Needed: A Better Buzzword Than Customersourcing
from the fame-and-fortune-for-the-best-response dept
At the same time some businesses are embracing "crowdsourcing" as a cheap way to tackle large tasks, another model is emerging whereby customers themselves are asked to submit new ideas or designs. Examples of this in practice include a shoe company that accepts design sketches, and a t-shirt maker that offers money for submissions that get used. Some may be skeptical of the idea that customers would voluntarily spend their time coming up with ideas for someone else's business, but this is something a lot of people do anyway. How many times have you had an idea for a new flavor of gum, funny bumper sticker or way to attach a strap to your backpack? By offering a modest financial reward or some form of recognition, businesses can start to harvest these countless glints of insight and inspiration. Using the customer base as a source of new ideas probably won't replace traditional modes of product development, but, like the standard suggestion boxes, is likely to a useful addition to the process.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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I can see it now...
Yay for free work!
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Re: I can see it now...
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I think any reward or fee paid to the suggestor should be small enough that the company using the idea isn't afraid of paying it. That would eliminate the situation the first poster mentioned.
Either that, or say that all suggestions are accepted but no payment will be made. There have been lots of times that I would have happily made good suggestions for the sole purpose of getting better products.
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So you think that's a new idea....
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Blackthorn suggestions.
One I can think of would be separating the GUI from the OS, so that the defalut installation has just a simple, 2k type interface, and the command line, and anyone who wants the next version of Aero, and has a computer capable of supporting it, can install it if they like. It would then be relativly easy for companies to create thier own UIs in thier colur scheme and so forth, and 3rd-parties could create extensions, add-ons, and completely new GUIs for Windows, wile keeping the basic OS and program compatability. The ability to create separate UIs would aslo make web acces programs easier to produce.
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ideas
its a fine line. personally i wouldn't expect to be paid for making a comment on a product unless i got it through a discount deal that required comments.
give me a discounted product, and some easy way of giving feed back and i'll file a report.
if i send a comment to a company of my own back, well its in the hope they may listen and a future product may work better for me. nobody looses there.
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Downsourcing (att: Clay Shirky)
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