Open innovation and the lottery business model

In a few weeks time, the company I work for will be moving to a new office space. Out with the Dilbert-like cubicle paradise, and in with the modern open office space without fixed seats, but with creative design, meeting pods, videoconferencing facilities and everything needed for a flexible, future-proof workplace. As part of my spring refurbishment, I'm also taking the opportunity to make my home office a tad more creative.

Open innovation and open design

So I ordered a few design gimmicks from the world of 'open design' for my home office to remind me of the new business models that are on the rise ever since technology made them feasible. Design matters, as Pinterest's founding designer states "design shrinks the gap between what a product does and why it exists". He also states it is work for all of us, and that is exactly what open design means: everyone can bring up their design ideas for products and collaborate with other (dedicated) designers and an interested crowd to get them into products. The profit is shared between all.

The two best known examples of open design companies to me are Quirky.com in the USA and Mookup.com in Europe. Below is a promotional trailer for Quircky to give you the big idea... The 'mots du jour' are open innovaton, open invention, open design...


Quirky Manifesto from Quirky on Vimeo.


What I bought

I bought a few items on Mookup.com for my home office refurbishment. Here's a few pics. The 'floating book stand', 'stain rack' and 'magnetic leaves' don't really fall in the category 'better use of a product', but into 'cool to look at'... I want them to remind me of this new business model (and I want the neighbors to wonder what I'm up to also, I admit...).

The lottery as a business model

The brand promise of sites as Quircky.com is to collaborate on new ideas, together turning them into a commercial product, and then share the profits. I think this is a great concept, and has a lot more potential than currently exploited. But how far does it scale up? Can it become a dominant model for innovation and product design? That will depend on the elephant in the room : Can you as a contributing free agent actually make enough money? A look in their forum gives mixed reviews.

I call this the lottery business model. From my UK friends I heard the phrase 'the lottery is the taxes of the poor'. People are willing to spend money for astronomical low chances of being the jackpot winner. It works. It also works in business models such as Quircky.com, Amazon's Mechanical Turk (where you can hit for submitted micro-tasks), topcoder.com (software coders compete to win the prize on a submitted code challenge). People are paying with their time and skill instead of money, and are thus entered into a lottery in the hope of winning the big reward, or the big job when their skills get noticed in the crowd. There is nothing wrong with this model as a side-income. It's even fun. For a few people it might actually get them a solid income. Those people will serve as the role models to attract thousands of less lucky folks to contribute their time essentially for free. Nothing wrong with that, if people realize that up front. Most people don't win the lottery. But then again... you might be next!  


On a closing note: I wouldn't mind getting the 'draw lamp' for my birthday next month...
Maybe draw lamp for my birthday next month?