Consumers increasingly influence brand decisions—new flavors, new styles, new products. Crowdsourcing or community-based design can be seen in the Mountain Dewmocracy, Colors Magazine and sites such as Quirky, which bypasses tradition as an online community-based product development service to bring the most in-touch products to market. Ideate above-and-beyond traditional innovation development processes, with crowdsourcing or new combinations of big agency and boutique think-tanks like Ideon. Direct, ongoing individual involvement–as cognitive groups that deliver real results–brings the entire consumer dialogue to the next level.
