Nobody is as clever as everybody

My co-author and friend Tomi Ahonen gave me an article from the economist yesterday called
The future of innovation. The rise of the creative consumer

The article discusses how online communities are engaging with a whole raft of businesses to develop either physical of virtual products. And is of course another verification of the thesis contained within our book Communities Dominate Brands

Bell, an American bicycle-helmet maker, has collected hundreds of ideas for new products from its customers and it putting several of them into production. Or that Electronic Arts, a maker of of computer games, ships programming tools to its customers, posts their modifications online and works their creations into new games. And so on. Not only is the customer king: now he is market-research head, R&D chief and product development manager, too.

It is common sense in many ways - as nobody is as clever as everybody. The article mentions a new book, "Democratising Innovation " in which the author Eric von Hippel (Open Innovation) argues that the rise of online communities, combined with the creation and wide access to powerful and easy- to-use design tools has powered this phenomenon into the mainstream as never before.
Right back in history circa 1996 a game developer in LA first noticed how gamers were working on improving the game "Red Alert" themselves and then posting these on fan websites.

The Economist reports that Westwood the game company decided to embrace this rather than try to ring-fence it and shut it down. The result a very powerful ongoing R&D relationship between gamers and the company.
Today we are in a world where customers are demanding more and more and always different manifestations of value+
By engaging a community of passionate and loyal fans within an innovation process is essentially a win-win, and there is evidence that community led innovations have a far greater chance of success than the traditional process, which focus groups itself into mediocrity.
We have seen on a global scale how understanding a community and engaging that community is far more sensible and dare I say profitable than ignoring it.

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