Wishful Thinking

[dies_felices]

  This post may be considered rather cynically.  The idea being to get the early adopter's pulse racing.  My thought here is though the idea trying to achieve model that appears similar to to the crowd funding model.

  Sony as it would be in this case, opens to the community of their customers a set of projects to be "Funded", some of the projects would be drawn in part from the community experience.  A project would end either on saturation (nearing the end date for the project) or on a specific date.   The success of project would be drawn from the level of excitement it creates. Extensions would occur for projects with a really big buzz.  I would argue that Sony is perhaps one of only a few companies able to do this effectively being able draw from content creation right across content delivery and more.

  This would work in a manner of limited edition products meet crowd funding.

  Example 1 would be a limited edition designer Xperia Z tablet with 128GB + 4G and accessories.  This would be run like a crowd funding site following a rewards style model until you reach customers back the Tablets which would be priced in the order of £800 (limited edition model with accessories and sub set of rewards).  £10 - everybody wants a T-Shirt!

  Example 2 combine the noise reduction of MDR-1RNC Prestige headphones with the wireless nature of the MDR-1RBT Prestige headphones.  Just for kicks, I'll say add touch gesture controls like another popular brand then test the market.

  Example 3 Crowd selected special features for special edition versions of Sony generated content.

  Example 4 Crowd driven mini content, like alternate endings or re-write a scene for if character Y were the hero in place of character X or if actor B plays character X in place of actor A.

  Example 5 Innovation open on-line workshops for the community to innovate along side Sony engineers and other creative thinkers.  Sony would then in partnership with the respective community members make some products a reality.  These might be to reach meet the specific needs of an disadvantaged person or to utilise a new idea.  Terms and conditions would of cause apply and need to be clearly stated.

[Catmambo]

Interesting idea. Getting consumer feedback on hardware development can be useful in some circumstances, but reminded of the Henry Ford quote “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”, its not always the best route. I know the US do involve local San Diegan's in research labs and we've done similar things in the UK.

Sony Store Online do offer selective limited edition products exclusively and some people may remember the Qualia products - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia_(Sony) that were launched 10 years ago. Now whilst things like Kickstarter allow for great crowd funded models, one would have to choose a product very carefully I think. 

[dies_felices]

This time, I will be quick.

I think your Henry Ford quote is spot on.  This is the thing with innovation.  I'd never have imagined Google, or Facebook or Twitter, they're easy to see how they're different but Amazon innovated too.

In so far as your statement 'one would have to choose a product very carefully I think' is concerned.  Sure if you like 3D printers you'd be foolish to back each project out there, at least unless you've got money to burn...  I think I get what you're saying.  If someone does come along and back any novelty then yes that would skew the outcome.

It's swings and roundabouts.  Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Would we have had an oil revolution (and derivatives of oil based products), if humans engineered a faster horse?

Or would we have ended up with the following:

[dies_felices]

I can see your using blue sky thinking there.

As the word revolution implies these thing will all eventually revolve back round to where they started.  While in the forseeable future we may not be relying upon horses as an energy source to meet our power needs bio-engineering might.