David Carr of The New York Times wrote recently that Apple’s tablet would be nothing less than “the second coming of the iPhone, a so-called Jesus tablet that can do anything, including saving some embattled print providers from doom.”

The result, after the launch of this new piece of voodoo from the people at the forefront of technology has been a monumental disappointment. It seems to be no more than an electronic book, magazine or newspaper – with internet access and a few nice apps and a screen that will screw your eyes up in about 15 minutes!

What’s interesting is why some of us expected so much more from a new gadget. I suspect this is because for some people, technology has become a kind of religion. We may not believe in a God anymore, but just as 500 years ago the Spanish missionaries put shiny mirrors in churches to dazzle the Incas and draw them in – we still like to see shiny new things that fill us with awe.

We’re living in an age of change and upheaval – yet technology gives us the illusion of control, a sense of order. Pick up a smart phone or turn on your laptop and you have a reliable, dependable device that does whatever you tell it to do. And no wonder a lot of people in the media wanted to believe that a new device from Apple could stop the decline of our industry’s Newspapers and magazines. Both are struggling to adapt to the Internet, and no one has any idea what our business will look like when we get to the other side of this wrenching period. The iPad may very well be the answer …….. eventually. But not from day one – and not until you get one free when you sign up to a year’s subscription of …. whatever.

It says more about us and what we have come to expect from Apple than Apple itself. Yet Apple did not invent the MP3 player, and they where not the first to think of distributing music over the internet. What they did was make it ‘cool’. In a world where Apple only have a 5% share of the mobile market and about the same in home computing – I don’t think the iPad is the savior of the printed word. But its quite cool. Should have called it the iWant.

Online is the prefect testing ground of this theory for many brands to collaborate with individuals and communities who share a common passion.

Apple opened up the source to its iphone and now they can claim over 90,000 applications for the iphone, the majority of which have been developed by consumers for consumers. When Vodafone tried to do this internally with a team of over 500 developers they arrived after 1year of development with zero, that’s right zero applications for their Vodafone live service!

And more recently a company called Local Motors has built a car called the Rally Fighter which has been designed and specified purely from thousands of ordinary people, who happen to be car nuts, submitting ideas, plans and concepts to the company’s website. Those that came up with the best and most significant ideas won cash prizes. The whole venture has taken about 14 months and about $2m to take the car from a sketch to the finished item. And there are already more cars in the pipeline.

 But even though these are great examples of successful product developments, brand owners are still reticent to let go and try this approach, they cling to teams of researchers and business analysts to inform their strategies and plans ,yet increasingly consumer knowledge outweighs expert knowledge and has more relevance and saliency.

So why not collaborate with the end users, ask them what they want and how they want it and cut out the “middle man” and develop your new products at a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time and with a ready audience of buyers!

The time for a new product development model is upon us.

Chris Lovell, Group CEO