I don’t know if you’ve noticed the new advertising campaign for Windows 7. If you have, you’ll notice that most of Windows 7 is your idea.
I can’t help but think about “The Homer” whenever I think about Windows 7 now. “The Homer” was Homer Simpson’s automobile creation. Homer’s half-brother felt that Simpson was the quintessential common man. So he and Homer created a car together.
http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/%22The_Homer%22
I believe in open-sourcing, crowd-sourcing and collaboration. And it seems to be on the upswing yet again. With so many people out of work, there’s a large group out there with free time to work on solving problems. Sites like Genius Rocket have been around for a while but now even new agencies are getting in on the fun.
http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/News%20Article.aspx?REF=1248
Of course, most agencies are already crowd-sourcing for ideas. Check out the American Express ad below and the flickr page that was probably the inspiration for it.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/looklikesmileys/
However, I also believe that collaboration can go too far. “The Homer” is a perfect example. It all depends on whom you listen to and who decides what’s good and bad. We have a saying here at R&R; “Great ideas can come from anywhere.” That doesn’t mean that they always do. Often great ideas come from people who are really good at having great ideas. Then those ideas are recognized by people who recognize great ideas, and pushed forward by people who are good at selling great ideas.
Look at the new Barnes & Noble Nook. The Nook offers everything missing from Amazon’s Kindle. You could say, the Nook was created by Kindle users. The Droid offers everything iPhone users wish they had on their iPhone. The Droid was created in part by iPhone users.
The difference is the iphone was created by people who are really good at great ideas. Windows 7 has everything that Vista users wish it had in the first place, with a few new bells and whistles thrown in. The iphone changed a paradigm while Windows 7 seems like an open-source fix of Vista rather than a brilliant new system. For a brilliant new system, they should solicit help from Mac users.
Windows 7 might be far better than Vista but the perception that user complaints drove the design can’t be missed in the new ads. If you are going to let real people have the credit, you have to wonder whether you’re creating something great or the computer version of a “Homer.”
