Dell IdeaStorm - A Brilliant Idea

If you have a user base consisting of millions of people, many of whom are technology-savvy, why not use this to your advantage? That is exactly what Dell did by essentially converting their community into a free and enormous product development team.

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Dell launched IdeaStorm a few months ago as a website to enable people to pitch their ideas to the company, which the company then uses to assess what is most important to their potential customers before deciding which products and services to offer. There are essentially four ways in which you can participate on the site.

  1. Pitch your own ideas for products and services you would like Dell to offer.
  2. Promote ideas submitted by your peers that you think are interesting/useful and feel that Dell should take into consideration.
  3. Discuss your ideas and those submitted by others with the entire IdeaStorm community.
  4. See how Dell has reacted to your ideas and what products and services (based on your pitches) they plan to offer.

The first step in participating on the site is to register, and using the rest of the site is just as easy as the registration process itself.

Submitting Ideas

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To submit an idea, all you have to do is write a title, choose all the categories applicable to your idea, and write an editorial summary for what you are proposing.

Promoting Ideas

Once ideas are submitted, they immediately appear in the recent ideas queue. From here you can promote the ideas you like by voting on them, and demote the ideas that you don't like. Every vote adds 10 points and likewise every demotion subtracts 10 points. If a proposal gets enough points (it is unclear how many are needed) it gets promoted to the popular ideas section of the site.

Discussing Ideas

There are two ways in which you can discuss ideas on the site. The first is to click on a particular idea that someone has posted and comment on it directly, and the second is to go to the comments tab on the site and participate there. The comments section works like a forum and anyone can start a topic or add to a topic without actually pitching an idea.

Ideas in Action

For any such system to work, you have to make it apparent to the participants that you are actually listening to them. Ideas in action serves as a way for Dell to show its community that not only are they listening, but that they are actually implementing the ideas proposed by their community.

As your ideas continue to pour in, we will use this page to provide updates on ideas that Dell is considering. We'll also show you how your ideas are being put into action at Dell over time.

Ideas submitted by the community go through several phases before they have a chance of being implemented. First you submit an idea, then it has to acquire enough votes to get to the popular ideas section. It is from here that Dell picks ideas that it will ultimately consider. Once the consideration process begins, it goes through the following status phases:

  1. None
  2. Already Offered
  3. Acknowledged
  4. Under Consideration
  5. Coming Soon
  6. Implemented

IdeaStorm has seems to be quite successful. The Dell community has contributed almost 5,000 ideas, which have been voted on over 300,000 times, and have amassed almost 20,000 comments. Understandably, the most popular concerns that the community has shared with Dell refer to what kind of free software should be pre-installed on new purchases and what operating systems the company should support (factory installed) on its hardware.

As you can see, with minimal investment from themselves, Dell has managed to find out what their community wants the most, how to implement those features, and stands to gain a lot by offering exactly what the consumers desire.

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SMX

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Reader Comments (4)

Jason, May 9, 2007

Wow you mean I can submit my ideas to them so they can sell me them back to be for money, COOOL!!!11 If you haven't hinted the sarcasm in my sentence by now you are already on your way over to the Dell site submitting away your idea like an idiot. Like common, it is one thing for a company to not be able to create the own ideas for products and or services, oh wait what am I talking about. They have a department for that, and its called R&D (Research and Development). I really think they should stick to the surveys, instead of making another Digg like clone site, were they can sell your ideas for money and you get squat. Call me back when the come up with an idea on there own, then maybe it will be worth my money.

Ny Nj, May 9, 2007

This is similar to what Yahoo is doing with suggestions.yahoo.com - a great way to avoid corporate politics and egos.

But if some comes up with an idea that potentially generates millions of dollars for one of these companies, will they get any compensation or at least recognition from these companies?

RichardatDELL, May 10, 2007

Hi Jason,

While I understand your perspective, think it only fair to note that the way technology is used and the web has evolved, companies like Dell have become part of the conversations and communities. An open discussion of ideas and customer preferences is not about "poaching" ideas. Its about opportunities for people to have a say, for all of us to learn from each other, and to connect-rather than be cloistered away in our silos.

There are some who think it is great that we have embraced this more open era, and suggest that the changes we are making reflect a new approach to listening to customers. They and we will point to our continuing to offer Windows XP and expanding options for preinstalled Linux, for example. This is transparent and inclusive, rather than closed to select focus groups.

I understand that you might not want to be part of that, but lots of other people do. I think it only fair we respect that.

At Dell, we are thrilled with the conversations we are having at Ideastorm, direct2dell and in posts like this around the web. We are not perfect, we are learning from our mistakes...but most of all the genuine feedback and opportunity to discuss things is very refreshing and valuable....I believe for all parties.

Bobbie, May 19, 2007

My "help desk" services with Dell still have til January 2010 to run due to a program I purchased with my computer. However, when I have called for assistance, unfortunately I have a problem understanding the camel jockeys who are on board to assist me. Aren't there any good English speaking trouble shooters in your employ? Also I need help in how to eliminate special folders I have created to file away special things. I can dispose of the special things but the folder seems to be permanent. What can I do about that? I would appreciate some sort of response. Thanks.