Monday, November 3, 2008
What blogs, citizen journalism and YouTube have done for media, CrowdSpirit hopes to do for product development. The Scottish-French venture's focus is on harnessing the power of crowds to allow inventors and adaptors to take their products to market. By involving end-users in every aspect of a product's life-cycle, CrowdSpirit aims to set off a crowdsourced manufacturing revolution.
How it works: inventors submit ideas for innovative new products and contributors submit problems for inventors to work on. Members vote, define a product's specifications, and can invest money to finance development. After a first prototype has been created, selected members test and help fine-tune in cooperation with manufacturers. Once the stage of product development has been completed, contributors continue to be involved, for example by acting as a product's ambassador and promoting it to retailers, or by providing product support, like translating instruction manuals.
CrowdSpirit's primary focal point is electronics with a market price below EUR 150 / USD 190. If all goes well, this will be followed by more expensive electronics, and other sectors as the concept develops. A selection of inventions will be launched in parallel, so that the community can work on several projects at the same time.
What remains to be seen, is how customer-manufacturers will be rewarded for their efforts. CrowdSpirit clearly states that contributors give up all intellectual property rights when they submit an idea or product, or when they help define a product. As trendwatching.com points out in its briefing about the customer-made trend (a.k.a. co-creation), "as co-creators get smarter and realise how much they're worth, expect kick-backs for co-created goods and services to go up. If you don't pay a fair share, talented members of the global brain will take their business elsewhere."
Website: www.crowdspirit.org
Kiosks that digitally print newspapers from around the world
Some ideas are nothing but solutions waiting for the right entrepreneur to get them going. That certainly applies to The Netherlands-based company PEPC, a global distributor of digitally transmitted newspapers from newspaper publishers around the world.
They have actually solved the problem of online newspapers not being much fun to read on planes, in the park, in bed or in bath, if you can get an online connection at all.
How it works: PEPC (founded in 1999) has developed an interactive kiosk with a built-in printer that digitally prints the latest editions of newspapers from around the world, on-demand and within minutes. The kiosks are linked to PEPC's private satellite network, meaning kiosks can be placed almost anywhere on earth.
Having completed product development and testing by mid-2002, the last six months have been used for a roll-out of 112 digital kiosks in 47 countries world-wide, publishing 104 titles in 28 languages. The kiosks are popping up in hotel lobbies, airports, cruise ships, and business centers.
The planned IPO for this year (2003) should accommodate a fast roll-out (PEPC is hoping to sell 1 million shares, priced at 14-16 USD), and, by increasing its scale of operations, a lower price per paper printed. The price currently hovers around 4-5 USD.
Sounds like an interesting sales or investment opportunity, or a great partnering deal if you’re working for anything that is fit to print!
source: www.springwise.com
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Aiming to become more nimble, car rental company Europcar is introducing mobile car rental facilities in the United Kingdom. Small rental booths are hooked up to Europcar's rental booking system and are manned by a representative during peak hours. During off hours, customers can drop off keys and make their own reservations over a built-in reservation hotline. A selection of hire cars is available at a location near the booth.
Europcar currently has 130 outlets in the UK and its Europcar City concept will let it expand to wherever potential customers are. In some cases booths will be installed temporarily, for example to cope with increased demand during tourist seasons, major events and exhibitions. Long-term rental points will be installed wherever it isn't feasible to build full-size outlets, like city centers.
The first Europcar City is operating at London's Euston train station, where 90% of rentals during the first month of operation were new London customers. The program will be rolled out to other locations over the next few months. Whether you want to create surprise and buzz (pop-up retail), or want to be where the demand is, following your customers around is never a bad idea ;-)
Website: www.europcar.co.uk
Contact: www.europcar.co.uk/tools/talktous.jsp
Source: www.springwise.com