The music industry has faced considerable strategic challenges in recent years, not least the trend towards reduced revenues caused by file sharing, but also the shift in market power from labels towards online aggregators such as Apple iTunes. Another side-effect of the world wide web on the music industry has been the trend towards dis-intermediation, [...]

An article in LimaOhio.com includes information on American Trim, a company from Lima, Ohio in the U.S. that is held up by the local Mayor as an example of a enterprise that has successfully pursued a mass customization strategy. American Trim manufactures parts for appliances and heavy trucks. ___________________________________________ In FXStreet.com, John Mauldin wrote a [...]

Since the crowdsourcing phenomenon was first documented during 2006, in a Wired magazine article by Jeff Howe, followed by his book of that name in 2007, the business and technology world has continued to adopt the concept, with varying models and methods. In some cases, the crowdsourcing model used involved a reward of some kind [...]

Following on from the previous post on personalized medicine, a less serious application of genetics: DNA art, as reported in the Pittsburg Live website. DNA 11, an Ottawa, Canada-based company, takes people’s DNA, obtained by a simple cotton swab wiped inside a cheek, and turns the genetic information into a glass-framed, 8-by-10-inch visual piece of [...]

I have found some interesting articles on personalized medicine around the web in recent weeks which, when taken collectively, provide a useful examination of current developments in this area. An article in the Vancouver Sun, ‘One-size-fits-all no more‘ provides an interesting overview on the topic of personalized medicine, explaining the topic everyday language, and decoding [...]

The Inventorspot website has a news item on the new customized travel guides being produced by Dorling Kindersley (DK) Travel. They are similar in concept to Offbeat Guides, which were covered on this site recently. The Inventorspot article considers the DK Travel customized travel guide to be a superior offering to the Offbeat Guide, although [...]

Cincom, which provides software solutions for configuration of complex products (often called product configurators), has started two separate blogs to engage with its customer base. The first of these blogs is called Complex Selling Made Effective, with articles written by contributors from Cincom, principally Louis Columbus and Dale Wolf of Cincom Manufacturing Business Solutions. While [...]

Could 2009 be the year that crowdsourcing takes root in the area of car design? My last 2008 post here described how Caterham, a specialist British sports car maker, is crowdsourcing the design of its next car. In late December, an article in the Boston-based XConomy website described how Local Motors, a startup company in [...]