Innovation through Customers

About a year ago Dell Computers launched a community site aimed at interactive feedback with customers, for the purpose of improving products and customer service, and responding effectively to customer needs by using this Web 2.0 technology.

The site is called IdeaStorm and, judging by the comments and interactions so far, and especially the rapid response to customers enabled by the site, it seems to be a great success.

The site is powered by SalesForce.com, a SaaS purveyor of Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM), and is based on their own Ideas Exchange.

Standing back and taking the Big Picture view, what's happening here is improved innovation and product leadership through collaboration with customers through a fairly new technology tool.

It represents innovative synergy between (a) the business organisation, (b) its customers and (c) information & communications technology (ICT). The prediction is that it will benefit the Business in achieving competitive advantage, provided Dell continue to innovate, and tie in its Business Processes with the site.

How did this innovation come about at Dell? Was it a top-down thing, or was it bottom-up? The guess is that it was a bottom-up idea and, if so, it gives an object lesson in using IT and people in achieving competitive advantage.

The people at the bottom, or more correctly at the Coal face, were empowered to innovate, and the people at the top provided the Governance that explicitly or implicitly laid down the principles and set up the organisation structures to make it all happen.

This use of ICT to bring customers into the innovation circle is predicted to grow, according an article in the December, 2007 McKinsey Quarterly.

And it's a good example of what this very blog site is all about.