When in the thick of solving a problem with your product, it’s easy to forget to check if your users have already solved it. After all, tradition dictates that you arrive at work, lock the door behind you, and commence creating. But that was before the internet – before people could make a public record of their at-home product improvements and share them with the world. Chances are, if your product is not meeting the needs of many of your customers, someone out there already fixed it. Some examples you say?

Louis Plante had cystic fibrosis. One long-term treatment for his disease was a long and uncomfortable ordeal to clean the lungs that was aptly called “lung clapping.” One day, Louis found himself ruining a rock concert for everyone in his general vicinity by coughing violently whenever there was music playing. He left early. He was disappointed that he didn’t get to see the encore, so naturally he dwelled on it. Pretty soon, he realized that he had been sitting close to the speaker and this was forcing him to expectorate without a machine punching him in the chest. His discovery was purely anecdotal. But if it works for one person, maybe it could help others. It’s at least worth a look.

Though there are many other examples in the medical field, it is by far not the only field with user-driven innovation. From modifying your Model T, to snowmobiles, to mountain bikes, open source software, and everything in between, it is human nature to improve things to solve problems. The technology to share our DIY projects gets better every day and this will become much more pronounced with the encroaching expansion of 3D printing. The ability to experiment and improve will shift to the user. If you were to believe someone like Eric von Hippel, the current shift from producer driven to user driven innovation is a business paradigm shift the likes of which we have not seen since the industrial revolution.

From peer to peer, this sharing is as easy as social media. But how do companies get access to crowd ingenuity? This movement of ideas is slowed and complicated by intellectual property laws and the difficulty of searching for and identifying worthwhile feedback, from lead users.

At ideaphore, we are lowering the cost to transfer ideas by simplifying the transaction. Imagine, open innovation available to everyone; customer development on demand. By removing high cost barriers, we let ideas move from individuals to organizations faster and earlier in the ideation process than ever before. Our suggestion box is better and more powerful because companies can determine the quality of suggestions proposed by an individual before looking at any of their ideas. And individuals have greater control and understanding of the terms under which their insights can be viewed by a company. We give companies the opportunity to listen to their best customers.

Join us in innovating open innovation by registering at https://ideapho.re.