WisconsInnovation

The concept is not new, and many have struggled to market similar solutions in the past, including Rocket Network and ProTools. Most competitors focus on live collaboration (jamming) or remixing, while Indaba seeks to improve traditional, asynchronous multitrack recording. Indaba has taken the lead among pro and semi-professional musicians by combining social networking with a web application that allows users to mix and edit audio in their browsers.

There are currently over 75,000 registered users from 150 countries, including many talented session musicians. Indaba encourages participation through frequent contests and crowd-sourcing in partnership with indie bands and labels. If it continues to grow in membership and quality, Indaba has the potential to compete with traditional record labels through its cooperative, grass roots approach to creating music.

I was conducting research on the topic of Internet marketing in the era of Web 2.0, and I ran across some interesting data points. In the early years of Web growth, ad-supported news content and consumer e-mail were the two greatest drivers of the top global Web sites such as Yahoo!. But trends such as social networking and blogging have changed this dynamic.

Two data points speak to how much this has changed -- especially with respect to how much customer co-creation is driving the future of the Web:

> Growth among traditional, ad-driven news sites is flat: "[O]nline news audience growth is flat and the market is highly fragmented, with nearly one-half of traffic going to sites that are below the top 100 news sites," according to a press release from technology industry analyst firm Jupiter Research from March of this year. And this is even as the number of Web sites globally continues to grow at a rediculous pace.

> Participation dominates the top global Web sites: Among the top 10 Web sites globally, according to Internet site tracking service Alexa, 5 out of those 10 are now based on user-generated content -- i.e., they are social media, social networking or user-contributed media sites. The list includes: YouTube (3), Facebook (5), MySpace (7), Wikipedia (8) and Blogger.com (9).

Do you have any examples of acceleration of this paradigm shift? If so, please share them.

I may be the first 27 year old to admit this, but I love Huggies Cleanteam line of products, specifically Henry the Hippo Hand Soap (though I thought he was a dinosaur). While foaming hand soap may not be a new innovation, Kimberly Clark (producer of Huggies) has innovated the packaging to different its product. Targeted at kids, the soap dispenser (Henry the Hippo’s head) will blink for 20 seconds to remind kids just how long they need to wash their hands. This new packaging innovation meets parents’ need to (1) get their kids to wash their hands more often to prevent the spread of germs and (2) teach their kids good hand washing habits.


All too often, we only think of innovation in terms of new products. Clearly, Innovation can take many forms, including packaging, marketing, pricing, and distribution.


Here’s a big thanks to the KC recruiting team, for sending us all a bottle of Henry the Hippo Foaming Hand Soap!