Crowd Control Imagine a biz where everyday Internet users were your focus group—and financiers! By Scott Steinberg Having personally published books, games, magazines, and more, trust me: There’s nothing cheap, or certain, about creating a new product or service. Thankfully, for today’s entrepreneur there’s no need to bet the farm building a better widget or to waste years designing the next Betamax. To find, fund, and have a field day with tomorrow’s million-dollar idea, all you need to do is ask potential customers. Crazy? Au contraire. Spending millions of up-front dollars on research and development, then manufacturing thousands of vibrating dumbbells and praying that they’ll catch the public’s fancy—that’s the insane approach. Instead, through the magic of crowdsourcing—requesting feedback or recruiting helping hands from large groups of people through open calls for assistance—you can gauge demand for and create bankable products from day one. Because we’re partners, let’s call our new venture What People Want—it’s short, sweet, and gets the basic idea across. (Plus, the jocks and daytime soap stars endorsing products on our inevitable late-night-TV infomercials won’t have trouble remembering the name.) From handbags to helmets, tell us what to make, pre-order enough items, and we’ll build it on demand. Already available services like Kickstarter.com—which let you petition everyday Internet users to finance projects like record albums, high-tech gadgets, and boutique fashion lines—have the right idea. Creators simply submit to Kickstarter a description of their project, including photos, videos, or audio samples. Then they set a desired funding level and deadline for financing. Kickstarter users are asked to pledge specific dollar amounts and are offered special rewards related to each project for contributing. (Ex. Donate $50 to get an indie comic book published and you’ll receive a signed copy; pledge $500 and the creator might put your name in the credits.) If financial goals are met, donations are processed and rewards are distributed. If promissory funding comes up short, nothing is exchanged. Succeed or fail, the creator of the idea not only retains all rights to his project, but he has also initiated buzz for it and opened pathways to potential backers and fans. Consider the recent book-to-film adaptation Blue Like Jazz, an independently financed production that was suspended for lack of funding. When Jonathan Frazier and Zach Prichard, fans of the Donald Miller memoir upon which the film is based, heard about the work stoppage, they consulted with the movie’s creative team and turned to Kickstarter. Within 10 days of its initial Kickstarter posting, the project had raised the $125,000 needed to resume production. Contributions continue to pour in. To date, nearly 4,500 people have invested, on average, a staggering $76 per person. In this instance, financiers were rewarded with everything from a thank-you call from the director to a personal home-visit and book reading by the author himself. Even carmakers are dabbling in the entrepreneurial application of crowdsourcing, using reality as the ultimate focus group and building viable businesses before finished products even exist. Take, for example, the doings at Local Motors (local-motors.com). Its autos are conceived by average Joes, whose designs are reviewed and voted on by other drivers. Highly rated concepts are moved into production at specially built
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Posted by Cristina Caine
It still blows my mind that industries like automotive and fashion design are crowdsourcing projects. It's a practical way for would-be designers to get involved in the creative process and actually see a finished product that they had a hand in creating.