innovate big

motivations driving open innovation online

I started this blog over a year ago now. At the time, I was interested in further exploring my passion for innovation, technology and business. As a bonus (I was hoping), my experience would also allow me to share any interesting findings with others along the way. Alas, it’s been fairly easy to get distracted but I still plan to stay true to my original vision.

In fact, since I started this blog and launched dotherightthing.com, several innovative consumer Internet product opportunities have surfaced and continue to keep me happily consumed. I love it. As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to get caught up talking about meaningful ideas but bringing meaningful ideas to life is where it’s really at for me. This is why we have plans on extending dotherightthing.com in the months to come; fertile grounds to continue to experiment in the world of consumer-driven Internet products.

Along these same lines, McKinsey Quarterly recently put out an article about “open innovation” (free registration required to read the complete article, I don’t quite understand why. Sorry.)

In this article, McKinsey refers to “distributed cocreation” to describe the effective use of open-source type initiatives and consumer-driven participatory marketing campaigns (initiatives where consumers help companies create marketing campaigns to build brands and awareness).

What’s worth noting here isn’t the thorough or rather obvious analysis of how the world has changed but instead the insightful research data that helps us understand what is motivating companies and consumers to get engaged in “distributed cocreation”.

So what and who cares… well, companies care about this new kind of collaboration because it allows them to:

1. Decrease research and development costs – companies get to try things before having to convince you to buy them.
2. Increase brand awareness, consumer loyalty and trust – it’s no secret, if your intentions are transparent, people are more likely to trust you or your company. McKinsey calls this “enhanced strategic position”, I would call it a requirement.
3. Increase innovation and competitive advantage – although the process is open, you will stay leaps and bounds ahead of the competition because you are now engaging your customers throughout not just at the point of sales.

Of course, this may differ from industry to industry but for most consumer product companies these rules apply.

Meanwhile, consumers care about this new kind of collaboration because it allows them to:

1. Be heard – feeling heard is an essential human thing but unfortunately for us, not an available option when we need it most.
2. Be famous without the fortune – similar to the desire to be heard including the companies you care about, the potential of becoming famous as a result of your contribution is also a key driver for most participatory consumers. Our independent research echoes these sentiments as well.
3. Make an impact – people want to see their ideas come to life, I can empathize with this motivation to be sure.

What do you think?