Consumer Passion

Fishing for Ideas

I'm being asked on a regular basis now to explain Open Innovation, which is what the startup I'm part of, Fellowforce.com, is all about.  Let me see if I can put this in a nutshell, or clamshell perhaps. 

In this dynamic, shifting, hyper-competitive global economy, most companies cannot simply stay 'inside the aquarium' anymore and expect to thrive.  Open Innovation enables any company or organization to go 'outside in' for innovation.   You can Crowdsource, which I like to describe as fishing for ideas in the open ocean.  Never know, you might land a marlin.  Or you can Crowdcast (also called narrowcasting), where you decide you want to solicit help from a more narrow group of experts.  This is like fishing in a stocked pond.  At Fellowforce.com, it's a closed Challenge, as opposed to an open one.

There's a third one, that I like very much.  It's for all of you 'Eureka Moment' creatives.  You could be a stay-at-home mom, a painter, a plumber, an engineer, anyone ... who comes up with one or more brilliant ideas.  At least potentially brilliant.  An innovation to a product currently on store shelves, a new product that you couldn't make on your own, or a service that you think an existing company should implement. 

The Innovation Box at Fellowforce.com is for you folks.  Just take your fish (idea), wrap it up  (we provide the online form for that), and present it to an existing company or organization (we do that for you).  The Innovation Box.  Give us your fish!   

(OH!!  and please remember to stop by Fellowforce.com to enter our Tagline Challenge.  A tagline is a variant of a branding slogan.  So put on your creative thinking cap, and come up with a new tagline to attract 'Fellows' to our site.  If yours is picked best, you get 1% of our company.  And who knows how much that could be worth down the road a bit :-) 

POIP (Pizza over Internet Protocol)

Dominos is the latest pizza chain to announce it's offering online ordering at a majority of its locations.  (the press release is here)

"Ordering pizza on the Internet is a relatively new trend," said Rob Weisberg, Domino's VP of precision and print marketing. "While the majority of our customers still prefer to place their order over the phone, we predict that by 2010, 50 percent of all orders will be placed through digital channels."

Weisberg continues, "We are evolving our Web site and our ordering process to cater to our young, hip customers who live on the Internet, love Domino's Pizza and need quick and easy ordering because their lifestyle demands it." He adds So far, our customers have given Domino's online ordering platform top billing for customer satisfaction.."

I no longer consider myself young, hip ... well, only by mistake.  But I'd order my pizza pie online if it gets the order right 99% of the time.  And if it doesn't add any time to the ordering/delivery process.  If you're passionate about pizza, and who isn't (stop with the too many carbs thing), you've no doubt had trouble at some point ordering by phone.  Might be a bad connection, might be a person with zero customer service ability on the other end.  If I can get on Dominos.com quickly, and place a perfectly accurate order, and there's someone manning the cyber counter at my local joint, then this is a good thing.  It's my turn to cook, so I think I'll make it Dominos tonight, with my laptop as the oven.