Sloan Management Review Article - ETR 500 Week 10 Blog

Consumers as they say are now “taking the bull by the horns” and are becoming an intricate part of the product innovation process despite what some businesses would like to think.  Consumers are in a position of power and have the final say so as to whether or not a product will be successful.  The field of dreams concept that has dominate the industries for decades of, “build it and they will come” is diminishing. Only few companies such as Apple are still successful using that concept and they too have tweaked it with the consumer in mind.  Consumers are now taking a manufacturer product and augmenting it fit their needs a lot better or upgrading it to a more effective product.   

Technology advancement couple with consumer’s curiosity has seen the evolution of the product innovation process.  The internet and the advancement of science have put the consumer smack in the middle of the invention cycle.  These consumers are creating, prototyping and executing product testing on their own.  Consumers are no longer waiting for the manufacturers to provide them with products that they need or having the OEMs assume what a consumer will need.  The consumer is now taking the lead and entering the market place themselves as entrepreneurs or seeking the manufacturers out with their own product innovations.  Over the last few decades entrepreneurship has seen rapid growth because consumers are successfully developing their own product ideas.  Larger more establish companies are now acquiring smaller entities that evolved through the entrepreneurship process and are saving those large businesses some R&D funding.  Some entrepreneurs are utilizing the process of selling their company or product idea an exit strategy such as what John Osher did with Porter & Gamble and his SpinBrush product idea.  The R&D process is a critical and expensive area for more established companies looking to maintain or grow their market share.  A few of these businesses are now seeking consumer inputs as a part of their market research process and as a way to improve their product design. 

Going forward the future looks very bright for those consumers that have an excellent product idea and for those folks that are in the business of entrepreneurship.  However, all this is based on the thought the all these entities has a product that is marketable and has profitability tied to it.  Not every great idea can be marketed but for those (consumers) who can find the gap(s) within the market place by developing a products such as the SpinBrush then good things are on the horizon.