Recently I heard about Quirky process through a product design and eventual commercialization, and get to think how this model can help organizations to think about how to give their employees and R&D a new way to work.
So, why do we really need R&D in our organizations? We can think of R&D as a prototyping engine, with the possibility to give employees a shot in an invention of theirs and possible innovation.
The problem here is that there are so many companies that possesses so much talent and some great ideas of products that can truly revolutionize the markets, and even whole industries. This hack is trying to suggest a model of the company Quirky.
But what makes Quirky model so interesting for organizations? Quirky made this model with 6 purposes:
- Meet the craziest and creative ideas for new products.
- Check product feasibility through consensus.
- Develop the best ideas.
- Create a social interaction of the best ideas in order to create demand among social network users and held a pre sale.
- Product manufacturing.
- Reward the inventor.
The Quirky Model
Six points are important to check product feasibility in an open space such as a social network, in which users, customers and potential customers of the product can review specifications and start to be interested on the new supply.
This model gives us two alternatives if an organization is interested on implementing it:
- Develop and commercialize new products via outsourcing.
- Use Quirky model in the company directly.
Develop and commercialize new products via outsourcing
Quirky-like companies are emerging all over the world, all of them implementing a social platform in which users can look after the next inventions that are being created. Outsource this activity could be feasible if only the top management is involved in the processes.
Use Quirky model in the company directly
We have heard about companies like 3M and Whirpool and their innovation pipelines that make it easy to test products that are aligned to the company strategy,constantly with innovation-like characteristics. As far as we know, Quirky has its own pipeline. And it could be used really well even inside these companies’ pipelines.
R&D challenge is to establish communication through social networks and all the internet community. So, we can observe for example, converging 3M and Quirky models, to see what happens.
- Gather of ideas having in consideration a crowdsourcing tool (maybe an opportunity for a follower to submit its idea for a product and a simple design, and eventually having a contest to make the follower work in the 3M prototyping process).
- Idea feasibility. These could be done by the means of the fans choosing their favorite idea.
- Cost feasibility
- Development
- Funding and legal issues to launch to market
- Launch. Having a Quirky-like presale instead of producing 1,000 units that maybe won’t be sold.
- Product evaluation. Evaluate the product and the success of the new product pipeline.
In conclusion, I hope that I was able to give you a great insight and motivate you all for keep on creating new ways to make the established better; for us, for the future.
Quirky.com
Tennant, N. (2008) Unleashing Innovation
"Quirky-like companies are emerging all over the world, all of them implementing a social platform in which users can look after the next inventions that are being created. Outsource this activity could be feasible if only the top management is involved in the processes."
Well almost all of the companies out there are outsourcing because they know it is really feasible and it is very effective for their business. Outsourcing can be very helpful to a company and it can be also a key for a greater success. When you outsource you can reduce your labour cost and increase your productivity. Developing and commercialising new products via outsourcing is a good strategy because the specialists will handle it for them.
- Log in to post comments
You need to register in order to submit a comment.