Inviting Ideas On Line

...allow users to interact and provide their ideas to design and co-create products and services.

The Internet has made it possible for vast numbers of users to be contacted effortlessly, and for them to contribute ideas easily, widening your potential poof of ideas.  Crowd sourcing uses Web 2.0--the interactive, user driven components of the Internet--to allow users to interact and provide their ideas to design and co-create products and services.  Examples include Adidas, whose mi-Adidas platform lets you design your own shoes, and the Lego Factory website, where users can design their own Lego toys.

Increasingly, companies like BMW, Kellogg, and Unilever are creating virtual innovation agencies, opening their doors to ideas from users by using the Internet to capture and review these ideas.  Even simple arrangements like competitions and challenges can be a useful way of capturing user ideas focused on a particular challenge or target, especially if they are distributed over the Internet to encourage a large number of participants.

ACTION POINT: Use the power of the Internet to source ideas and involve your customers.