In his TED talk about Crowd Accelerated Innovation, Chris Anderson (of TED, not Wired)Â makes an analogy of web video to the Gutenberg press – the changes he points to go far beyond the revolution in businesses to point out the potential for education and to the groundswell of social innovation. The last few minutes can bring tears to your eyes.
For a long time I have been interested in what happens with the cost structure of new product development when you start involving users in the innovation process. For the last decade research has pointed out that traditional NPD is becoming more expensive because of:
- Increasing investments in NPD of overall budget
- Increasing NPD cost per product
- Decreasing NPD cycle time
- Increasing NDP failure rate
In order to reduce risk and increase sales, companies often choose products aimed at a segment’s lowest common denominator, which results in a poor fit between consumer preferences and products and lately we have seen several examples of adverse consumer reaction to mass market products. (more…)