NPR ran a story this morning entitled, "Crowd Sourcing Turns Business On Its Head," in which it reported on a sneaker company that asks customers to design potential new shoes, posts the designs so that folks can vote on their faves, then produces and sells the top shoe. The winning designer gets $1000 and 1% of the profits. The company claims that, by using this method, they've cut design-to-final-product time from 12 months to six weeks.
The line in the story that gave me the greatest pause was this: "Like other companies relying on community design, RYZ [the shoe company in question] doesn't need a large marketing or design staff."
Creative competition is not uncommon. Microsoft endorses the iDSA's Next-Gen PC Design Contest, and McDonald's famously ran it's "Big Mac Chant-off" earlier this summer, to cite just two of many examples. It's also far from new. For example, Coke got the design for its iconic bottle from a competition it ran way back in 1915.
The real question is, "Are we entering an era in which competitions and crowd-sourcing will become the primary source for everything from product design to graphic design?" Although this might be an extreme way of putting it, I fear that it's not an outlandish way of putting it.
At the end of the day, the proof of this pudding is in the eating: Will shoes designed this way sell? If they do, the model works. My hunch is, however, that even if they don't sell, it won't mean the model can't work, just that it needs refinement.
I definitely see this as a growing way to do business with designers and other types.
Last week at the Chicago New Media Summit, Ross Kimbarovsky & Mike Samson, founders of crowdSPRING, a new Chicago company that allows businesses to post their design project (like a $150 logo design) and then designers from anywhere in the world can choose to create logos and hope theirs is chosen, talked about how the advent of Web 2.0 and it's democratization of the web (my term) is throwing traditional thinking about hiring a 'professional' designer on its ear.
They say "this experiment in worldwide empowerment called the Internet has brought designers together and the tide is turning. The tension evident between this growing creative movement and centuries of tradition will disrupt and define the creative industries for years to come."
Of course they say this because and are hoping this change comes because, after all, they have found a way to make money off of it. But it will come with both good and bad results, and it's sure gonna be interesting to watch this pan out.
Thanks for the comment, "ChicagoDude."
This line hits the nail on the head: "The tension evident between this growing creative movement and centuries of tradition will disrupt and define the creative industries for years to come."
The tension is real and tempers can run fairly high on this issue. Should businesses discover that they can get their design needs met effectively in this way, then the design profession will have to be very innovative in its response.
If, on the other hand, businesses find out that cutting corners on design has real business costs, then the design profession will be vindicated.
We shall see what comes to pass.