In its "Customer-Made" special report, innovation Web site Trendwatching.com looks at "the phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed."
Note, this trend goes beyond the mere build-your-own-blouse services on fashion retail sites, which allow you to select size, color, and logo placement on your $129 shirt. At that point, the manufacturer has already designed the basic product and narrowed the options the consumer can choose. Where we are heading, Trendwatching reports, is to an ongoing two-way conversation between consumers and business that will redefine how products and services are made in the future. Case in point, TiVo's self-organized Community forum, where 65,000 members "have traded ideas on 'how to convince friends and family to buy a TiVo,' 'how to deliver impromptu sales training sessions to Best Buy employees whose sales pitches need work,' or 'how to be a better TiVotee.'" As Trendwatching puts it, "Customer-made sales teams anyone?"
Why are consumers in the driver's seat? Trendwatching sees a convergence over the last five years of increasing consumer activism and the coming of age of "Generation C"—the C is for content—a creative cohort that is generating an incredible amount of digital content filling the Web from home-made videos to product reviews.
Trendwatching is left with the breathless conclusion that "Customer-Made may turn out to be one of the most exciting and long-term engines behind change and innovation that the world of business has seen in years: a way of thinking that has the power to redefine the relationship between customer and brand, between consumer and producer, something that taps into the most awesome reservoir of intellectual capital ever assembled." That's a lot to chew on, but the ideas presented here are worth the attention of marketers and product developers everywhere.