What are the similarities and differences between a community-driven product development process and a

traditional product development process inside a firm?

In the modern (costumer-driven) Business-Space costs, time and quality are the main variables that drive costrumer
needs. The challenge is to develop new products that are not only economically justifiable but, furthermore, meet
individuals’ needs. One way to approach/tackle to this problem is a more collabrative and itterative process. That is to tie
the costumers closely into development process of innovation.

As a matter of case study lets compare the two types of Product Developement Processes.

Social Media and internet (Web 2.0) has changed the way how costumers and businesses interact with one another.
How?

Both … are the costumer centered processes however the former/latter is more cheaper, faster and user friendly. In the
traditional product development process R&D(Research and Development)-focus groups, questionnieries, prototype
designs, test market costs a lot with a bound of feedback from a focus group, however in Community Driven Process
yields almost a realtime feedback of costumers. Further more

The difference between … is that

Traditional product Community-driven Product

Product Development Culture
Product Testing
Costumer Support
Product Promotion
Costumer Relationship
Product Ownership
Competitive Advantage
Costumer Opinion
Production Approach
Hierarchical, Centralized, Private, Closed, Expert
Driven
Internal, Dedicated test groups, hand picked
select costumers
Costumer Service
One-way marketing and advertisement
External Buyer (Consumer)
Institution, executive management and
shareholder
Superior products, legal barriers to entry (IP
protection), brand name advantage, price,
popularity,
Difficult to get user feedback .
Traditional R&D centered approach.-
groups, questionnaires, prototype
designs, test market
High cost for R&D- groups,
questionnieries, prototype designs, test
market
Work for newer ideas and creativeness
Egalitarian, Diverse, highly open and
collaborative, collective intelligence
World as tester
Costumer Community
Viral propagation, social marketing, word-of-
mouth, efficient use of social media and Web
2.0
Partner and supplier (costumer as producers)
Entire ecosystem (Business communities of
customers and partners)
Network effect, effective community
throughput, mass customization, end user
ownership, ease o use, cost-effectiveness,
Cheap, Faster and User Friendly products
Almost a Real time feedback by
costumers/community on Facebook,
Twitter etc implies easier to analyze
business stratigies
Low/Reduced costs of owener
Costumers can costumize their products
online
Costumers involved in development
process
Win-Win situation for Both Costumer
and the Company
 Sheer number of Developer implies low
development time
Compesation limited to few contributors
i.e. winners of contest etc implies low
costs
Open-ended production

SIMILARTIES
Both focus on costumers and their products/services
Both have marketing strategies
In case of products, they may not have production process difference.
Costs, Time, Quality and Costumers are variables/factors for both the process.

Head to Head Comparison of Threadless and ….

If the product design and implementation makes it through the community development process, it by definition satisfies the needs of the
community and likely satisfies the needs of the target consumers as well. In my view point, the Community Driven Company lasts longer since its
easy, simple, inexpensive, competitive, interesting and user friendly.

What are the motivations for community members to participate? What is Threadless offering to their community
members?
I will answer this question, with my experience when I visited their website.

Before going through the multimedia case, I navigated through their website and I attracted me so much that I started designing or them.
Threadless offers weekly design competitions and winner get an award of $1000. They have both open-ended and categorized design
competitions. Beyond the prize money, winning designers are rewarded with membership in the Threadless alumni club, a private forum for
exchanging feedback and advice.

Furthermore Threadless is offering on the site critiquing submitted designs, blogging about their daily lives, posting songs and videos inspired by
the designs and most importantly purchasing t-shirts that have won the weekly design competitions.

The blog forum provides a platform by means of which the 30-person staff regularly interacted with other Threadless community members
throughout the day, and vice versa.

Communication, transparency, hard work, and fun were key elements of the Threadless culture, both in the office and online.

How are winning designs currently selected? Figure 1 and Table 1 show sample designs and their relative
scores. How would you go about selecting winning designs?
Artists from around the world submit designs, the Threadless community scores each design and the best of the best are printed and
sold. New designs are chosen for print every week and the winning artists can profit handsomely for their designs, and in some
cases, also take home big cash prizes from special themed design challenges.

Each design that meets the minimum submission criteria is up for voting for a seven-day period on their website. Once a week, Threadless
employee selects six to eight designs from 100 top scoring archived designs, that have garnered the most community votes.

However, I include a third man comment. I told one o my designer friend about threadless competition and here is how he replied:

“I have seen how it works, it’s harder to win. The voters are the designers on the site, so you will witness the favoritism. No chance for a new
designer to get all the votes.”

My Questions?

1. What is difference between Community Driven Product Development and Community Based Product Development?