Dell takes customers seriously

There is a lot of buzz around Dell nowadays. With Mr Dell Himself back in the saddle and speculations about Dell leaving their trusted ‘Direct Sales’-concept (they might sell their PC’s via bricks-and-mortar-outlets!), one of their initiatives is not in the floodlight. That’s a pity because Dell’s IdeaStorm initiative deserves more attention in my opinion. Via a special website Dell invites customers and prospects to vote on future product development. Via Dell IdeaStorm new Dell PC’s will be available with the open source OS Ubuntu. At the moment of writing people already contributed 4.510 ideas for Dell to consider. These ideas are discussed on the website and people can also vote on them and see what Dell is planning to fulfill in the (near) future.
This seems another good example of companies who actually start dialogs with their prospect and client groups in order to design the future in cooperation. No more abstract focus groups with small (often non-representative) amounts of customers. But a realistic opportunity for all to participate. Within ARA (my workplace) we propagate this approach as the next evolutionary step in Direct Marketing (we call it Dialogical Thinking (‘Dialogisch Denken‘ in Dutch). Another good example of this approach was giving by John Moore (former Starbucks topdog) in his excellent essay for ChangeThis. Download that PDF and read all about the principles of a ‘Board of Customers’.