Nice Review in the Economist!

This week The Economist ran a nice mention of Outside Innovation along with three other books on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in a piece entitled "No Fear of Flying" . The three other featured books include: Mavericks at Work by William Taylor and Polly LaBarre, which I recommend highly,  Joe Wilson and The Creation of Xerox by Charles Ellis, and Carl Schramm's The Entrepreneurial Imperative.

The Economist said:

"Patricia Seybold focuses on the potential for using customers more in the innovation process. In “Outside Innovation”, she does a decent job of justifying her Martin Lukes-esque subtitle, “How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future”. Her case studies cover a number of web-based companies and are written up with even more breathless enthusiasm than those of Mr Taylor and Ms LaBarre. These examples will be especially useful to anyone looking to innovate on the internet, particularly if open-source software is involved.

Ms Seybold reckons that most companies make two common mistakes about their customers. First, they think that customers can't envision what they don't know about—so innovation has to be driven by a company's in-house visionaries. Second, they believe that they already do a good job of listening to their customers. Citing companies ranging from Lego, which got customers to design its bestselling Mindstorms robot products, to “boutique streetwear retailer” Karmaloop, whose trendsetting customers are its sales force, she argues that companies urgently need to identify their most important customers and engage deeply with them about what they want."

 

I loved the reference to Martin Lukes! For those who aren't loyal readers of the Financial Times, Martin Lukes is the main character of a hilarious email soap opera that runs every Thursday in the FT. I admit to being an addict--so much so that on a recent Thursday on which the column was inexplicably missing from my edition of the paper, I was miffed all day. Martin Lukes is delightfully depicted (by his creator, Lucy Kellaway) as a complete fool and idiot. He is particularly prone to coining over-the-top terms like "creovation" and to sexist and boorish, insensitive behavior. His escapades never cease to delight and amaze!

It's a good thing I have a sense of humo[u]r or I would be really dismayed to have my writing characterized as Martin Lukes-esque!

Comments

[GrahamHill]

Patty

You also got a great review in the MadeForOne.com blog "One Word for many Trends" posting at http://www.madeforone.com/Articles/index.php/technology/one-word-for-many-trends/

The posting traces the origins of Customer Co-creation in its many guises (CCC, lead user innovation, crowdsourcing, open innovation, etc).

It is as much a should read as Tim O'Reilly's more famous "What is Web2.0" posting at Oreilly.com.

Graham Hill