Another stab at the innovation trends of 2011 from Michael Schrage at the Harvard Business School. Fiev good and one bad, from my point of view, plus a disgusting neologism that his good sense should have buried. So I shall do it for him: "contestification" is not a word; it is an excresence.
Schrage lights upon the intertwined benefits of crowdsourcing, gaming and haptics as they infiltrate the corporate arena. He looks forward to participatory innovation using crowdsourcing, apps and gaming, especially in the replacement of brands and passive advertising with participatory consumers (potentially awarded with coupons).
Schrage's trends point to the participatory relationship between retailers and consumers that will come together at various levels in the coming years: he could also have added the link with mass customisation and power of peer review; for his apps, read potential communities of buyers, sellers and plagiarists. Does he not anticipate the age of the amateur innovator, whose ideas are taken up, for a fee or reward, by the retail platform?
Instead, he argues that innovators should heed the death of their ideas:
In other words, a charismatically innovative lobbyist may have a bigger impact on marketplace success in 2011 than the country's most savvy technologist or marketer.
I will give him kudos in coining a new euphemism for political corruption.