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