Outside-Inside Learning: Learning from customers (2)
Using the crowd to bring in knowledge on current trends and future developments is nothing new anymore. In an earlier post i wrote about how companies can learn from customers and in another also about IBM using its employees (and some customers) to get ideas for new innovations in their global innovation jam.
Today i came across another example: Philips with their recently launched livesimplicity.net. Philips is a dutch company, offering technology products for lifestyle and healthcare sectors and is already known from its Lead Users program. On Leadusers.nl (dutch website) they conducted studies with lead users on specific topics, like video technology and sleep quality.
To me it seems that they have used the leadusers.nl website not only to gain knowledge on those topics, but also on how to listen to consumers. This knowledge clearly is now used in their livesimplicity initiative. The initiative is a mix between a weblog and a discussion forum, and has a lot of similarities with the InnovationJam website of IBM.
The website facilitate discussions in 6 areas (Business, Communication, General, Internet & Technology, Lifestyle & Social and Wellness). Each discussion starts with a short description and two contrasting viewpoints (A and B). Visitors are invited either to vote for a viewpoint, or register as contributor and write a comment.
The site is well thought. For example the initiators thought of incentives for contributors and have set up a rating/reward system. “Each contributer has a rating, shown as an icon. This is calculated from how many times that contributer has made a point and had others agree or disagree with it. Each posting has an agree/disagree button next to it, and the combined results of these are displayed in the Rating.” So contributors can develop themselves as respected members of the site. It is also noted that “High-rating contributers are often selected to contribute to certain discussions”.
Furthermore they have developed a visual tracker, which enables contributors to keep updated on their favorite topics. Of course downloadable as seperate tool for your desktop, so you don’t have to be on the site 24×7.
Yet another company on the road to transform their Research & Development departments to a Connect & Develop department. It is probably partly a marketing instrument to promote Philips’ Sense and Simplicity slogan, but also a tool to acquire knowledge on what people think in Philips-relevant areas of life.
from: Theo van Vugt, Danga and Bruce Nussbaum
