Where Crowdsourcing Meets Product Development
I’m intrigued with what Quirky.com is doing to help bring new product concepts to market in a fast, efficient way. As one of the few platforms to make product development truly social, Quirky truly is the intersection of crowdsourcing and product ideation. The concept is simple: any member can submit a product idea to Quirky.com, and the community of influencers can help shape, refine and complete the product. The benefit is faster time to development with what could be a more commercially viable product.
Applying this model in CPG would likely be considered heresy among the ranks of most CPG market research teams. The CPG product development model is steeped in the tradition of generating lots of ideas, prototyping a few concepts, testing those concepts among a pre-screened panel, conducting lots of focus group session and ultimately making a bet to commercialize (or not). The crowdsourcing model turns over control and critical decision-making to the masses
The social product development model could help cut through the clutter much faster, and even help identify some whitespace product concepts that would otherwise have been tossed aside. I see great application for entrepreneurs that can’t afford traditional product development processes. I can even see some larger CPGs experimenting with platforms like Quirky, more from a learning perspective. But ultimately it’s the real success stories that will help attract more attention to this newer, potentially better development model.
