One of my primary research areas right now is “prosumerism” (think: producer + consumer = prosumer), which we use to describe what many people call customer co-creation: getting customers actively engaged in the innovation around, and creation of, the products and services they consume. One of the biggest questions in the space is around business models and incentives. We believe financial rewards are becoming ever-more important, and are always on the lookout for companies that might be innovating in this area.
With that in mind, I recently stumbled upon KirtasBooks, which has developed an interesting program called “invest in knowledge” – allowing individuals to subsidize the digitization of the world’s knowledge one book at a time, in exchange for 5% of of all future sales of that book through their site. Basically you pay just short of $30 to have an “out of print” book digitized, and a soft copy delivered to your door, in exchange for a cut of future sales.
Now I don’t think KirtasBooks will actually be a great success- they’ve got that pesky little competitor Google to deal with after all. But it’s the structure of the program that I find interesting, and potentially applicable to other industries. How many companies looking for new ideas and designs could have customers pay to come up with them (which helps to filter out all the crap that can come with totally open / free submission process), in exchange for offering a cut of future sales if other customers choose to buy the product? In this case, the “prosumer” isn’t actually doing much except investing money, but it’s not hard to envision it going to another level.
Has anyone seen this idea used anywhere else?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
what a great idea
I have an idea I’d like to explore in a partnering venture and KirtasBooks seems like a good potential partner because glancing at the article this seems to be along the same lines. By the way, I ordered a book from KirtasBooks and have mixed feelings about it. I think the digitizing on demand idea needs work, but I think it has potential.–Jeff Bedolla 12/23/09
Nice little neologism “pronumerism’ Keep up the good work! Don’t underestimate your potential for success!