A recent post on this site profiled FellowForce, an open innovation project that acts as an intermediary between enterprises and individual innovators. At the time I had noted that the FellowForce website had certain limitations which limited the prospects for success. However, since then FellowForce has made an innovation of its own that […]

Springwise recently reported on developments involving the new trend of crowdsourced band management, which can also be referred to as ‘crowdfinancing’ as the participants pay a fee for the privilege of being involved in deciding the direction of a band. The first entrant in this new marketplace, Sellaband, recently celebrated its first anniversary. […]

CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com, has recently announced a new online Books on Demand service.
CreateSpace was originally founded as CustomFlix Labs, Inc. in 2002 and acquired by Amazon.com Inc. in 2005. Prior to launching the Books on Demand service, CreateSpace was already providing inventory-free, physical distribution of CDs and DVDs on Demand, and video […]

Mikko Ahonen, who runs the Beyond Creativity blog on open innovation, creativity and technology, has posted an interesting evaluation, of Fellowforce, a service that acts as an intermediary between companies and individual innovators or problem solvers.
Fellowforce is a collaboration between Building Better Business, a Dutch organisation that promotes entrepreneurship and a related business […]

In recent months, technology magazine Wired in collaboration with NewAssignment.Net has embarked on unique project - to launch a reporting project that would focus on a particular trend or area of interest, and then open up its reporting process to outsiders, who would work with the Wired editorial staff to carry out interviews with key […]

An interesting idea recently covered by Springwise is custom blended teas. Blends For Friends is a British company that sells custom-blended teas, mainly ordered as gifts. The buyer is asked to provide some information about the chosen recipient, although only some basic details are obligatory. However, there are many more optional pieces of information […]

Zazzle, the online marketplace for personalized products, may be close to securing funding of $30M from a hedge fund investor. This was reported on Friday last on Techcrunch.
No official statement has, as yet, been issued by Zazzle regarding any investment.  If true, it would continue a remarkable run of success for Zazzle in attracting […]

Erick Schonfeld, editor-at-large of Business 2.0 magazine and presenter of The New Disruptors on CNNMoney , recently visited a startup called Desktop Factory. This company is involved in developing 3D printing hardware, and aims to bring their product within financial reach of home users within a few years.
The most interesting aspect of Desktop Factory’s […]

Back in November 2006, I speculated as to the type of businesses which might emerge using a hybrid of mass customization, crowdsourcing, micro manufacturing and online factory business models. One such hybrid has emerged recently in New Zealand. Ponoko describes itself as the world’s first personal manufacturing platform where anyone can click to […]

Internet custom products marketplace company Zazzle recently announced that it had acquired Confego, a San Francisco Bay Area company that provides software that enables brands to offer fully customized apparel, bags and footwear designed from the ground up. Confego co-founders Brennan Mulligan and David Gross have joined Zazzle effective immediately.

Confego manages order fulfillment and […]

Slacker, Inc. has recently announced the creation of “Personal Radio,” which enables U.S. consumers to customize their own radio stations and listen to them wherever they happen to be. The Slacker Personal Radio is available in beta for PC streaming at www.slacker.com and later this year on Slacker Portable Radio Players via Wi-Fi and […]

Just how big is the market for photo personalized goods?  A few years ago, it was very unusual to see products that had been personalized with photographs.  Now, it is commonplace with a large selection of online suppliers and also offline stores in shopping districts having the equipment to put photo images on a variety […]

Kerry and Bryce Moore. Designers and owners of Context Furniture in Royal Oak, Michigan, USA, have written a guest article in Metromode, an online magazine based in Michigan.  In the article (written as a series of posts over a week in February), they explain how their company has utilised mass customization and manufacture on demand […]

Business Week has written about Dell’s new IdeaStorm initiative, suggesting that feels a lot like Digg.com, the popular tech news aggregator.  The similarities are strong:  users of IdeaStorm post suggestions and the community votes, so that the most popular ideas rise to the top.
The writers of the Business Week Article are Don Tapscott and Anthony […]

Materialise NV, which develops software for the rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RP&M) industry, and Dimension, a business unit of Stratasys, Inc., have teamed up to develop ‘Dimension Magics’, a customised version of Materialise’ Magics software specially tuned to the specific requirements of production on Dimension 3D printers.
Dimension desktop 3D printers - which include the Dimension […]