Social Co-creation is a big buzzword now; it’s sort of crowdsourcing, evolved. Using customers to help you throughout the new product (or service) development process is an exciting opportunity that’s been made vastly easier by social technologies.

Most of the case studies in this area talk a lot about idea sites or e-suggestion boxes. What these platforms do is allow for companies to publicly collect ideas from their customers or employees through a community-like environment. The companies that have done a good job with this have a process for vetting these ideas and building on the good ones to help them innovate. Doug Williams, an analyst with Forrester, recently wrote a great case study on Ford’s ideas site, “Your Ideas.”MORE…

I have always loved flying. Now, I don’t mean just the hurtling through space in a comfortable cabin with movies, wine and dinner at my discretion. I mean everything about it—from the preflight wandering of airport bookstores and people-watching—to the in-flight blissfully out-of-time, disconnected from the world, “me time” with no chiming BlackBerry or demanding email—to my ultimate safe arrival somewhere across the globe that always has me marveling things like: “Seven hours ago I was in London, now I am in New York—that is crazy!”MORE…