Comments on: Even with a vibrant community you can still fail

By: oddpodz

oddpodz — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:59:06 +0000

I think it is helpful to listen to your customers and show them in some way that you are listening, but it’s smart to keep innovating on your own. I forget where I heard it, but there is an old innovation tale about the days pre-automobile. If you had done some field research with people about transportation, they probably would suggest finding away to breed faster horses. It’s doubtful that a “customer” would have suggested building a car. Major innovations don’t really happen from crowd consensus, but you might find a few easily added features.

By: Ellen Naylor

Ellen Naylor — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:24:46 +0000

Hi Francois,

I like your post in that it’s provocative and gets people to think about what realistically to expect from “your community,” esp. that innovation often doesn’t come from your custmers, just ideas for product tweaking or even new products that are not so innovative, but they’ll pay for.

It’s important to have an idea of what to expect from your various networks. Innovation comes from so many sources, but really needs to be a very targeted effort of which social networks is a piece to get you to people who you would never otherwise meet, or at least not as easily.

Thanks,

Ellen Naylor

By: Stephane LEE

Stephane LEE — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:41:11 +0000

Great post François, though a bit biased on the downside.

There are countermeasures for these :
1/ don’t give money incentives, but VIP rewards

2/ have a push/pull strategy, where you welcome user ideas, but also feed your community with your own information or ideas, and we have a unique platform for enabling this.