Customer/Outside Innovation

  • Is User-Centered Design the Missing Link?

    Bridging the Gaps Between Customer Experience and Product Development

    by Patricia Seybold, Ronni Marshak
    Empower UX professionals and embed them within your business units to help product managers and developers identify customer needs and develop products that are easy to use and to adopt, easy to support, and on target to meet a critical end-user need.
    Apr. 28, 2011
    Strategies
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  • How to Transform the Quality of Life in African Rural Communities

    Educate Young People to Be Entrepreneurs and Leaders

    by Patricia Seybold
    In western Uganda, URDT’s Vocational Institute addresses unemployment by training young people to be job creators—not job seekers—in their local communities.
    Mar. 17, 2011
    All Members
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  • Why the Huffington Post Is Successful

    Engaging Your Audience as Active Contributors and Promoters Was Baked into Its DNA

    by Patricia Seybold
    The Huffington Post became a successful, profitable online media property for seven good reasons. Most of these best practices are applicable for anyone providing online content.
    Feb. 17, 2011
    All Members
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  • Turning Innovation into Reality

    From Ideation to Implementation—Lessons Learned from Our Visionaries

    by Ronni Marshak
    How can you take all the great ideas that come from customers, partners, and employees and make them actually happen? Let’s look at the different aspects of outside innovation generation and what you need to do to actually turn ideation into innovation.
    Jan. 20, 2011
    Strategies
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  • Pandora: Delivering Personalized Internet Radio

    How Pandora Internet Radio Combines Taxonomy, Crowdsourcing, and Personalization to Improve Music Playlists

    by Patricia Seybold
    As is the case with many electronic publishing efforts, Pandora has merged the best of both worlds: a professional taxonomy with the wisdom of the crowds. Professional musicians categorize music, but people can vote on whether certain songs really belong.
    Jun. 10, 2010
    Strategies
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  • What Happened in the Music Industry Will Happen To You

    by Patricia Seybold
    By 2000, the music industry was under siege by renegade customers. Here’s how new businesses and new business models emerged in response to customers' behaviors.
    Mar. 1, 2010
    All Members
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  • Five Steps to Success in Designing a Customer-Centric Business

    Chapter 1 – Customers.com 2.0

    by Patricia Seybold
    A 5-step prescription for customer-centric executives to design new businesses or re-focus existing organizations and win customers for life.
    Feb. 4, 2010
    Strategies
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  • How Custom Product Design Can Spawn Customer-Centric Ecosystems

    How National Semiconductor, CustoMax, and Zazzle Built Vibrant Ecosystems

    by Patricia Seybold
    Three companies in different industries—CustoMax, National Semiconductor, and Zazzle—have built vibrant customer-centric ecosystems to let customers design their own products.
    Jan. 7, 2010
    Strategies
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  • Innovation in Education: School Children Improve Their Families' Livelihoods

    At URDT, It Takes a Child to Raise a Village

    by Patricia Seybold
    Why not educate children to become masterful in envisioning and creating a better life for themselves and their families? That’s the innovative approach to education that URDT has been practicing for almost a decade.
    Nov. 25, 2009
    All Members
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  • Local Motors

    Reinventing the Car Industry from the Outside In

    by Patricia Seybold
    Local Motors is a new American car company with an innovative approach: get customers to design cars, manufacture them locally, and let customers help assemble their own cars Build-A-Bear style!
    Oct. 23, 2009
    All Members
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  • Want Customer-Contributed Content?

    Make It Easy for Your Customers to Multi-Post

    by Patricia Seybold
    Do you want customers to contribute content to your Web site? Customers are more likely to post or curate content in an environment that will "automagically" syndicate that comment or posting out to several other sites.
    Sep. 1, 2009
    Strategies
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  • How Citrix Evolved Its Online Community of Customer Advisors

    How to Recruit and Manage a Private Customer Community—Patty’s Visionaries' Interviews' Series

    by Patricia Seybold
    Andrea Davidowitz tells the story of how and why she launched a private B2B online community of advisors in 2007 and what she has learned about running and managing a private customer community. Andrea manages strategic customer programs at Citrix.
    Aug. 6, 2009
    Strategies
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  • How Visionary Customer-Centric Execs Keep Innovation Alive

    Take-Aways from Patty’s Visionaries' Spring 2009 Meeting

    by Patricia Seybold
    How do Visionary Customer-centric Execs deal with the recession? By continuing to innovate!
    Jun. 18, 2009
    Strategies
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  • Google Wave

    It’s “My” Design, but Will I Use It?

    by Patricia Seybold
    Did Google design Google Wave by watching customer behavior? If so, did they get it right?
    Jun. 11, 2009
    All Members
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  • How Keds Uses Zazzle's Customization

    Best Practices from the MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2008

    by Patricia Seybold
    Keds is giving customers the ability to put their own designs on their sneakers by taking advantage of Zazzle.com. Zazzle is a customer-centric ecosystem that lets customers create their own designs to products and then buy or resell their creations.
    Jan. 8, 2009
    All Members
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  • Smart Customization Comes of Age

    Best Practices from the MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2008

    by Patricia Seybold
    Smart Customization, a profitable and sustainable implementation of mass customization, is gaining traction. The MIT Smart Customization Seminar, held November 2008, provided glimpses of what international practitioners have done and learned.
    Jan. 8, 2009
    Strategies
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  • CustoMax: Platform & Ecosystem for Custom-Tailored Apparel

    A Journey from Mass-Produced to Smart Customization

    by Patricia Seybold
    CustoMax is a customer-centric ecosystem for made-to-fit mass-customized suits, apparel, and shoes.
    Jan. 8, 2009
    Strategies
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  • Spreadshirt: Customers Want to Create Their Own Brands and Amplify Your Brand

    Best Practices from the MIT Smart Customization Seminar 2008

    by Patricia Seybold
    Why do customers love to create their own T-Shirts? “If it’s not on a shirt, it didn’t happen,” says Jana Eggers, Spreadshirt’s CEO. Customers value the ability to create their own brands. They also love to personalize well-known brands.
    Jan. 8, 2009
    Strategies
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  • What Are Visionary Customer-Centric Execs Thinking About?

    Engaging with Customers to Innovate, Solve Problems, and Keep their Brands Focused on Customers' Goals

    by Patricia Seybold
    Patty’s Visionaries are the leading customer-centric executives who are transforming their companies (and their industries) from the outside in. This is an overview of some of the topics they discussed in their Spring 2008 meeting.
    Jun. 5, 2008
    Strategies
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  • Making Team Innovation Work

    Learning from FIRST How to Inspire Inventors and Build an Innovative Culture

    by Patricia Seybold
    FIRST’s annual world robotics championship inspires kids to work together while competing, and to come up with innovative solutions to difficult challenges. There are lessons to be learned on how to inspire adults to innovate and cooperate.
    Apr. 30, 2008
    All Members
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