Crowdsourcing Win: Minecraft Lego
As the proud owner parent of a LEGO-obsessed 6-year old, I couldn't help but get excited about what LEGO has been doing with the LEGO CUUSOO community. LEGO CUUSOO is a site where you can share set concepts you'd like the whole world to enjoy and aim for their eventual release as real products. And if the idea of being able to offer feedback and suggest ideas to form new products or features isn't sweet enough on its own, how about a 1% royalty on all product sold, should your idea come to life? Easy as 1-2-3:
Have an Idea? - Create a project, share your idea and see what other people think.
Get 10,000 Supporters - With 10,000 supporters, your idea will be reviewed by LEGO for a chance to become an official LEGO product.
Receive Royalty - If the project passes the review, it will be produced and you as the idea owner will receive 1% of the total net sales of the product.
What a great way for LEGO to engage with the builders of all ages that make up their customer base. I've always been a fan of LEGO as an outlet for creativity, making ridiculous monstrosities as a child, and now, helping my little guy take his carefully built, 3rd party branded Star Wars, Batman, Dinosaur sets... and making monstrosities of his own. T-rex head on Batman's body? Sure! No, I see no reason why the Luke Skywalker and the Joker shouldn't cruise around in a firetruck, attacking Jack Sparrow riding a raptor. Sure, it incites a bit of the old nerdrage in me the way that famous Gandalf pic does... but it's all an outlet for creativity. With the CUUSOO community, LEGO is able to encourage and harness some of that creativity, and turn it around into new product. And for a new product to surface from the community, it has a fanbase of at least 10,000 strong community members, who may have a significant propensity to buy. Yesterday, LEGO CUUSOO released a preview of the first project to reach the 10,000 supporter mark and pass their review - The Minecraft Project.
According to comments from the LEGO CUUSOO team, it took just 48 hours for Mojang's Minecraft project to get 10,000 supports worldwide.
Okay, we get it. You have a passionate community who wants to see Minecraft themed LEGO sets. It just took three server outages to prove it to us, but yeah, we're listening.
Having passed review, the new 480-piece Minecraft LEGO set is scheduled to ship Summer 2012, and is already open to pre-orders at gamer/geek clothing retailer Jinx. There's something to be said for the power of communities, and crowdsourcing in new product introduction.
The Power of Customer Communities
Once upon a time, sinking piles of dollars into market research, surveys, focus groups and the like was just the way it was. And even then, there was no guarantee you'd have a winner on your hands. Not that such guarantees even exist... But through crowdsourcing ideas and feedback, or even crowdfunding, producers of product are able to get closer to those guarantees by gauging audience interest and commitment. As an example, since early 2008, myStarbucksIdea has been a place for customers to share, vote on, and discuss ideas on improving their Starbucks experience.
The community, powered by Salesforce.com, is home to over 28,000 coffee & espresso drink suggestions alone, and thousands of other ideas in categories like Social Responsibility, Atmosphere & Locations, and New Technology. MyStarbucksIdea provides Starbucks an opportunity to engage with their customers and fans, but also to have the community be a part of shaping products and services delivered by their favorite coffee house. In a recent post, MyStarbucksIdea announced a record 2011 where 70 ideas from customers and partners were launched, including things like Starbucks K-Cups packs (for Keurig single serve brewers) and eGifting.
Eat your heart out focus groups.
More recently, it's hard not to go a day without seeing a Kickstarter project making headlines at TechCrunch, on Twitter, or even in traditional media. Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects, where every week tens of thousands of people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, and other creative fields. Entrepreneurs, creatives, and other project creators submit their ideas and set funding goals to support developing their project. If projects reach their funding goal, off to the races building, creating, with a pool of funding... and in many cases, extra hype and buzz already created to support accelerated growth. None of that "if you build it, they will come" nonsense. If they come, and commit, build it.
Whether it's in toys, coffee, business applications, or a pictorial of a century of history's most notable dogs, it's great to see community-sourced ideas come to life, and companies leveraging communities and social channels to test and validate assumptions and ideas. I for one am excited to see communities in action... if it wasn't for these communities, Luke and ol' Bats wouldn't be getting that new creeper friend to play with.
