What are the similarities and differences between a community-driven product development process and a traditional product development process within a firm?
Community-driven product development is different than traditional product development within a firm because community processes lack most of the hierarchical structure and costs that exist within a firm’s development process. Firms usually pay highly educated professionals to research, solve problems, and develop new products. Because of the large salaries required for these types of positions and the physical aspect involved with commuting to the job itself, these firms can only hire so many people for such tasks. Community development on the other hand can be done by just about anyone. Websites, internet, and other technologies make it extremely simple for mass groups of people to contribute their input and knowledge. The ease of use and large base of non experts who contribute their innovative ideas allows for inexpensive product development. While a traditional firm uses standards and a limited number of executives to decide the final outcome, crowd sourcing companies can ask for answers, utilize criticism, and determine favorites from a limitless number of people. What could be any better than obtaining feedback directly from a company’s customer base? Of course, most companies involved in community-based development must utilize a set of standards in order to streamline the generated content, but the system is not nearly as bureaucratic as with traditional systems. As ecommerce continues to grow, I think many companies will see the positive impact crowd sourcing will have, thus driving us to a much more community driven economy.
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