable.

All innovation challenges are closed on a predefined deadline, after which the solution seeking firms assess all the proposals submitted and award the prize money to the most promising ideas. The prize is then split among the contributors to the winning solution proposals according to their input in the development process.

So far, more than 80 different new product and service development challenges have been broadcast on the Atizo platform, and its more than 60 clients include telecommunications providers such as O2 and Swisscom, FMCG manufacturers such as P&G, the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, the motorcycle manufacturer BMW and clothing manufacturers Odlo and Mammut. The authors investigate ten innovation challenges that were posted on Atizo’s website by nine different firms in 2008: Some were aimed at finding a technical solution for a specific problem whereas others asked for new service o product ideas.

When analyzing who were contributing to these contests, the researchers found that an extrinsic desire for monetary rewards tends to be positively related to the making of non-substantial contributions. People who are intrinsically motivated however tend to breed more substantial postings, and knowledge diversity facilitates all types of contributions to open innovation projects. The most valuable contributors are those who combine high levels of intrinsic enjoyment in contributing with a cognitive base fed from diverse knowledge domains.

 

Well, this sounds not too surprising, on the first sight. However, based on my personal experience with running several different kinds of contests as a client of various platforms, I believe that in the long run extrinsic motivation by money is more important. The Atizo structure is set up in a way that price money is rather small. So there may be a strong self-selection effect that those people that have "real" valuable solutions even don't bother to participate at all.

But the study by Karsten Frey, Christian Lüthje and Simon Haag shows clearly that hosts of OI platform and contest shall ...

• ideally try to raise intrinsic motivation by creating an enjoyable environment for participation,
• make problem statements divisible into different subtasks, which supports the formation of teams and the division of labor among team members
• provide structures and interaction tools to facilitate task partitioning and task coordination in collaborative problem solving.
• ensure that participants feel empowered to proceed in their solution process autonomously, for instance, by not imposing too many restrictions about what mechanisms and principles are admissible in order to solve a given innovation problem.
• facilitate valuable feedback to contributors both from other contributors and from the seeker firms to ensure that the solutions proposed will meet the firm’s basic requirements. Constant feedback also contributes positively to the contributors’ feeling of competence, which in turn raises their motivation to work on innovation challenges.

 

Hence, the study clearly showed that open innovation is an art and craft that demands careful management and specific competences, and that it is not just another piece of software.

Featured Research: Is your company ready to benefit from an open innovation processes?

Today I want to continue our little series on new papers dealing with one (or many) aspects of mass customization, open innovation and innovation management. In an act of shameless self promotion, we picked this short management article on some of the key requirements that can decide whether or not a company is ready to benefit open innovation.
 

Increasing innovative capacity: is your company ready to benefit from open innovation processes?

By Philipp Wagner and Frank Piller (RWTH Aachen)

Published in: Ernst & Young Performance Journal, Volume 4, Issue 2
Download full article here at Ernst & Young (very nice layout :-)

A company’s ability to innovate is key to its success. The strategic and systematic opening up of internal innovation processes to include external knowledge – in other words, open innovation – can result in significant competitive advantages.

There is now a whole range of open innovation methods that complement traditional innovation management methods. While there is already considerable evidence of the potential that open innovation offers, many companies still have a comparatively closed innovation process, or are still in the process of transitioning to a more open approach.

In order to exploit the potential of open innovation, the corresponding methods must be tightly integrated into the Innovation management toolbox. Moreover, open innovation calls for a shift in strategic orientation, the organization and companies’ culture. These requirements are not dissimilar to those of traditional innovation management. Open innovation also needs to be planned, managed, monitored and formalized.

In this paper, we have presented a tool that enables companies to assess their readiness for open innovation as a basis for defining targeted internal measures aimed at promoting the benefits of open innovation.

How open the innovation process is depends less on the specific industry involved than on the decision of the management of the company in question. Companies that have been successful in implementing open innovation have reported that creating an open innovation culture is a powerful motivating factor, and that internal cultural barriers and a lack of motivation are the greatest obstacles

In our experience, dealing with external knowledge and external players poses another major challenges for many companies. In practice, the application of open innovation tools does not always lead to the desired results, and the potential theoretically possible is not fully exploited. A company’s readiness to assimilate external information is a key challenge in this regard.

In this paper, my fellow colleague at RWTH Aachen, Philipp Wagner and myself present an audit aimed at helping companies assess their readiness for open innovation and, where necessary, optimize structures and processes.

The articles comments on the factors that determine a company’s actual situation with regard to specific criteria and, by comparing this to a target situation, endeavors to determine the company’s readiness to utilize open innovation successfully and derive suggestions for action from these findings.

==> Download the full article here as a PDF

And a disclaimer: In the present state, our open innovation audit still is a really customized and lengthy consulting project that we are happy to offer to interested companies. But it IT IS NOT A QUICK SCALE that you just can fillout online and then get your readiness score.  We are working on this, too, but at the present stage, we were not satisfied with the results of such a self assessment.

However, such a self assessment is available in form of the Open Innovation Assessment by NineSigma. Have a look there. This is a nice illustration and complementation to our paper.

The Market for Mass Customization: Results from the Customization500. Part II: The State of Choice Navigation Toolkits

 (Part 2 in our series with key results from the Customization500 study. Part 1: Some Data on the MC industry structure).

The Customization500 study (see http://www.mc-500.com) provided us also a very detailed view into the current practice of choice navigation and online configuration. When crunching the numbers, we found a large puzzle:

The reality of toolkits clearly falls behind the broad body of academic research on design parameters of successful toolkits.

You find lots of additional information about the Customization 500 (short: MC500) study in a special section in my blog, www.mc-500.com

 

How did we evaluate customer satisfaction with a configuration toolkit

 

We used more than 40 parameters to evaluate the state and design features of each toolkit in our study (Table 3).

Table 3: Data collected for each configuration toolkit profile

 

This objective data was then matched with the performance outcome of the toolkit, i.e. the perception of our trained experts of the configurator.

For this evaluation, we used five criteria to measure the performance of a configuration toolkit in our sample:

(1) visual realism, (2) usability, (3) creativity, (4) enjoyment and (5) uniqueness.

All impressions were measured by our panel of trained expert judges on a 1 to 5 rating scale (1=very low value / 5=very high value).

• Multiple items: For most of these criteria, we used multiple items to gather the scope of these criteria. Items were grouped and tested with the help of factor and reliability analysis.
• Inter-rater reliability of these factors was checked with the Intra- Class-Correlation-Coefficient.
• Performance: Finally, the single factors were combined to one overall performance factor.

In more detail, the five evaluation criteria were constructed as follows:

• Visual Realism was measured by means of one question “How realistic do you assess the visualization of the configuration process?”
• To measure usability, the evaluators were asked to rate: "The configurator is (1) intuitively usable, (2) user-friendly as well as (3) clearly and (4) logically structured".
• The creativity factor consisted of two items: "(1) The website gave me a lot of freedom", and "(2) I could give my creativity free rein while designing the product".
• To determine enjoyment, the experts had to rate: "The configuration was (1) fun, (2) delight, (3) pleasure, (4) entertaining and (5) interesting".
• To assess uniqueness following statements had to be evaluated: "My created product (1) is unique, (2) is different, (3) helps me to differentiate; and (4) no one else has such a product."

In addition, we had multiple other scales for performance like the satisfaction with the final product, the willingness to purchase, the likelihood to recommend the vendor to a friend, etc. 

All 500 companies that are included in the Customization500 are presented with a profile picture like the following Figure 4.

 Figure 4: Sample profile picture (purchase the full report for all 500 evaluations)

 

Configuration process experience is driving overall customer satisfaction

 

Our analysis showed that on the one hand side, “preference fit” and the meeting of a customer’s “need for uniqueness” are strong drivers of satisfaction with a particular mass customization offering.  

However, process satisfaction, resulting from the enjoyment and creative involvement during a user-friendly configuration process, has an even higher impact in many cases, according to our data.

This confirms the early findings of researchers like Nikolaus Franke or Martin Schreier who have stated that in B2C mass customization about 50 percent of the additional willingness to pay can be explained by the process experience and a feeling of achievement and co-design success – and not by the higher functionality of fit of a custom product.

Our study clearly supports this claim. We urge managers to look beyond the sheer technology and back office integration of configuration toolkits and also focus on delivering a great configuration experience.

 

Meaningful visualization

 

Academic research often has stressed the importance of realistic visualization as a core element of a good toolkit. But many companies in practice still have very simple visualization features, and sometimes no illustration of the outcome at all.  But there also can be too much of a good thing:

Evaluators often highlighted not those sites with the most advanced 3D visualization as best in class, But those with visualization features that matter and come to the point.

For many products, a realistic, fast, plug-in free and well-described visual of an individual configuration is better than a complicated 3D model wearing, for example, my custom T-shirt – that takes many seconds to load and almost crushed my computer when playing with it. Sounds obvious? Well, it is not. We still see many sites where technology is used as a point of differentiation – but not as a source of customer value!

 

Providing help and process navigation

 

When looking at the data which features of a configurator drive most the perceived usability and use experience, we found that navigation- and orientation-help features, such as a progress bar or an activity list, play a key role. Co-design toolkits with a higher level of company- and/or customer-help features, such as design inspirations, deeper product information or recommendations by other consumers, in general performed better in terms of satisfaction.

However, about 50% of the toolkits in the "Customization 500" do not offer any or only a low level of these features. Here, we find many untapped opportunities for practice to enhance the gross utility of customers.

At the other side, we’ve found quite a few offerings without or with only a low level of these features which were performing excellently nonetheless. In some cases, the simple product design (solution space) did not require special help features. In other cases, customer satisfaction with the offerings was excessively influenced by the particular value provided by the customizable product itself.

There is not one best way. Companies should “customize their mass customization strategy” based on the requirements of their customer stock. But having an understanding of the perception of customers or a firm's toolkit is crucial to make such a decision.

 

Parameter versus need based configurations

 

The largest gap between practice and recommendations of academic research can be found in the area of parameter- versus need-based toolkits.  We found that in today's mass customization reality, basic parameter (option) based toolkits still rule. Customers have to make their own decisions from a list of predefined options. This often demands a large number of decisions and also knowledge of the user about the product. While this may be perfect in the business-to-business context, it is not always the best option in consumer markets.

Here, need-based configuration has been shown to provide better results. In such a need-based system, users share something about their preferences, requirements, or expected outcomes. This input then is transferred by an algorithm into a product configuration. A need-based configurator hence mimics the behavior of a good sales person who also may recommend you exactly the right product (configuration) after asking just a few but insightful questions. In our study of the best 500 toolkits, less than 3% of companies had such a need-based configurator in place. While we acknowledge that it is more costly to develop a good need-based configurator, these systems seem to offer a great opportunity for differentiation and larger customer satisfaction.

 

Conclusion

 

Concluding, we can state that mass customization still is an area in the making. While there has been much progress, and there are some really great toolkits in the market, the majority of systems still are in an early stage. But as our data shows, from the customer perspective it often is just a small step between a good to a great toolkit.

All companies that have been included in the Customization500 received this vignette to illustrate that they are part of the leading companies in the field of mass customization and personalization. So when search for customization on the web the next time, watch out for this sign.

But we expect that the Customization500 is a very dynamic field. Even during the time of our research we found many developments, improvements, and failures. This is why studying the field of mass customization remains a continuous endeavor ... but a fun one, too!

 

Context information

 

Part 1: of this series:  Data on the MC industry structure

www.mc-500.com: More information on the Customization500 study and a list of the 500 companies included in the evaluation.

 

http://bit.ly/mcpc-proceedings: The Proceedings of the last MCPC conference cover many dozens of case studies, latest research, 2500+ slides, and 15+ hours of video of the plenary presentations. As part of the proceedings, you also find three detailed PPT presentations using the Customization500 data in larger detail.

www.mc2012.org: Speaking German? Then participate at the next meeting of the German-speaking mass customization community (Salzburg, 29 June 2012) – and learn from some of the German champions of the Customization500.

 

The Market for Mass Customization Today: Results from the Customization500. Part I: Company & Industry Structure

In his recent report about mass customization, Forrester's J.P. Gownder concluded that "mass customization is finally the future of products".  But how does the future of products look today?

In a joint project, Dominik Walcher and I looked together with our colleagues Thorsten Harzer, Christoph Ihl and Fabrizio Salvador into the practice of mass customization. Our multi-stage study, "The Customization 500", is the first global benchmarking study on mass customization and personalization in consumer e-commerce.

In a series of postings, I want to introduce some of the results from this research. You find all about the Customization 500 (short: MC500) study in a special section in my blog, www.mc-500.com

Sample construction for the Customization500 benchmark study

 

Given the scope of the mass customization market, we focused our analysis in the Customization500 on companies that sell directly to end consumers (B2C), using an online toolkit for user co-design that is applied to change the physical characteristics of the product in a dedicated manufacturing step (hence excluding products where customization is embedded in the product like a smartphone). In addition, we pragmatically focused on companies which we were able to analyze as they had a website in either English or German language.

In total, we found almost 1000 firms meeting these criteria (refer to www.configurator-database.com, a continuously updated list of mass customization companies). Following an extensive evaluation activity, we identified 500 companies that lead this field from a customer perspective (see here the full list). For each company, we gathered more than 100 data points. Data was collected by a group of trained expert evaluators who spent hours on each website.

 

 Figure 1: Selecting the data for the Customization 500

Also, each website was at least evaluated independently by three evaluators, and we took care to investigate all cases where the inter-rater reliability was not sufficient. The result of this exercise was a ranking of all companies, and allowed us to identify some of the leading offerings in the field. Figure 2 shows a summary picture of one of the companies included in the study.

 

Figure 2: A typical illustration of the overall score sheet of a company included in the Customization 500 (to get access to  all 500 profiles included in the Customization500, you have to purchase the full market study).

 

Which are the dominating industries with mass customization offerings

 

Table 1 provides an overview of the categories where mass customization in BtoC online today is employed. We find some very crowded categories that dominate the market. As expected, the option to personalize items by applying a user design on a basic product by different forms of digital printing is leading the field (categories 1, 2 and 4). There also always seems to be room for another custom shirt business or personalized sticker / foil to decorate your smart phone. Interestingly, however, there also is a very large (and still growing) field of applications in the food and nutrition industry where mass customization is applied to customize taste and nutrition of food.

 

Table 1: Categories of mass customization application in the Customization500

Using customized products for the gift market is a growing, but still not over-crowded opportunity. Most vendors still see mass customization as a one-to-one business, providing a custom product for the buyer (hence, also the dominance of me, my, mein etc. brand names).

However, some of the most successful mass customizers have realized that mass customization offers a perfect cure of a common problem: „Oh my good, [Name here]‘s birthday is coming up in a few days -- I need to rush to get an „original“ present now – but what?“ Take customized chocolate. Chocri and MyM&Ms, for example, are competing with gift cards and gift books, not with other candy items. They are not to be eaten - even if they taste very good - but to express that I have thought of you and really have spent some effort in getting this present done. For this, I am willing to pay a premium of 1,000 percent or more. As a provider, however, this means that a delivery time of 24 hours is a must, plus advice for easy gifting, wrapping, additional greeting cards etc. Here, we still see many untapped opportunities.

When looking further in the domains of mass customization application, we interestingly only found very few good configuration toolkits (for functional customization) in the field of consumer electronics and computers. Here, apparently the improvements of hardware apparently make it less useful to customize a product via toolkits before purchase, but allow users to customize the product during the usage stage with an embedded toolkit. It may be a sign of the shift in mass customization that the early pioneer, Dell, today almost offers no customization at all at its website. Well, there still is a configurator, but the choice options are very limited.

 

A closer look into company structures

 

For 120 of the 500 companies, we also could obtain extensive data by means of a company survey. Figure 3 shows our two-step data gathering approach.

Figure 3: The expert evaluation of the Customization 500 was followed by an extensive company survey of 120 companies

Descriptive statistics for the responding firms are given in Table 2, providing an enhanced insight into the company structures of the players in the mass customization market today.

• About 83% of the firms were founded exclusively with the purpose of mass customization, while 17% run their mass customization business in addition to their standard business. In general, most firms are rather young.
• Only 16% of the mass customization offerings are older than five years, indicating the long time lag from the description of the idea to the broader application of toolkits for co-design.
• 54% of the firms have less than five employees.
• Annual sales of the responding firms range from less than $100,000 to over $5 million in the last fiscal year, with the majority having sales of less than $1 million (83.5%).

These observations are consistent with our observation that the current dynamism in mass customization is driven primarily by innovative startups that have built their business models from the ground up and focus entirely on the promises of mass customization.

Table 2: Descriptive data from the company survey of responding firms

Clones dominate mass customization entrepreneurship

If you have a good idea for a custom product, it will be copied fast. This is one of the major conclusions we can draw from our observations of the market. The barrier to entry for many products is rather low, and once an interesting idea comes on the market, copycats follow quickly. This in general has not to be a bad thing, as also clones help to build the market, generate attention, and signal to press that this is a new category.

However, for the pioneers this means that they have to focus as much attention on branding and differentiating their business as upon building the processes and systems. Patents or other forms of IP do not provide much help here, thus, we conclude: As a pioneer, be fast, smart, and differentiate your business beyond the brand name and your core products.

Despite the many "me-too" offerings, surprisingly often the late followers are doing very well in their segments. We see three reasons here:

(1) Strong growth opportunities in every market: The late comers even in the most crowded categories (like custom men's shirts) enter into a market that still is not matured at all. Overall, there is not one category in consumer B2C where custom products have more than a few percent of the overall category (in most cases, they have a few tenth of a percent!). So there is still enough space for everyone.

(2) Market education: Pioneers in a category often have to spend a lot of attention to educate the market and just let consumers (and journalists) know that this kind of custom product is available. Latecomers can build on this generated market education.

(3) "Best of Breed" solutions: Latecomers often perform as best of class of established players, combining the design elements of pioneers, but also of mass customization sites in other categories.  A recent good example if getwear.com, which came late with another custom jeans offering, but has the best online configurator in its industry.

Mass customization platforms make the third wave of mass customization

But despite many clones, we also found a lot of innovative business models. Some of the best performing companies in the Customization500 are not stand-alone businesses that deal directly with consumers, but are mass customization platforms. These platforms can be regarded as the third stage of mass customization development.

The first wave of mass customization was driven by the early pioneers in the field in the early 1990s, motivated by the opportunities of new flexible manufacturing technology. Levi Strauss is a typical example from this time. Most of these offerings worked offline in a traditional retail environment. Also, first internet offerings coming of in 1995 and 1996, like CyberChocy or Creo Interactive, came up at this time. But in most markets, consumers were not ready yet.

The second wave came with the internet economy, around 1998-2002. Often, startups at that time just opened, as everybody could do it, not as customers needed it. But some great examples of mass customization survived, like NikeID (opening only because former Nike CEO Phil Knight wanted to have „something in the internet“, and so they selected mass customization as this promised to cause little channel conflicts with established retailers). In the following years, the internet-based mass customization offerings matured, and many more followed. It was the broader development of online configurators that made mass customization happening in a larger scale.

But a third wave of mass customization is happening now: It is driven by companies like Ponoko, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, Cafepress, Lulu, Gemvara, and many others, which offer design, manufacturing, and retail capacity to everyone. These platforms allow entrepreneurs to open a dedicated mass customization business at very low investment cost. On these platforms, people are not just customizing to fulfill their own needs, but to create (micro) niche markets for their peers. The platform providers have successfully combined the eBay idea of very easily selling things over the internet with the customization model of robust fulfillment processes. Here, we are just at the beginning and will see many more applications soon.

In an upcoming posting, we look more closer into the state of the practice of choice navigation (configuration) toolkits.

Context information

 

www.mc-500.com: More information on the Customization500 study and a list of the 500 companies included in the evaluation. 

 

http://bit.ly/mcpc-proceedings: The Proceedings of the last MCPC conference cover many dozens of case studies, latest research, 2500+ slides, and 15+ hours of video of the plenary presentations. As part of the proceedings, you also find three detailed PPT presentations using the Customization500 data in larger detail.

www.mc2012.org: Speaking German? Then participate at the next meeting of the German-speaking mass customization community (Salzburg, 29 June 2012) – and learn from some of the German champions of the Customization500 

Featured Research: The Value of Crowdsourcing: Can Users Really Compete with Professionals in Generating New Product Ideas?

Today I am happy to present you another paper in our series of recommendable reads:  A study by two fellow researchers on the question whether or not crowdsourcing is "worth it". Also, thank you all for the great feedback on this new series! I will continue to introduce new papers over the next weeks. 
 

The Value of Crowdsourcing: Can Users Really Compete with Professionals in Generating New Product Ideas?
By Marion K. Poetz and Martin Schreier
 

Published in: Journal of Product Innovation Management,  Vol. 29 Issue 2 (March 2012)
Download working paper version at SSRN.com or Bocconi University 

Generating ideas for new products used to be the exclusive domain of marketers, engineers, and/or designers. Users have only recently been recognized as an alternative source of product ideas.Whereas some have attributed great potential to outsourcing idea generation to the “crowd” of users (“crowdsourcing”), others have been more skeptical.

Our colleagues Marion K. Poetz from Copenhagen Business School and Martin Schreier from Bocconi University join this debate by presenting the first real- world comparison of ideas actually generated by a firm’s professionals with those generated by users in the course of an idea generation contest.

For their research, the two scholars coopersated with the MAM Group, a leading company in the baby products. MAM is based in Austria and sells more than 40 million baby products sold each year, being the market leader in many countries, It especially has positioned itself as the firm that is highly capable of designing leading-edge baby products (as demonstrated by several international design prizes).

In their study, Martin and Marion first faciliated a company-internal idea generation process (i.e., ideas generated by professionals) that led to a total of 51 ideas.

Users and customers, in contrast, were invited to submit their new product ideas via an online ideation contest. The incentives for participation were a cash prize of €500 for the winning idea and 50 noncash prizes to be raffled off among participants. Overall, 70 users participated in this idea generation contest.

Executives from the company then evaluated all ideas (blind to their source) in terms of key quality dimensions, including novelty, customer benefit, and feasibility. The following picture has the core results:

 

As the table shows, Marion and Martin find that on average user ideas score higher in novelty and customer benefit, but lower in feasibility. Even more interestingly, they find that user ideas are placed more frequently than expected among the very best in terms of novelty and customer benefit.

My comments to this paper:

First, this finding is even more striking as the researchers did not use a state of the art ideation contest and invested much into external recruitment of ideas.It really shows the value of looking out of the box and engaging for your firm's periphery.

However, this does not mean that a company's internal R&D people are dump and we all sjopuld better get rid of them. No! For most ideas and innovation, I strongly believe that the internal innovation function still provides the more valuable, as feasible, input of ideas. Consumers only can take a very limited number of highly novel ideas and products.

But in the few times where a company really needs radical innovation, engaging with external users may be more beneficial.

But these external users are often not the customers of the firm (here I find the paper a bit misleading). It are not "average" customers of a firm that come up with the really good ideas, but industry experts, young designers, lead users, and other "non-representative" people that take the opportunity of an ideation contest to pitch their idea to a potential manufacturer.  And these contributors will not work for Euro500 price money in the mid term!

 

Featured Research: The Paradox of Tie Strength in Customer Relationships for Innovation: A Longitudinal Case Study in the Sports Industry

I am happy to announce the publication of a new paper on a topic that is strongly underlying this blog: The relationship between firms and customers for innovation and value creation.This post shall be the start of a series of posts on our own papers and papers from others in the area. In an act of shameless self promotion, I start with one of our own papers.

The Paradox of Tie Strength in Customer Relationship for Innovation: A Longitudinal Case Study in the Sports Industry, by Tobias Fredberg & Frank T. Piller 
 

Published in: R&D Management, Vol. 41, Issue 5 (Dec 2011)
Download working paper version at SSRN.com

Current literature argues that firms should have strong ties to customers to benefit from increased customer retention and loyalty. Strong ties, however, have also been shown to prevent innovation, suggesting that firms should also develop weak ties to other customer groups.

Our paper tries to explain this paradox. We look in situations where strong ties facilitate, rather than prohibit, innovation. Our paper is based in a seven-year longitudinal research project with a global sporting goods company.

From the case we find that the paradox of tie strength results from an overly simplified view of the nature of company-customer relationships.

Contrary to the established literature, we find that strong ties in the case supported significant innovation. In fact, the involvement resulted in the development of a new product with a radically different product architecture and led to one of the most successful product launches in the company’s history.

To explain these findings, we introduce the nature of customer participation in a firm’s value creation processes as a new dimension of the constitution of firm-customer ties and discuss how such a kind of relationship can develop (see Figure).

In addition to the known continuum of strong and weak ties, firms have to look on the nature of ties which results from different modes of interacting with customers: Firms can either select rather passive modes, where customers just response to an activity of a firm, or much more interactive relationships, where customers actively contribute and participate. We find that the latter kind of relationships can be created by a firm, and that here radical innovation despite (or better: due to) strong ties can be possible.

Context information:

Benedict Dellaert and colleagues recently had a great paper on a similar topic, see "Corine S. Noordhoff, Kyriakis Kyriakopoulos, Christine Moorman, Piet Pauwels and Benedict G.C. Dellaert (2011), “The Bright-Side and Dark-Side of Embedded Ties in Business-to-Business Innovation,” Journal of Marketing, forthcoming (pdf download here)."

Interested in more recent / upcoming research papers? Then look here for a list:

Recent Working Papers / Work in Progress by Frank Piller: Download of recent working papers at SSRN

Public Proceedings of the last MCPC Conference Published -- Access all Conference Presentations, Papers, Videos

Did you miss the MCPC 2011 conference? It was a terrific event, and we really got great feedback and comments on the conference.  Check here for some conference pictures!

Richard Henderson at UC Berkeley has been very helpful in creating the best conference documentation we ever had! On a special conference website, the full conference program  is  now available with links to the slides of the presentations, full papers (when available), and many full videos of the plenary and keynote presentations (for Day 1 and 2).

To access this rich source of information (I estimate that this are 2500+ slides, 1000+ pages of papers, and 15+ hours of video), either use the access code you got as a conference participant, or purchase* the full text proceedings:

Bridging Mass Customization & Open Innovation. Proceedings of the MCPC 2011 Conference -- including an access code to all presentations, papers, and videos. Edited by Henry Chesbrough and Frank Piller. Published by Lulu, Inc. (Raleigh, NC), 2012.

=>  Paperback version: ISBN: 978-1-4716-3023-1 (ca. 5 day delivery time)

=>  eBook version: ISBN: 978-1-4716-3086-6 (instant download)

For detailed information about presentations and speakers please also refer to the conference proceedings flyer!

---

*Note: Why do we sell these proceedings and do not provide open access? First, this would have been unfair to all people participating at the conference and paying the full fee there. Second, organizing such a conference is a big effort and investment, and we still need the proceeds from this publication to cover our cost. Third, many authors and presenters do not want to have their papers and presentations openly on the web, but agreed to a controlled publication only.

New Book: Customer-Driven Supply Chains: From Glass Pipelines to Open Innovation Networks

As a result of our EU-funded research project REMPLANT, we are proud to announce a new book that Prof. Frank Piller partly co-authored:

Customer-Driven Supply Chains From Glass Pipelines to Open Innovation

by Lyons, A.C., Coronado Mondragon, A. E., Piller, F. and Poler, R

Find Customer-Driven Supply Chains at Amazon.com

More book info and download of individual chapters at Springer.com

The Book reviews the concept of lean thinking and its relationship to other key initiatives associated with supply chain management. Detailed industrial case studies based on the authors’ experience illustrate the principles behind lean supply chains. Moreover, a series of diagrams are used to illustrate critical concepts and supply chain architectures. Special emphasis is placed on the importance of transferring lean principles from the organisational level to the supply chain level. The theory and principles behind lean supply chains are reviewed. Other concepts related to lean supply chains discussed in the book include: mass customisation, agility, information sharing and the bullwhip effect. A methodology used to measure the performance of supply chains is introduced; this methodology comprises the tools of decision timeline, data-flow diagramming, supply chain value stream mapping and a performance measurement scorecard.

Readers will gain a clear picture of the competitive implications of lean supply chains. Customer-Driven Supply Chains: From Glass Pipelines to Open Innovation Networks will be a valuable resource of material to students studying supply chain/operations management as well as researchers in this field. Industry practitioners will learn how to develop sound supply chain strategies that can have a positive impact in their organisation.

Lead author and driver behind the book has been Andrew Lyons from the University of Liverpool, a great research partner in the REMPLANET project. He has been a Lecturer in Operations Management at the University of Liverpool Management School since 2002. His research interests include: operations strategy, supply chain design and performance measurement, supply chain information structures, mass customisation and build-to-order strategies.

#MCPC2011 Business Seminar: The Future of Mass Customization: The New Open Manufacturing System at #Materialise, #Ponoko and #ILT

On November 16th, the MCPC 2011 conference kicks off at the Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco. In this series of postings, we introduce our speakers at the business seminars of the conference.

Additive Manufacturing and the opportunity for every consumer to turn any idea into a tangible product will change not just mass customization, but our dominant perspective of design and manufacturing. Learn the key facts from visionaries and business leaders in this field.

Wim Michiels, Executive Vice President, Materialise
The Industrial Revolution 2.0: Personalization through Additive Manufacturing

Every year, consumers’ interest in customization increases and market demand for personalization is creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs as well as entrepreneurs who have an existing offering that they now wish to tailor. With the technological advancements in Additive Manufacturing (AM), commonly known as 3D Printing, individuals have the ability to add a personal touch to the things they use and love most from cell phone cases, to shoes, to accessories for their cars and more.

David ten Have, CEO, Ponoko
Building the World's Easiest Making System

The future of products - using software to connect consumers, designers and making devices. Ponoko Inc is the creator of Personal Factory — the world’s most advanced platform for the mass creation of custom goods. Creative consumers can turn their design ideas into custom goods on demand using Ponoko's global network of making devices. This local production reduces the environmental impact of manufacturing. So far, more than 100,000 customer designed products have been made in 15 locations throughout the USA, Europe and Australasia - everything from 3D printed jewelry to laser-cut clocks to CNC routed furniture. Just as the Internet revolutionized the exchange of digital photos, music and movies, Ponoko pioneered the exchange of digital designs, reinventing the way consumer goods are designed, made and distributed. In a future when there is a making device in every home, school and business, Personal Factory is the software that makes it easy for everyone to create custom goods.

 Reinhard Poprawe, Director of Fraunhofer ILT, RWTH Aachen University
Laser Additive Manufacturing - The Key to the Next Generation of Economic Custom Production

 

 

 

 

Please find the complete program at the official MCPC 2011 website.

#MCPC2011 Keynote Session: Setting an Agenda for Research & Innovation

On November 16th, the MCPC 2011 conference kicks off at the Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco. In this series of postings, we introduce our speakers at the business seminars of the conference.

Discuss with your fellow participants your insights from the MCPC 2011 and close the conference with three forward-looking keynotes and a review by the conference chairs that will set the agenda until the next MCPC.

Vishal Gupta, Director Developer Network, Elsevier
Wither Scientific Publishing? Collaborative Innovation, Open Platforms and Personalized Workflow Solutions Has an Answer

With an exponential growth of scientific information and wider distribution of services and data sources; integrated and intelligent search and discovery become crucial to the success of researchers. This is not possible without partnering on a platform that provides the ability to integrate workflow solutions in a seamless way, allowing a more meaningful use of the content. At Elsevier we are trying to bring a paradigm shift in partnering with researcher and developer communities on open platforms to jointly develop innovative workflow tools that are embedded deeply in user’s workflow, personalized to suit the individual needs, and geared towards driving research outcomes.

Kent Larson, MIT Media Lab
Urbanization from a Perspective of Mass Customization and Open Innovation

This talk will provide a thought-provoking outlook by looking on urbanization from a mass customization perspective. It will propose a systems approach to creating new cities at four scales:

1. New Urban Strategies - parametric tools to create urban blocks with the optimal mix of housing, commercial, retail, and services and their related infrastructure.
2. Mobility-on-Demand - modular approach to assembling an ecosystem of mobility modes and new vehicles (like the CityCar)
3. Personalized Places of Living and Work - mass-customization strategies for high-performance urban housing
4. Proactive Technology - sensors, algorithms, and interfaces to proactively encourage energy conservation, healthy behaviors, and mobility choices.

Mitchell Tseng, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Embodying Innovation for Customer Value - Building Bridges Between Mass Customization and Open Innovation

In our knowledge economy, value comes from generating creative ideas and then embodying them in products for transactions. Mass Customization starts from finding out the customer value and then try to create the best combination of components that shape the physical products for customers to buy. On the hand, Open innovation invites creative idea from everyone, from partners, suppliers, customers and others to contribute for a defined purpose that is valuable. Either approach involves a critical step of transforming abstract idea to tangible products, connecting concept to physical world in order to achieve customer value. Although there are products that can be valuable in abstract forms or software, majority of products still relies physical embodiment. This presentation will like to address the interface between electronically moveable and immoveable. Some of the techniques that can be adapted to amplify the synergy between these two essential components will also be reviewed and discussed.

Please find the complete program at the official MCPC 2011 website.

#MCPC2011 Business Seminar: Using Social Media for Customer Co-Creation at #Quirky and #IndieGoGo

On November 16th, the MCPC 2011 conference kicks off at the Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco. In this series of postings, we introduce our speakers at the business seminars of the conference.

Social media is becoming a core platform for new product & new service development. Learn from the pioneers in this field and discuss how these approaches could work in your company.

John Jacobsen, Head of Engineering, Quirky
 Social Product Development - Launching a Great New Product Every Few Days

Quirky is a social product development company that brings two brand new consumer products to market each week through its online collaborative platform. Quirky’s community of almost 90,000 members weigh in on every aspect of product development from research to industrial design to branding; quirky shares its revenue with the influencers who help bring each product to life. Since its launch in 2009, Quirky has collaboratively developed more than 120 new products. Top influencers are making tens of thousands of dollars. National retail partnerships include Bed, Bath & Beyond and HSN, with its own show on the HSN Channel each month. Quirky will also have its own show premiering on The Sundance Channel on August 30th. The show, called Quirky, is about the powerful process of making invention accessible. Each one-hour episode will demonstrate how Quirky has successfully re-engineered and democratized the business of innovation.

Erica Labovitz, Director of Marketing, IndieGoGo
Experiences with Crowdfunding in the Movie Industry

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please find the complete program at the official MCPC 2011 website.

#MCPC2011 Business Seminar: Winning with Open Innovation at #Procter&Gamble, #Eyeka and #Clorox

On November 16th, the MCPC 2011 conference kicks off at the Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco. In this series of postings, we introduce our speakers at the business seminars of the conference.

The business seminar today will focus on open innovation. We will start the day by two inspirational keynotes on companies that really "got it" in open innovation and co-creation.

Ashish Chatterjee, Director Connect+Develop, Procter & Gamble
Celebrating a Decade of Open Innovation at P&G - Key Lessons

With every celebration comes reflection. What’s worked, what hasn’t? What can be better moving forward? Such is the case for Procter & Gamble, now marking 10 years of Connect+Develop℠, the Company’s branded approach to open innovation. In the true spirit of collaboration, P&G shares both the good and the bad they’ve experienced along the way. From the first deal, to some of the biggest, to some that simply never were, or never should have been, P&G also will discuss new open innovation frontiers and challenges on the road ahead.

Suzan Briganti, US Rep., Eyeka S.A. & CEO, Totem Brand Strategy
Edward Rinker, Research Fellow, Clorox
Co-Creation Among the Fortune 500

In many ways, co-creation has been more of a European phenomenon. The (according to Forrester Research) top three co-creation platforms (Eyeka, Jovoto and Hyve) are based in Europe and until fairly recently, many US companies have hesitated to adopt the methodology. In this presentation, Eyeka’s US Representative and their first Bay Area client, Clorox, will discuss their views on the state of co-creation among the US Fortune 500. They will reveal why companies are turning to co-creation, the internal resistance they sometimes face, and how they overcome it to use this unconventional new methodology. Their remarks will touch on some ways in which co-creation differs from traditional market research and customer insights.

Please find the complete program at the official MCPC 2011 website.

#MCPC2011 Program Highlights: MC Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

Successful Mass Customization not only depends on the design and proper employment of the consumer backend (configurator). Of equal importance is the organizational structure "behind the scenes" that allows a company to actually keep the promiss of individual production while still remaining profitable. In this session we will hear expert advices about the key aspects of successful MC Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management.

 

Sessions 7.4 (Nov 19): MC Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management

Modeling & Simulation of MP-MC Apparel Manufacturing

Apparel companies that initiate Mass-Customization (MC) must identify a suitable manufacturing (assembly) strategy, which is vital for their success. Most companies that produce apparel using Mass Production (MP) systems, are interested in investigating if the existing systems can be used to implement a MC strategy.

In this part Muditha Senanayake (Cal Poly Pomona) and Trevor Little (North Carolina State University) will explore the opportunity to mix MP and MC using computer modeling and simulation. Based on varying sizes of bundles and varying frequencies of products tested on simulated production lines they will present their observations of the production system performance. As a result they will present possible implementations of mix manufacturing strategy and its limitations.

Using a Simulation-Based Framework to Design Supply Chain Offering Mass Customization in the UAE

Mass Customization has emerged as a successful business model that can address the contemporary challenges of global markets. Although companies have adopted various levels of MC, a major challenge for firms is to efficiently design their supply chain in function of their MC offers, which also needs to support the involvement of customers in the innovation process. Marc Poulin will present a work in progress of a simulation framework that enables UAE firms to design supply chains that offer MC products and services. Using the leading edge simulation software SIMIO he will model and simulate supply chain models in the UAE.

Methodology for Implementing the Right Supply Chain for Mass Customization

In this presentation Luigi Battezzati (University of Milan) will focus on the definition of preliminary implementation guidelines in order to define the proper supply chain for different products (emotional, functional), manufactured by different companies (mass or handcraft producer), in compliance with different winning criteria impacting on critical areas for Mass Customization

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

#MCPC2011 Program Highlights: Strategic Capabilities for Mass Customization (Showcase Session)

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

Proven by many success stories from all kinds of businesses, Mass Customization is one of the most promising concepts of our time. History shows, though, that a great theory is worth little without practical knowledge. Mass Customization is no different and hence it is of great importance to correctly understand why and, most important, how value can be created by the employment of MC. In this session we will hear about failure and success, core capabilities and different approaches to make the most out of a concept that is easy to comprehend, yet hard to master.

Sessions 7.1 (Nov 19): Strategic Capabilities for Mass Customization

Why MC Organizations Fail

In this session, Dominik Walcher (Salzburg University of Applied Sciences) will explain the development of a classification system for failure reasons of MC organizations based on literature review both form entrepreneurship and Mass Customization research as well as qualitative expert interviews. He will then discuss the exemplary application of this system to the Custom Foot failure case study.

Value Creation by Mass Customization: An Analysis of the Three Core Capabilities of Mass Customization

This part will focus on the key essentials of Mass Customization. Thorsten Harzer and Frank Piller (RWTH Aachen University) and  Fabrizio Salvador (Instituto de Empresa) will give an insight in and discuss the importance of the three core capabilities of Mass Customization.

Comparing Four Personalization Approaches to Understand Value of Personalization

Chenjie Wang (Georgia Tech) and Mitchell Tseng (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) will present the findings of their study regarding sources of distinctive value as being perceived “unique” by individual consumers. Based on the results of their investigative work they will share their conclusion about how different business models and associated design approaches can be developed to augment the value of product design. Presenting four different approaches in personalized products they will discuss different ways of customer engagement with respect to these four values, analyzing how personalization values are addressed and identifying their unique design features, user interactions and other relevant parameters in design ecosystems.

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

European Commission is Funding Research on Mass Customized / Personalized Food - Call for SMEs to particiapte

While the European Commission since many year has supported lot of research on mass customization, they now have issued a specialized call on personalisation and customisation of food.

In their call "KBBE.2012.2.3-04: Personalised approaches to food production and distribution" they ask for proposals to research this issue in a consortium of SMEs and Research Institutes.

The aim is to further develop processing, packaging and distribution aspects of convenient, personalised food products attractive to the consumer. Personalisation can take many forms, and might refer to individual health or lifestyle aspects and/or address personal preferences regarding quality, portion size or cost, convenience, packaging, taste or pleasure, or it might concern specific target groups.

Interestingly, they clearly say that they WANT MORE THAN known approaches like nutrigenomics, genotyping and phenotyping; specific nutrients or dietary advice, but demand a real prototype of a customizable food product:

"The conceptual models should be applied to developing prototype foods for a limited segment of the market, preferably in a demonstration unit."

I hope the people at the EU are aware that a lot of this is happening already in the European Community, driven by great entrepreneurs like Chocri, MyMuesli, Allmytea, and many others!

If anyone thinking of participating in the call and submitting a proposal still needs a partner in form of a great research group with much knowledge on customization, let me know :-)

More info on this in the meta call, Call: FP7-KBBE-2012-6.

Full program of #MCPC2011 published: More than 150 Presentations on Mass Customization, Customer Co-Creation & Open Innovation

  

 Finally, the full conference program of the MCPC has been released. There still are a few things to update and exchange, but 95% of the program are fixed!

In addition to hundreds of CEOs, Founders, Directors, and Practice Leaders of the companies that apply and support mass customization, customer co-creation and open innovation successfully, many of the world's leading researchers in these areas will present latest findings in an accessible way.

The interactive conference format of the MCPC 2011, supported by the proximity to the Silicon Valley / Bay Area entrepreneurship and investment community, allows for deep interaction and networking between the participants. There are more than 150 presentations, panels, or workgroups on the program!

Join us in a lively exchange on best practices, case studies, success factors and open business models that focus on the top management and leadership issues and / or provide deep insights into specific design parameters of the tools and technologies behind open co-creation and mass customization.

Some selected topics of presentations and panels at the MCPC include:

- Setting up a mass customization business model;
- The market for mass customization;
- Defining a customer co-creation initiative that works;
- Managing customer-centric supply chains and fulfillment:
- Design elements of successful configuration toolkits;
- Metrics for open innovation;
- Implementing open innovation in an R&D organization;
- Learning from failures of the early pioneers;
- Getting VC investments for business models for MCP;
- Optimal incentives for internal and external participants;
- Getting corporate buy-in for customer co-design and OI;
- And much more!!

Before the main conference (Nov 18-19), a special business seminar provides executable frameworks for the management of mass customization and open innovation and a focused view on future topics.

Please register as soon as possible, as seats are limited and many are already taken! The conference hotel is conveniently located between San Francisco Airport (SFO) and Silicon Valley and allows for very efficient travel.

We hope to meet you in San Francisco in late Nov !

Frank Piller and Henry Chesbrough

MCPC 2011 Co-Chairs 

http://www.mcpc2011.com | MCPC2011 Full Program

 

#MCPC2011 Program Highlight: Open Innovation Capabilities

 

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

Open Innovation has developed far beyond the state of a niche-method practiced only by a selective few entrepreneurs. With the evolution of the internet to "Web 2.0" the chances offered by employing this global meeting place to integrate consumers into the innovation process has been understood long since by large and small companies alike. Still the capabilities of Open Innovation are not been used to their fullest by many who could profit from its broader use. In sessions 6.4 and 7.4 we will take a look at what is possible and how it can be achieved.

Sessions 6.4 & 7.4 (Nov 19): Open Innovation Capabilities

Paradigm Shift of Innovation Processes

The phenomena MC, OI and OSI do not only stand for interactive business models but also represent the radical opening of the value creation chain on an unprecedented scale.
Doris Blutner (RWTH Aachen University) will explain how a generalized inclusion for people to participate in the designing process develops into a new paradigm of the genesis of innovations, which equals a discovery procedure, which – through its collective action – stirs up the economic competition, and whose products cannot be attributed to national origin any longer.

Management of Uncertainty: The Key for Open Innovation

Transformation in modern society is typified as a changeover from uncomplicated/simple/first modernity to reflexive/automatic/late modernity. Reflexive modernization is based on the idea of a risk society, forced individualization and multidimensional globalization which deeply manipulates the context for open innovation. Since managing uncertainty can be regarded as a core practice of successful innovation management, Robert Freund and Zoran Anisic will discuss open innovation from the second modernity point of view and shows new ways of dealing with uncertainty.

Emerging Capabilities of Open Innovation in Networks

In this presentation Astrid Lassen, Alexia Jacobsen, Sören Poulsen, Sören Wandahl and Henrik Sörensen (Aalborg University) will particularly focus on determining how to engage a willing but largely inexperienced network of companies in user-driven innovation. They will identify essential antecedent of user driven innovation and provide insights into how to stimulate and develop emerging capabilities of open innovation, especially in an industrial context.

Implementing Open Innovation: Groundwork on a Strategic Transformation Model for Multinational Companies

In this part Norman Mueller (Anglia Ruskin University) will aim to extend the understanding about the interface of organizational behavior/development and Open Innovation, specifically about how OI is implemented and adopted within multinational companies (MNCs). He will especially focus on human interactions in connection with change processes, taking an aggregated view on inter-dependencies between departments within MNCs.

On Becoming a User-Driven Firm: Slow-Cooked for Extra Goodness?

Mika Westerlund (Aalto University) and Seppo Leminen (Laurea University of Applied Sciences) will reveal what it takes for established firms to shift from traditional provider-driven innovators into modern-day user-driven co-creators. Based on firms’ experiences they identified four distinct phases of becoming a user-driven firm which they will describe and analyze. Their presentation will be completed by a discussion on organizational challenges that a firm faces on the sometimes long way towards an open organization.

Trust is Good, Control is Better: An Open Innovation-Controlling for SME

Due to a lack of respective research Small and Medium Enterprises currently have no instrument helping them to decide whether they should adopt Open Innovation.
Jessica Koch, Eckart Hauck and Ingrid Isenhardt (RWTH Aachen University) will present their research on the topic of the efficiency of OI for SMEs and talk about the development of an instrument that can help SMEs to decided whether employing OI is worthwhile or not.

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

#MCPC2011 Program Highlights: Rapid Innovation and Manufacturing in an International Production Enviroment

 

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

In a world of global markets and constant technical innovation one has to live up to the challenge of not only surviving on the individual markets but to out-innovate any competition at the highest pace possible. It goes without saying that for producing companies, production speed is a key competency. In sessions 6.3 & 7.3 we will take a look at expert techniques to accomplish this tough yet vital mission. 

Sessions 6.3 & 7.3 (Nov 19): Rapid Innovation and Manufacturing in an International Production Enviroment

Rapid Response Manufacturing in RIO South Texas Region

Opening Session 6.3, Miguel Gonzalez, Jianzhi Li and Douglas Timmer (University of Texas-Pan American) will speak about their experiences with rapid response manufacturing techniques in their home region of South Texas.

Experiences in Disburse Engineering Design Education Targeted on Rapid Innovation & Manufacturing

In this part Jianzhi Li, John Lloyd, Miguel Gonzalez, Douglas Timmer (University of Texas-Pan American) will share some of their experiences on the topic of disburse engineering design education with a special focus on its application in rapid innovation and manufacturing.

Information Technology Suitability Index for Mass Customization

In their presentation, Douglas Timmer and Miguel Gonzalez ( University of Texas-Pan American) will discuss the suitability of information technology in regards of mass customization.

Case Studies of Rapid Response Manufacturing in an International Production System

As a response to intensified competition, changing customer needs and greatly shortened product life cycles, ALPS as a global parts supplier to major automakers has been implementing rapid response manufacturing and mass customization technologies in order to capture and satisfy customer requirements in a timely and efficient manner.

In their presentation, Edi Sanjoto (ALPS Automotive) and Miguel Gonzalez (University of Texas-Pan American) will introduce best practices and strategies which allowed ALPS to connect with customers effectively and to quickly identify product variations. Furthermore they will compare different configurations of manufacturing lines with mass customization in mind, based on which they will give their recommendations for rapid response manufacturing strategies.

Reconfigurable Strategies to Hammer Open Innovation Concepts into the Mass Customized Automobile Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry in general and the automotive industry in particular is distinguished by rapid globalization, high mass customization, regionalization, value chain restructuring and reduced product as well as innovation life cycles. This in turn has compelled the automotive manufacturers to open up their innovation process to better address the customer needs readily by exploiting efficient outsourcing strategies.

Sarfraz Minhas, Ulrich Berger and Christiane Hipp (Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus) will discuss the need for reconfigurable approaches in planning as well as in control to address mass- customization-induced complexities under the umbrella of open innovation. A reconfigurable production control will be proposed in the body-in-white production, encompassing the configuration of specific setups to enable co-development in a distributed production environment, exploiting ICT technologies to produce mass customized products.

Innovations in Mechatronic Products and Mass Customization

Mass Customization has been recognized as a successful strategy in the design and development of products tailored to customer needs. Global competition demands new products with added functionalities, as in the case of mechatronic products.  These products are becoming more and more important as a product type and new inventions have resulted in drastic changes in design and development of mechatronic products, both standalone and enhancing conventional mechanical systems.

In this part, Tufail Habib, Kaj Jörgensen and Kjeld Nielsen (Aalborg University) will present the particular structure and properties of mechatronic products compared to conventional mechanical systems.Following that they will give an overview of typical changes regarding functionalities from mechanical products towards mechatronic products.

Utilising Mass Customisation Methods for Modular ManufacturingSystem Design

In order to operate under and take advantage of the specific dynamics of today's markets, manufacturing processes have to be robust to product changes – a contradiction to traditional manufacturing systems developed as dedicated engineer-to-order solutions, tailored to production of a specific product or a limited product assortment. In response, modular manufacturing concepts are evolving, designed with the needed responsiveness in mind, being the manufacturing paradigm of Mass Customisation.

Research focus has been on the basic principles and enabling technologies, while modular architectures and system design have received less attention. A potential to fill these gaps by applying selected design theories and methods of MC has been identified. Based on a communality analysis between these theories/methods and the modular manufacturing approach, Steffen Joergensen, Alexia Jacobsen, Kjeld Nielsen, Ole Madsen and Kaj Jörgensen (Aalborg University) will discuss and evaluate the potentials and show possible obstacles of application.

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

#MCPC2011 Program Highlights - Developing Great Configuration Toolkits for Mass Customization

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

In our research on the core capabilities that characterize a successful mass customization enterprise, we have identified "choice naviagtion" as one of these capabilitues. This session of the MCPC 2011 conference presents the latest inisghts from managers and researchers on developing a great toolkit for choice navigation.

Sessions 5.3 (Nov 19): Customer Co-Creation and Configuration Toolkits

Customizing Complexity - Lessons Learned from Configurator Projects

Although the configuration process is the core of every mass customization project and crucial for the success, the high number of failures shows that the complexity of configuration mechanisms is continuously underestimated. What critical factors do play a role in making it right? Which peculiarities should be considered to avoid traps? Based on the data generated by cyLEDGE's configurator-database.com, Paul Blazek (cyLEDGE) and Klaus Pilsl (IndiValue) will take a look at different approaches to customize products and present the biggest barriers and most important enablers which they have verified in their own configuration projects. Their findings show the existence of recurring patterns that determine success or failure.

Definition of a Framework for Configuration

The review of literature shows a deterioration of the understanding of configuration. The definition of configuration has become ambiguous as different research groups defines configuration differently. In this presentation Klaes Ladeby (Technical University of Denmark) will propose a framework for configuration that permits a more precise understanding of a configuration system, an understanding of how the configuration system relates to other systems, and a definition of the basic concepts in configuration. The total configuration system, together with the definition of key concepts, comprises a strong frame of reference when working with analysing configuration systems.

Collaborative Technology in Online Value Co-Creation: The Emergent Practice of Electronic Mass Customization

In response to the wide ambiguity in terms of the underlying efficient value co-creation processes in mass customization, Krista Palmu, Jerry-Mikael Lindholm and Petri Parvinen (Aalto University) have conducted an exploratory study to examine how collaborative technology is used to facilitate online value co-creation activities between the buyer and seller. They will present their explorations of the emergent, yet insufficiently studied, electronic mass customization brought on by the advanced technologies. Based on in-depth themed interviews and netnography, they will provide a value co-creation framework for understanding how the use of collaborative technologies could benefit mass customization industry and, thus, develop competitive advantage for companies and additional value for customers.

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration (reducted rates until Sept 30)

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

#MCPC2011 Program Highlights - Mass Customization and Open Innovation in the Fashion Industries

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

Since the beginning of the MCPC conference series, clothing and footwear products have been has discussed extensily during this event. Also, just by looking onto the numbers, these industries are leading the mass customization movement. At the same time, some of the early pioneers in Crowdsourcing, Threadless, also focused on this industry.

A dedicated track at the MCPC2011 will provide a closer look on this topic.

Sessions 5.2 and 6.2 (Nov 19): A Special Focus on the Fashion Industries

Why Customization of Footwear is Not Fit for Masses

Market facts prove that, despite a certain number of valorous entrepreneurs are there to exploit the advantages of the new business model, the benefits of personalization of products have not yet reached the shoe wearing masses. Sergio Dulio will present the example of a new Italian brand in the field of luxury bespoke men shoes and the presentation of its technical and market expansion plans, it will be discussed why customization and masses, at least in the field of footwear, don’t’ seem to go together as expected and a theory will be formulated to support the idea that, possibly, this is the right approach to a consumer centric shoe world.

Customization in Apparel Design

Advanced customization and 3D visualization are in the core of the latest planned solutions to enhance customer's shopping experience and brand loyalty, and with the help of advanced GPUs the industry is a step closer in creating a better, more precise design and shopping environment. Yoram Burg (Optitex) will present and discuss the latest projects his company is involved in that include deploying the 3D customized solutions in the worlds of movies, home sewing, apparel design, animation and art work, and give a preview on the next level of solutions currently in development by OptiTex.

ErtlRenz Sport Shoes World - Adapted to Improve the Customer's Performance

While many professional athletes are outfitted over long periods of time by their sponsoring sports brand through the same service people, the “normal” customer typically buys his standardized equipment by individual picks from different stores. Dirk Rutschmann (Corpus-e), Sven Renz and Wolfgang Richter (ErtlRenz) will report from the ErtlRenz Sport Shoes World and present how they embrace the customer over his personal sports career providing him individual sport shoes for maximum performance and comfort like a pro.

E-Co-Creation for Fashion

The Web 2.0 revolution is changing perceptions and influencing a younger generation, but can co-creation challenge traditional design methods for fashion and promote sustainability, and can designing together enable the democratization of fashion? Jen Ballie, Philip Delamore (London College of Fashion) will present a mapping of co-creation within a fashion context, using participatory practice methods. A series of case studies will be used to define co-creation communities, the role of the individual and the sustainable benefits of working together. The viewpoint of both the designer and consumer will be used to illustrate their role and relationship, and to define methods and toolkits for how they can work together.

CoReNET - Value Co-Creation of Small Series Customized Healthy, Fashionable Clothing, Footwear and Assessories

In this presentation, Dieter Stellmach (DITF Denkendorf) will give an insight into CoReNET - Customer-ORiented and Eco-friendly NETworks for healthy fashionable goods: A toolset and first practical experiences for value co-creation of small series customised healthy fashionable clothing, footwear and accessories.

The Fitting of Pants

When fitting pants, a garment can have the correct horizontal and vertical dimensions, but not fit properly. This is a particular problem at the crotch, where there is a saddle point on the abstracted 3D form of the body, where the front and back of the body are joined in the crotch area and one leg transitions through the crotch area to the other. Bonny Carmicino has determined that these fit problems are the result of patterns that do not properly fit the crotch curve and are not properly balanced and will present new methods of creating the proper crotch curve and balancing pants, both of which produce excellent results on subjects of all shapes (including “normal” and also atypically- and asymmetrically-shaped subjects).

Configurator for Apparel Manufactoring within the Mass Customization Program

Companies need to acquire and manage a knowledge base of consumers’ needs and preferences in order to meet, even surpass, customer's expectations. In the fashion & clothing industry, mass customization is not generally well understood or implemented due to difficulties related to measurements, pattern adaptation, and inflexible manufacturing processes. Jocelyn Bellemare (Université du Québec à Montréal), Serge Carrier and Pierre Baptiste (Montreal University) will present their identification of the fundamental variables and data necessary to produce custom-made clothing, the development of a configurator based on such data, and how to enable the efficient transmission of configurator generated information to computerized production systems.

--- And these are just some of the talks on this industry!! check the full program for more!!

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration (reducted rates until Sept 30)

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

(updated) #MCPC2011 Program Highlights - Advancing Health Care by MC and OI

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

Service customization has been named since several years as a hot topic with too little research about it .Henry Chesbrough just broad Open Service Innovation into focus with his new book. In this session, we will focus on a special service application: Helath care. How can our health care systems and service delivered to their users being enhanced by mass customization thinking and methods of open innovation?

Sessions 5.1 (Nov 19): Advancing Health Care by MC and OI

The Market for Innovation in Healthcare in Europe: Can Open Innovation Help Overcome Embedded Inefficiencies?

The introduction of both innovative products and services and new organizational structures in the healthcare sector will be crucial to meet the goal of providing high quality care and optimal living conditions for elderly people at affordable cost. The costs of developing products for these markets are high for all companies. Yet innovative products are seen as means by which new forms of care may be afforded for a growing elderly population. Terence Mughan (Anglia Ruskin University) will present his findings regarding whether or not open innovation can help resolve this conundrum.

Implementing Additive Manufacturing in the Custom Orthotic Industry: Productivity and Design Implications

As Additive Manufacturing (AM) is being applied to a wide variety of fields it is recognized that the medical and particularly the orthotics and prosthetics fields require further analysis in terms of design, cost, productivity and quality. AM must be prepared to challenge currently established methods for the creation of orthotics. Javier Munguia and Kenneth Dalgarno (Newcastle University) analyze the case of the adoption of AM technologies by a SME dedicated to the customized fabrication of foot and Ankle Foot Orthotics (AFO). This includes the adoption of digital scanning technologies coupled with additive manufacture for the creation of a new generation of orthotics.

Variety Management of Personalized Braided Stents

Prefabricated, standardized implants do not correspond exactly to the shape and nature of the structure to be substituted in the human body. Tailor-made medical devices can offer a much more effective therapy than off the shelf products. To make long-term individualized implants accessible to a large number of patients, the development of a mass customization solution is essential. Silke Tomoscheit, Nina Laar, Fabian Schreiber and Annahit Arshi (RWTH Aachen University) will present how the technology of braided stents offers new opportunities in manufacturing for patient-specific implants for the treatment of arterial occlusive disease.

Individual Nutrition - Development and Application of a Classification System

The pursuit of health and happiness can be seen as strong trends influencing today’s economy. With the help of nutrition both aims can be achieved. Requirements regarding functional as well as hedonic solutions differ from person to person. Consequently more and more providers of customizable food / individual nutrition can be found. Dominik Walcher (University of Applied Sciences Salzburg) and Benedikt Goellner will provide an insight into the state of the art of this emerging field.

 

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration (reducted rates until Sept 30)

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

#MCPC2011 Program Highlights - Overcoming Barriers for Open Innovation

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

The relationship of mass customization and sustainability has discussed since quite a while, but still there is very little knowledge about this field. A dedicated track at the MCPC2011 will provide a closer look on this topic.

Sessions 2.4 (Nov 18): Overcoming Barriers for Open Innovation

The Not-Invented-Here-Syndrome: an Investigation of an Important Barrier Hampering Open Innovation Processes

In innovation literature numerous studies focus on the interaction with external partners for value creation and the importance of integrating external knowledge in the process of new product development (NPD) to successfully create (breakthrough) innovation. A failure is often explained by the Not-Invented-Here (NIH)-Syndrome, a negative attitude (or prejudice) towards external knowledge.David Antons, Mathieu Declerck and Kathleen Diener (RWTH Aachen) will put attention on the cognitive perspective and measure the NIH-attitude implicitly by applying the psychological method of the IAT (implicit association test). 

Back to the Roots of Open Innovation: The Intergroup Bias in the Evolution of External Ideas

The ability to integrate external innovation ideas is crucial for Open Innovation and Mass Customization. It often seems to be problematic as external ideas are reported to be rejected by the company’s employees. On the other hand there are arguments for the assumption that these ideas are evaluated overly positive. Wolfgang Gruel and Christoph Ihl (RWTH Aachen) will take a closer look at an experiment with 3755 participants in a multinational company that showed evidence for both assumptions - but with no effects on average.

Is Not-Sold-Here a "Syndrome"? Reasons for Limiting Outbound Open Innovation

The Not-Sold-Here (NSH) syndrome has been characterized as protective attitude, rooted in the fear of losing control over technology that causes companies to be unable to actively engage in outbound open innovation, even though the companies have a strategy to do so. Antonie Jetter, Pattravadee Ploykitikoon and Charles Weber (Portland State University) will present initial findings from a series of interviews with R&D decision makers that are engaged in technology commercialization, showing that NSH differs substantially from the Not-Invented-Here syndrome because NSH drivers are mainly organizational, rather than attitudinal.

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration (reducted rates until Sept 30)

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

#MCPC2011 Program Highlights - Mass Customization as a Driver for Sustainability

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

The relationship of mass customization and sustainability has discussed since quite a while, but still there is very little knowledge about this field. A dedicated track at the MCPC2011 will provide a closer look on this topic.

Sessions 2.2, 3.2 and 4.2 (Nov 18): Environmental Sustainability and MC

Mass Customization and Sustainability - An Introduction

An introduction to the general topic of this session will be held by Frank Steiner (RWTH Aachen University).

Is Mass Customization Sustainable?

Mass Customizers are like other companies currently experiencing an increasing customer demand for environmentally sustainable products as well as an increasingly strict legislation regarding environmental sustainability. In this presentation Thomas Petersen,  Kaj Jörgensen, Kjeld Nielsen, Stig Taps (Aalborg University) will address the issue whether the concepts mass customization and sustainability can be integrated by asking the question: can mass customized products be sustainable?

Proposal of a  Reference Framework to Integrate Sustainability and Mass Customization in a Production Paradigm

Mass customization strategy is applied by firms in order to make them more customer-oriented and make each individual customer a source of opportunity and hence profit for the firm. Sustainability on the other hand brings not only eco-efficiency for the company, but also has a great impact on economic efficiency and social perspective of the firm. Donatella Corti, Marco Taisch, Golboo Pourabdollahian (Milan University), Andrea Bettoni, Paolo Pedrazzoli and Luca Canetta (University of Applied Sciences and Arts of South Switzerland) will show how integrating these two concepts together to develop a new strategy of sustainable mass customization can create a significant value for companies in today’s globally competitive environment.

Modeling Framework to Evaluate Sustainability Performance of Mass Customization Solutions

In this presentation Fazleena Badurdeen (University of Kentucky) and Ken Wijekoon will present a framework to optimize the configuration of customizable solutions (products or product-service systems) to ensure economic, environmental and societal sustainability requirements are satisfied. Activities across the total product life cycle are considered to develop a model to evaluate closed-loop flow assuming a modular product where customization can be achieved by selecting from alternatives.

Towards an Integrated Mass Customization and Sustainability Assessment Framework

The new challenge of sustainable development adds more requirements to be dealt with in order to keep their competitiveness and sustain their position in the market. For the mass customization enterprises, sustainability performance may depend on several mass customization enablers, thus these two concepts needs to be assessed together in order to foster both. Khaled Medini, Catherine da Cunha and Alain Bernard (Nantes University) will take a closer look at enterprise interactions with environment, society and economical environment and how they can be interpreted as a first step to establish an enterprise model in the mass customization and sustainability context.
 

Supporting Sustainability and Personalization with Product Architecture

Consumers as well as governments are applying constant pressure on companies to adopt a more sustainable strategy, consumers request greener products and governments applies rules for reuse and more eco-friendly manufacturing. There are several factors counting in favor or against the sustainability of MCPC products.

Modularization is a driver for MCPC and earlier research within product architecture has indicated that modularization could support sustainability. In their presentation Thomas Petersen,  Kaj Jörgensen, Kjeld Nielsen, Stig Taps (Aalborg University) will present their empiric work on the drivers for modularization with focus on sustainability and MCPC.

Smart Customization: The New Driver of Sustainability. A Case Study in Custom vs. Standard Men's Dress Shirts

In 2009 Ryan Chin and Daniel Smithwick (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) published "Environmental Impacts of Utilizing Mass Customization," a paper that focused on sustainability benefits of mass customized men's dress shirts by examining the manufacture, distribution, and use of custom vs. standard off-the-rack men’s dress shirts. In this presentation they will extend this research in breadth and depth by conducting a series of detailed experiments focusing on the total consumer experience of custom vs. standard men's dress shirts. 

Co-Creation and Mass Customization from a Triple Bottom Line Approach

Very often mass customized products are considered more sustainable than mass produced products. However, there is little evidence that this is the actual case, there are however components in those supply chains that do suggest that less waste is produced. Jonas Larsson, Joel Peterson and Klas Hjort (University of Boras) will map and analyse three supply chains with different offerings of mass customised or co-created products from a social, environmental and economic perspective i.e. the triple bottom line. It will not be possible to conclude whether these supply chains are sustainable or not but rather to compare the supply chains with each other from the triple bottom line perspective. The work is based on qualitative and quantitative data and case studies of three supply chains.

MCPC: The Enabler to Open the Next Age, It's Opportunity and Challenge, Report from Japan Post 3.11 Earthquake

Yasuyuki Cho (Wacoal) is an MCPC practitioner born and living in Japan. Under the deep impression of the Tsunami that hit Japan on March 11 he changed the subject of his presentation to reflect on MCPC and its chances and opportunities for a sustainable life and business.

Customization and Manufacturing Sustainability: General Considerations and Footwear Investigation

To adapt to global competitive pressures, European Industry must develop methods and enabling technologies towards a personalized, customer oriented and sustainable manufacturing. To this end, a key question to be addressed is whether Mass Customization can be regarded as one of the main driving forces to achieve effective Sustainability, or rather a burden.
Andrea Bettoni, Paolo Pedrazzoli, Luca Canetta, Marzio Sorlini, Claudio R. Boer (University of Applied Sciences and Arts of South Switzerland) and Donatella Corti (Milan University) will first portray the two concepts of mass customization and sustainability and will then propose a framework to establish a link and evaluate it, also with the support of concrete examples in footwear.

 

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration (reducted rates until Sept 30)

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

#MCPC2011 Program Highlights - CEOs of Open Innovation Accelerators Share Experiences at MCPC

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

In this session, the CEOs and founders of some of the most successful intermediaries for open innovation will reveal some of their secrets on how to employ open innovation and customer co-creation. I am personally looking forward very much to this session as in the past years, it has been these "open innovation accelerators" that have been the drivers behind the development of open innovation in practice.

Sessions 2.3 and 3.3 (Nov 18): Open Innovation Accelerators - CEO Presentations

9 Ways to Get Your Team Ready for Co-Creation

In this session Martijn Pater and Marieke Streefkerk of Fronteer Strategy, a consultancy specialised in innovation, co-creation and brand development, will identify various social, psychological and organisational barriers that can be encountered when starting co-creation within an organisation as a result of the change process set in motion when changing to an open innovation approach. They will offer 9 practical ways to overcome these barriers and to get your team ready for co-creation by providing clear direction, motivating them and creating a supportive environment. 

Open Innovation and Co-Creation: From Single Projects to Long-Term Programmes

Dr. Michael Bartl (CEO of Hyve) will  provide a conceptual framework how companies can implement co-creation activities in a permanent and enduring way. A holistic approach of collaborative innovation requires not only a skill set of tools and methods but also adapted innovation processes, organizational routines and cultures. The introduced programmatic approach implies the need to think of co-creation as a strategic programme rather than as a “just in time” outsourcing of innovation tasks.

The Co-Creative Organization of the Future

 While most brands embrace customer insight, direct involvement of customers in creative tasks is a relatively new approach. In this presentation Dr. Nick Coates and Jennifer Yazdi (Promise Corporation) will discuss why organizations that are going to move beyond tactical / sporadic co-creation will need to re-think some of their orthodoxies and start ‘being co-creative’. To demonstrate their points they will  present 2 case studies about co-creation approaches that start to show a pathway towards ‘co-creativity’.

Quebec Seeks Solutions: A Unique Setup to Profit from Open Innovation

This presentation will be held by Carl Viel and Christophe Deutsch. They will share the latest information on the Quebec Seeks Solutions conference -- a new form of offline co-creation.

To Be Or Not to Be - The Magic of Selecting the RIght Idea

In this presentation Andera Gadeib, CEO of Dialego, will reveal some very useful tricks that can help you to accelerate innovation process by reducing the great quantity of text based ideas using text mining techniques. The experiences discussed result from several innovation projects accompanied within different industries, mostly fast moving consumer goods companies (FMCG) in Europe.

The Creative Consumer

Current trends in consumer innovation have seen traditional market research focus groups and surveys increasingly replaced or complemented by crowd-sourcing, social media monitoring, neuroscience, and ethnography among others. Dr. Nick Coates and Jennifer Yazdi (Promise Corporation), however, believe that there is a bigger role for the customer which is supported by the development of prosumer technology and online collaboration tools. How can companies best use the creative potential of the creative consumer? Coates and Yazdi will try to answer this question by presenting their expert's guide to tools and techniques from our 15 years of experience working with organizations from all over the globe.

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration (reducted rates until Sept 30)

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

#MCPC2011 Program Highlights - Session on Design for Mass Customization and Personalization presents Roger Jiao and Dave Sloan

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

One of the lestablished researchers in the mass customization domain is Roger Jiao from Georgia Tech University. He is chairing the "Design for Mass Customization" track of the conference, that looks into practices and methods to develop product architectures and modular product families.  The first session will provide a great overview of the field and developments leading to the state of the art. I personally are especially looking forward to the presentation by Dave Sloan from Treehouselogic (he has a great blog!!!) who will comment on the backgrounds why MC is taking off now.

 

Session 1.5 (Nov 18): Design for MC and Personalization

Design for Mass Customization And Personalization: A Review

 Product design has gone beyond the traditional objective of attaining functional requirements to meeting the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction. Design methods for mass customization can only satisfy customers’ functional needs by offering choices through configuration of existing components with pre-programmed configuration rules. Roger Jiao (Georgia Tech) provides a review of recent research relevant to the popular personalization concept with Special emphasis on user experience, customer participation and product differentiation.

How the Evolution of the Internet Has Spurred Mass Customization

In this talk Dave Sloan, CEO of Treehouse Logic, focus on how the Internet landscape and consumer demand for Internet tools have changed in the past 2-3 years. The Internet has become faster, more powerful, more adopted, more social, and more mobile. All these factors contribute to the adoption of online customization.

Understanding Socio Technical Modularity - Reinterpreting Modularity from Actor Network Theory

 Modularity has gained an increasing popularity as a central concept for exploring product-, process- , organization- and supply chain structure. The predominant understanding of modularity however faces difficulties in explaining the social dimension of modularity. In their presentation Christian Thuesen, Lars Hvam (Technical University of Denmark) and Anders Kudsk (NCC.dk) will address this gap, offering a reinterpretation of the modularity concept from a socio-technical perspective in general and Actor Network Theory in particular.

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration (reducted rates until Sept 30)

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

#MCPC2011 program highlights - Customer Co-Creation for Ideation

In a series of postings, we present some of the program highligths of the MCPC 2011 conference. The following is just one of more than 50 sessions we will host on Nov 16-19 in San Francisco, CA.

One of the main topics of the MCPC 2011 will be co-creation with customes and users. We are glad that we could win a number of high profile researchers to present their latest studies on customer co-creation. This session focuses on co-creation for idea generation.  

Session 1.3 (Nov 18): Customer Co-Creation for Ideation

The Future of Crowdsourcing - From Idea Contests to MASSive Ideation

Johann Füller(CEO of HYVE), Katja Hutter and Julia Hautz (Insbruck University) provide an overview of crowd sourcing practices for the future and introduces the “MASSive Ideation” approach which supports generating and evaluating numerous ideas and allows for the further elaboration of top-ranked ideas into a handful of the most promising concepts. This is done in collaboration with a large and geographically scattered crowd. The software-based approach captures the advantages of both real-life innovation workshops and virtual online interaction to facilitate the generation of elaborated product or service concepts.

Coopetition in Virtual Communities: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Virtual communities provide an essential outlet for customer co-creation. Vera Blaszevic, Alexandra Gatzweiler and Evalotte Lindgens (RWTH Aachen University) and Sophie Einwächter (Bochum University) talk about how to use the concept of coopetition to study cooperative and competitive mechanisms in virtual customer communities and their effect on individual and community productivity. Learn how coopetition increases productivity and why it is important for the long-term survival of the community.

Value in Co-Created Content Production in Magazine Publishing: Case Study of Co-Creation in Three Scandinavian Magazine Brands

This talk taps into the evolving phenomenon of co-creation in publishing industry. Tanja Aitamurto (Stanford University) and Saara Könkkölä (Aalto University) identify the value emerging from content co-creation in three Scandinavian magazines in a shared content production process in which customers and editorial teams co-create a magazine. The study shares results of the business value of co-creation and its impact on reader-brand relationship,  increased revenue, more personalized products and other benefits.

The Relevance of Customer Co-Creation of Value for Service Companies: Does Co-Creation enhance Revenues and Satisfaction?

Ursula Grissemann and Nicola Stokburger-Sauer (Insbruck University) assess the effects of co-creation on customer satisfaction and service expenditures, highlight the effects of company support for the customer to co-create and analyze the consequences of customers’ satisfaction with their co-creation performance. They found that service expenditures increase the more customers are integrated into the service development process. Likewise, co-creation was found to positively affect customer satisfaction with the service company.

Listen to the full content of these talks at the MCPC 2011, Marriot SFO Airport, San Francisco, Nov 16-19, 2011:

- Conference Website and Registration (reducted rates until Sept 30)

- All info here in one compact MCPC flyer

- Conference hotel and travel (rooms fill quickly, book now!)

- All posts about the conference in my blog

Participate in Research on Flexibility in a Manufacturing Network

A group of Master students in Business Administration at SUPSI in Switzerland asked me to post their link and request for participation at a brief survey for manufacturing firms, which I am happy to support:

"We are currently following a research project in collaboration with the project Remplanet, sponsored by the European Commission, which analyse development of methods and tools that provide flexibility for the corporate network.

Our work focus on the production and sales strategies chosen by the European companies, especially BtB, in the manufacturing sector. As we aim to obtain a picture of the real situation, we kindly ask you to participate to the following survey.
 
The survey is anonymous and will take just 10 minutes of your time. The main goal is to understand manufacturing companies' needs regarding flexible production.

The survey is available in English at the following link
http://linux3.dti.supsi.ch/limesurvey/index.php?sid=38841&lang=en

Your contribution is very important for us, especially for the good result of our research. For this reason, we would like to thank you in advance for your kind collaboration. Daniele Cerri, Fabio Crivelli, Claudia Ghilardi, Andrea Nessi, Ornella Piana"

So, if you are working for an European manufacturer of industrial equipment or components, please support the them and participate in the research!

CYO 2011: Final Agenda - European BtC Customization & Personalization Entrepreneurs meet in Berlin

The "Create Your Own" event on May 30-31, 2011 in Berlin at Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg, Moritzplatz 1, 10969 Berlin.

The CYO 2011 is a unique opportunity to explore the reality and future behind individualisation, co-creation, and personalisation -- mega trends that are shaping the European consumption landscape. The event is co-organized by a consortium of European companies and research institutes in the field of mass customization. Here is the semi-final agenda. Participation is 200,- Euro only -- but register until May 1.

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Monday, 30th of May 2011: CREATE YOUR OWN 2011 Company Showcase & Evening

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The opening event will feature over fifty co-creation entrepreneurs, makers, researchers, technology experts, policy maker, and investors from around Europe. A press conference and special exhibition will present the makers and shapers of personalisation and customisation in Europe to a wider audience.

16:00 Registration starts

17:00 Opening Talk: Greetings & Event Overview

17:30 Showcase Exhibition Opening: Experience some of the best European CYO consumer good companies

19:00 Press event, film screening and recpetion: Create Your Own -- The Official Movie, produced and directed by the London College of Fashion
 

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Tuesday, 31st of May 2011: CREATE YOUR OWN 2011 Business Conference and Workshop

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  The business conference will provide a detailed look at innovative European start-ups that are quite literally giving the people what they want. At the seminar, plenary presentations and panels will look into the market for mass customisation, new business models connected with the trend, and the latest technologies that make it happen.

8.00 Registration starts

9:00 Welcome Addresss: John Cleuren, DG Research, European Commission

9:30 CYO Opening Presentation: The Mass Customization 500 – A Benchmarking Report of 500 CYO Offerings, Frank Piller (RWTH Aachen) & Dominik Walcher (Salzburg University of Applied Sciences)

10:00 Best Practice: How to sell dreams – The Success Story of Personal Novel, Jan-Christoph Goetze (Personal Novel)

10:30 Coffee & Networking Break

11:00 Best Practice: To be announced

11:30 Panel I: The market for customization & personalization – where will we go?

Moderator: Prof. Frank Piller, RWTH Aachen

• Thorsten Harzer, Boston Consulting Group/RWTH: “What about the MC market today?”
• Tom de Bruyne, Boondoggle: “How to sell your innovativeness”
• Michael Bruck, Chocri: “How to take the plunge to the US”
• Oliver Hickfang, Juuway: “Perspectives for European Companies to Sell Custom Goods to the Chinese Consumer”
• Rolf-Christian Wentz, Business Angel: “When are MC start-ups promising?”
• Paul Blazek, CyLEDGE: “Mass Customization at the Edge: the most curious CYO businesses”

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Panel 2: The power of communities - Qualified open innovation and mass customization
Moderator: Prof. Thomas Fischer, ITV Denkendorf

Panel Keynote: How to realize the ideas of consumers, Hervé Francois (Color Textil) & Niels Hendriks (KH Limburg)

• Hervé Francois, Color Textil: “Designers as professional customers”
• Niels Hendriks, KHLim: “How to satisfy customer’s needs”
• Ellen Mutchler, Color Textil/ Digifabrix: “How to develop professional exchange platforms”
• Sue Jenkyn-Jones, London College of Fashion: “How to support the customer by Style Advice“
• Michiel Willemse, TNO: “3D printing of jewellery”

15:00 Coffee Break

15:30 Panel 3: Business models and platforms to run a successful mass customization business
Moderator: Sergio Dulio, Milano

Joint Panel Keynote: Platforms as collaborative business models for the future of mass customization: The cases of BivolinoServices and Customax, Bas Possen, Customax, and Michel Byvoet, Bivolino

• Andreas Kortmann. Matteo Dosso: “Being successful in a BtoBtoC market within 12 countries”
• Carine Moitier, Bivolino: “Bringing art into the customized apparel market”
• Philip Rooke, Spreadshirt: “How to let customers make money with their designs“
• Martin Meuser, Customate: ”How to collaborate with big players“
• Lotta Nordin, Adidas: ”Aligning mass production and mass customiaztion“

17:15 Wrap up and results of the the “Makers Incubator” (workshop)

17:30 Reception and Exhibition

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Participation at the CYO 2011 is 200,- Euro only -- but register until May 1.

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SPECIAL OFFER: If your company is offering mass customization products or services, participate at the CYO 2011 showcase exhibition. This will be a great opportunity to showcase your offerings to a wider public, the CYO 2011 participants, and a large group of invited journalists and multiplicators. Participation at the exhibition is only 250,- Euro (including the 200,- Euro participation fee at the business seminar), but place is limited. For any exhibition requests, just check the CYO website.

MCPC 2011: Call for Papers and Presentations - Bridging mass customization and open innovation

The 2011 World Conference on Mass Customization, Personalization, and Co-Creation (MCPC 2011): Bridging Mass Customization & Open Innovation

San Francisco Airport Marriot Hotel & Conference Center, November 15-19, 2011 
mcpc2011.com | twitter: #mcpc2011 | download Call for Papers

Finally, the MCPC 2011 is ready to go public: I am really excited about the next large MCPC conference, as we finally will bridge between the two topics that have been driving my research since many years: mass customization and open innovation. There are many common themes and topics between these two domains. In a separate posting, I have provided an overview about the connections between mass customization and open innovation.

For this endeavor, we could win the best possible conference co-chair representing this topic: Prof. Henry Chesbrough from the Center for Open Innovation, Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley. I believe Henry needs no introduction at all to anyone reading this blog. But head to his blog and web site for recent information about his work.

The second local 2011 co-chair will be Solomon Darwin, Associate Director at the Center for Open Innovation, University of California Berkeley. Solomon already was of great help in finding the venue and setting many details of the conference!

But the most important ingredient of the conference is YOU! We need YOUR best ideas, papers, and presentations to create an exciting and truly innovative program. And so I am happy to present today and here for the first time the upcoming Call for Papers & Presentations for the MCPC 2011.

The most important information follows below, but you also can download the MCPC 2011 Call for Papers in pdf form.

The MCPC Conference Series

As you may know, the MCPC conference series started out in Hong Kong in 2001 as a bi-annual conference devoted to Mass Customization & Personalization. The content has broadened in recent years, including also customer co-creation, user innovation and other strategies of customer-driven value creation (hence, MCPC = Mass Customization, Personalization, and Co-Creation"). The event frequently brings together hundreds of the world's most remarkable people in the field.

For reports and reviews of the previous conferences, check here (MCPC 2007 at MIT) and here (MCPC 2009 in Helsinki).

The MCPC 2011

The MCPC 2011 wants to engage academics, business leaders, and consultants in fundamental debates through a set of plenary presentations, discussion panels, and paper presentations. The conference will take place on Nov. 15-19, 2011 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott Hotel & Conference Center.  Located in Burlingame, CA, just minutes from the San Francisco International Airport and between downtown San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, the hotel offers a perfect location with great views of the San Francisco Bay. Its inviting waterfront location and great conference center will provide an inspiring conference setting.

The 2011 conference will consist out of four major elements:

• The "Research and Innovation Conference" is an academic-style conference, with a broad call for papers. All contributions are peer reviewed by at least two reviewers. An international program committee and many ad-hoc reviewers support the program chairs with this process. Presentations are organized in parallel tracks, with plenty of time for discussions and feedback. The conference has the policy of "all participants, including presenters, have to pay the registration fee" that is characteristic for academic conferences.  The open call for papers & presentations relates to this part of the event!

• The "Business Seminar" provides an innovative platform for managers DOING mass customization and open innovation as the core of their business. The seminar's foremost idea is to connect managers in peer-to-peer interaction to foster an intense discussion, facilitated by presentations from industry leaders and the seminar faculty. In 2011, the Business Seminar will kick-off the entire conference event. Presentation at this seminar is by invitation only.

• Networking events: A sponsor's marketplace & exhibition, social events like networking lunches, conference dinners, and cocktail receptions, but also site visits to local companies provide unique opportunities to connect and exchange ideas among participants. The event has a long track-record of successful business relationships and even a number of start-up companies that has been launched thanks to new connections during participants of the conference.

• Pre-Conference Show: The first day of the conference, Nov. 15, will be used to host a public event in a central location in Palo Alto or san Francisco to showcasre to a wide public that customization and co-creation are new future trend but a broad reality. A press event and exhibition will be part of this pop-up sho of MC excellence.

How to submit your paper and presentation proposal

We invite you to submit your best work, addressing the conference theme along one or more of the questions asked in the detailed call for papers (PDF). We especially seek papers which follow the idea of "engaged scholarship", i.e. which are relevant to both practice and research.

You can submit three types of proposals (Page limits include references and figures):

1. Full papers: Max. 10 pages, according to the formatting guidelines (http://bit.ly/g8y1Tr). This is the preferred form of submissions.
2. Short papers / extended abstracts for work in progress (3-5 pages), but including comments on the research question, the methodology, data and empirical methods used (if applicable), and a discussion of the results. Please also use the formatting guidelines for preparing your extended abstract (http://bit.ly/g8y1Tr).
3. Presentation proposals (PPT slides) by managers: In order to accommodate practitioners who have interesting results but are not familiar with writing papers, this alternative way for contributing is offered. Mass customization business proprietors, open innovation project managers, services and technology providers are invited to submit a presentation outline in form of a slide presentation (PPT of max. 20 slides, transferred into PDF). 

Please check the detailed Call for Papers for more details on what we expect from a good proposal, how to format your paper, and how to submit it!

To submit a paper (practitioners: presentation proposal), head here. 

Important dates

April 7, 2011: Deadline for submissions for paper and presentation proposals (via this online submission system only)

June 15, 2011: Final notification of accepted contributions

Aug. 1, 2011: Presenter registration deadline

Nov 16-17, 2011: MCPC 2011 Business Seminar (optional registration required)

Nov 18-19, 2011: MCPC 2011 Research Conference and Presentation Sessions

More information

• Download full call for papers & presentation as PDF (with much more information!)

• Download MCPC 2011 Conference Briefing - An extended "About the Conference"

Can MC Enhance UK's Medal Winning Prospects for the 2012 Olympics? Participate in Survey on Personalised Footwear

The Elite to High Street Project is an inter-disciplinary project at Loughborough University in the UK that focuses on the personalisation of footwear. Researchers in Sports Technology, Manufacturing, Industrial Design and Ergonomics are working together to deliver sports footwear optimised for the individual.

It is hoped that results of this project will contribute to the UK's medal winning prospects in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, with a longer-term goal of bringing personalised sports shoes to the high street.

As part of this project, Matthew Head has been investigating how potential customers can be integrated into the personalisation process. He is in the process of developing the YourStep system: a toolkit that is intended to form part of an in store running shoe personalisation process. The aim is to increase consumer understanding and confidence in the personalisation process, which will hopefully minimise regrets customers may experience after purchase.

Matthew’s prototype toolkit is available online at www.yourstep.co.uk/survey, and he would welcome feedback. It takes around 10 minutes to complete, and the results will hopp to shape the future development of the system. Please participate in this research!

Any further feedback or queries can be emailed to him directly at [email protected].

From Open Innovation to Open Manufacturing: M. Tseng on "Shanzhai" cell phones in China -- A model of open manufacturing

My colleague Mitchell Tseng from HKUST, brother in arms of many of our MC initiates and publications, last year gave a very inspiring presentation that now has been published in print. On invitation of the Peter-Pribilla-Foundation, Mitch was asked to present his ideas on how open innovation thinking will influence manufacturing.

And he came up with a very different take to the state of the discussion. Before, the term open manufacturing often has been connected to the community of people that develop "open" manufacturing technologies like OS-based 3D-printing (Makerbot et al.) and "Open Hardware" (see http://www.openhardwaresummit.org -- I participated at this event but had not time to blog about this yet).

But Mitch is not talking about these initiatives that more or less build on the transfer of the principles of open source software idea to hardware. His approach towards open manufacturing is building more on Henry Chesbrough's understanding of open innovation as a broad collaboration of organizations.

Open manufacturing in Mitch Tseng's understanding builds on the idea that supply chain networks are getting more open and often are organized around a kind of platform that allows the exchange of resources and capacity between the participants. This allows new and smaller players to enter the market and produce new products (often for niche markets) faster and with high efficiency.

One example of open manufacturing in his understanding is the success of Shanzhai manufacturing in China. Originally, this is the name for the Chinese companies that design and market counterfeit electronic products. According to the Blog blogs.gxs.com,

"The term dates back several hundred years to Chinese mountain bandits which operated outside the purview of the local government."

On the website Shanzhai.com  these companies “operate a business without observing the traditional rules or practices, often resulting in innovative and unusual products or business models.” 

Today, the Shanzhai represent approximately 20% of the mobile phones sold in China annually!  And they go global. With exports, Shanzhai were estimated to represent 10% of worldwide phone sales in 2009.  And not all Shanzhai phones depend upon stealing the designs and brands of foreign brands, as blogs.gxs.com writes:

"Some manufacturers have become so successful that they are leveraging their own brand.  For example, Tianyu, which is referred to as the King of the Shanzhai, markets its phones under its own label.  Tianyu started off like much of the Shanzhai imitating global brands and evading government licensing requirements.  However, the company became so successful that it has adopted a new business model in which it obtains licenses, pays taxes, and sells legitimately on the commercial market.  Tianyu now enjoys 8% market share in China, more than Nokia, Samsung or Motorola!"

In his paper, Mitch Tseng describes very well how open collaboration enables these companies to compete with such an efficiency -- and his conclusion is that behind the success of Shanzhai is much more than counterfeiting  and stealing Western designs: It is the openness of their manufacturing and design network.

I find this case remarking due to two characteristics:

• First, the Shanzhai model shows a great way for robust processes for mass customization. Many of the models are highly individual pieces, created by a Shanzhai company to tap into a makret opportunity it realized. Production runs often are just a few hundred pieces, and often are starting with a special request by a customer or retailer.
   
• Second, it is a great model of what openess can offer. I have to strongly emphasize that I AM NOT in favor of stealing the IP of other companies or pirating and counterfying products. But the model shows that in a world where existing knowledge can easily being combined to new creations, a lot of creativity resides.

More information:

I have placed a full scan of Mitch's paper here. It has been published in a recent brochure by Peter Pribilla Foundation, summarizing the results of a conference in Munich in April 2009. (Download paper)

And a note for all management professors: Mich and Hau Lee from Stanford have published a great teaching case on the Shanzai model. It can be obtained here.

Conference Report - User and Open Innovation Research at the UOI Workshop and the AOM 2010

(Modified re-post of a posting by Alex Vosson in the RWTH-TIM Blog). During the past weeks, I attended together with some colleagues from our RWTH-TIM group two major events in the conference circle: the Annual User and Open Innovation (UOI) Workshop and the Academy of Management Annual Meeting (AOM).

The UOI Workshop series has been started by Eric von Hippel and Nikolaus Franke in 2001. In the first years, we were a small group of about 5-8 professors with a few PhD students doing research on user innovation (very much lead user, communities, and open source software development in the beginning). Despite being still "by invitation only", this workshop now has grown into a major conference. This year, at MIT, we were about 200 participants, 50% profs. amd post-docs, 50% PhD students.

Visiting the UOI always is special. It is as much a family meeting as a scientific event. Every participant gets a 2-min slot to present recent research or ideas, and so one really get a very good impression about how our scientific community is evolving and see what everybody is currently working on.

My impression from this year's workshop (at MIT): User innovation research is consolidating, we know already quite a lot, and some people are replicating older research, or are really looking into small pieces. In the field of open (distributed) innovation, however, there are still many open spots! And some great high-lebel research is being conducted here. I was very pleased to learn that our own projects on "not invented here". "open innovation platforms", and "user idea contests" as well as "internal capabilities for OI" are really matching with the open research opportunities identified this year.

For more detailed information about the UOI workshop, head here: My colleaque Joel West from San Jose has repored extensively about the event in his great blog: UOI Workshop Report I and  Report II

The Academy of Management Annual Meeting on the other hand is a slightly different, yet not less valuable, event. It is the biggest management conference of teh world. And so it requires a decisive mind, with many interesting sessions just within the TIM division at the same time . For me, the variety and diversity of the Annual Meeting still makes it the best academic innovation management conference in general.

This year, we saw a lot of "open innovation" sessions. Much more research on intermediaries, a lot on absorptive capacity as a driver of open innovation, a little bit on user innovation. For more, please refer to Joel's blog above. The theme definetly is going mainstream, and I hope it will not just become a management buzzword that will be forgotten in a few years.

There also still is a lack of a common definition of open innovation. While the core community has a good understanding of the topic, many people are just exploiting the term for many traditional forms of knoweldge exchange and collaboration in the innovation process.

I believe that the AOM could be the place where a solid discussion on the term takes place, but this year, this was not happening. Still you get a great overview about research from all over the world.

Again, Joel West has a great report about Open Innovation Research at the AOM in general and a special report about a joint session we organized on "Open Innovation with Suppliers".

Participate in Company Survey on Mass Customization Practices

REMPLANET is a research initiative, funded by the European Commission, which focuses on achieving resilient supply networks for mass customizing companies. For more information you can visit the Project website http://www.remplanet.eu.

As part of the REMPLANET project a large-scale online-survey has been disseminated to European engineering industrial companies in the mechanical, electrical, electronic, metalworking and metal articles sectors.

The main objective of this survey is to gather information from a representative sample of capital goods manufacturing companies in order to contrast and validate the results of the research with real practices and problems of the sector.

For this reason, you are invited to participate in this survey by providing your knowledge and experience in completing a questionnaire where a set of issues related to the topics addressed in REMPLANET project are examined.

The questionnaire is divided into seven sections and its completion will take app. 20 minutes. Click here to enter to the survey! If you are an European company in the capital goods sector, please participate in the survey and support our research!

The Customization500: Global benchmarking study of mass customization online offerings

During the opening session of the upcoming MIT Smart Customization Seminar, my colleague Dominik Walcher and I also will present the first results of a very recent global benchmarking study: The Customization500 (Yes, I was inspired for this title by NESTA's Open100).

In the last weeks, we (actually: we and a large team of more than 20 great research associates) evaluated more than 500 mass customization offerings that can be purchased online (and in addition about 200 online configurators of companies where you can configure a product or service online, but then not order it online, e.g. automotive companies). This is, to our knowledge, the largest study evaluating the state of the art of mass customization on the internet. For each configuration site, we got more than 200 data points and evaluations.

This first stage of data gathering will be complemented by a company survey plus consumer surveys on selected offerings. As a result of this study, we hope for a better understanding of the state of mass customization & personalization in the practice, a large collection of "best" and "promising" practices, and also an overview of technologies used for online configuration.

I will definitely report more about the results of this study in the coming months (and in case you are a company that has been part of the benchmarking, just be patient: You will get a mail with your evaluation during the next weeks!). For first results, wait for the opening session of the SCS 2010!

How to scale up a mass customization business?

Most mass customization businesses are still rather small. Really small, if we compare their sales and volumes with the comparable category of standard products (I am just talking about consumer goods here, for industrial / BtoB-goods, this is a very different story!). This holds true for most start-ups and companies dedicated solely on mass customization, and the MC units of large established players.

While I do not believe that mass customization at any time will overtake mass produced (or better: high variety, build to stock) assortments, many MC businesses today face the demand to scale their business up. This also is a main topic we want to discuss during the MIT Smart Customization Seminar on May 20-21 at MIT.

While preparing for the seminar, and talking to some of our speakers, I drafted these four factors that influence the ability to scale customization up, i.e. increase the volumes:

  a) Short delivery times. This is what Zazzle and Spreadshirt learned: When you are able to deliver in 24h hours, you have an entirely new market segment, the gift and occasion market. Also take Chocri. With their custom chocolates they do not compete with Mars or Lindt, but with Hallmark and other greeting card companies, or also with book publishers that produce these typical gift books.

  b) Using affiliates and networks. Using your MC capabilities as a platform to enable advanced customers (retailers, country subsidiaries, and other distributors) to customize an assortment that then is produced in small batches (or on demand) to cover local market requirements.

This is what some sports companies do: Connecting mass customization and mass production into one model. In the end, a mass produced item is nothing else then a configuration in a solution space. The main driver for large scale customization in a consumer business will be not the average consumer, but some "customers" customizing for the mass. Like a local retailer that spots a market opportunity for her local market and wants customizes a special batch just for her school. The coach customizing for his team. Or even a country subsidiary of a firm that is creating a special assortment to meet the requirements of a local market.

While this has not been covered as "mass customization" in the past, I would argue, it is! One can apply exactly the same principles compared to customizing something "one to one" and on-demand for an individual consumer.

  c) Marketing communications for mass customization. This is a totally open point, see the previous posting!. There is no research at all (that I know) on how to "communicate" mass customization. What is the best communication policy for mass customization? (in the moment it seems to place "me", "my" or "individual" in front of the brand name).

Until today, researchers have focused on the interaction with customers once they have entered the system (there is plenty of research on how to design the interaction experience in a configurator etc.) But how to communicate customization? This is a major factor to reach new audiences. When I ask during a lecture or talk who in the audience has a custom product or knows about the ability to get one, the majority still has no idea!

  d) Internal change management. Often, the ability to scale mass customization up is constrained by the company itself (especially if you are a large firm like yours). In most companies, MC still is seen as a "pilot" or "something special", often just with a marketing / PR focus. As long as MC is seen internally as such an oddity, it will not scale up. I have seen this in many large corporations. In fact, I just do know very (!) few established large consumer good companies that really have a serious MC offering (serious being defined as "if I close it, I realize it on the balance sheet"). But as long as you don't have a business system that really can scale up (and also has the motivation to do so), it will be a difficult field to achieve.