Here is our last article of this very interesting week on openbusiness.cc. I’d like to thank Hannah and the Openbusiness team for having offered me the opportunity to share my ideas on their website. FYI, it’s not too late to ask your last question on this blog

Lionel, CrowdSpirit Founder

Here is a very “supportive” article from Hannes Treichl, one of the most early adaptor of our project. This article is in German.

I’d like to personnaly thank Hannes for his incredible and great support

Lionel, CrowdSpirit Founder

Today, I will demonstrate How does CrowdSpirit have a competitive advantage over large companies? Why would it be in the community’s interest to join CrowdSpirit rather than an existing large company . Here is all the details
Lionel, CrowdSpirit Founder

Today, I’m explaining “How is it possible to Crowdsource electronic products and to produce good quality products for a small company like CrowdSpirit ?” here is all the details

Lionel, CrowdSpirit Founder

Today, I’m introducing my vision of What is this concept of “customer-centric product” or “customer-manufactured ” as invented by Springwise ? In other words, what value will crowdsourcing bring in terms of innovation within the CrowdSpirit World ? Here is the details on the article.

Lionel, Crowdspirit Founder

For those how want to have further details about CrowdSpirit, have a look on the first article that I’ve post on OpenBusiness. By the way, here is the agenda for the week:

1. Monday -> what is the business model of CrowdSpirit in detail ?

2. Tuesday -> what is this concept of customer centric product or customer manufactured as invented by Springwise? In other words, what value will Crowdsourcing bring in terms of innovation within the CrowdSpirit World ?

3. Wednesday -> How is it possible to Crowdsource electronic products and to produce good quality products ?

4. Thursday -> Why does CrowdSpirit have a competitive advantage over large companies? Why should the community be interested in CrowdSpirit as opposed to similar ventures from larger companies and brand names ?

5. Friday -> When CrowdSpirit will be launched ? Remaining Q&A.

So do not hesitate to ask question.

Lionel, CrowdSpirit Founder

Again, I’d like to thank Dasmenneke for having totally translated my interview on Tapahont.info. You can find the first part of the interview here.

Best regards

Lionel, CrowdSpirirt Founder

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RFly: Why aren’t there then French Version when there is a majority of french people in the team ?

Lionel: First off, our bussiness model is clearly universal and so it’s international. We have 2 types of audiences, the audience for the communicative platform and the audience mainly consistent of buyers, the 2 are intimitely connected, and the first is a prequisite for the second
For the first, we’re confronted with very little problems if our audience understands english and we’ve put a reward system in place for this geographical coverage. It would be very sad to limit it to the french community, even if not the majority of our public comes from english speaking countries most people understand it.

The numbers of the current users strenghten us in our strategy
Because we have visitors from approximately more then 100 countries
Lead by the English speaking countriest: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australie, etc… but offcourse also from non English speaking countries like France, Germany, Korea, The Netherlands, Brasil, etc…

The second key component of this project, namely the community of buyers, will have access to our products trough the Local salesman who will supply himself trough our central distributor. Those last ones offer a coverage in more then 100 countries. So we’ll have an approach in place to progressively cover all those countries starting with North America and Europe. It’s is important to note that we’ve deliberately decided to not address the direct-sale to clients firstly to leave this delicate and very important task to experts in this matter, meaning the resellers, and secondly to concentrate us on the most important part of our job (managing the platform and connect the industrial partners with the community) too consolidate and develop our activity

Additionally, our team has international experience, so this isn’t a problem for an international development

Finally, it is of the utmost importance to position us as a innovator and leader in the world to take care that we’re not passed by, given the universal aspect of our business model. For the moment, the results are encouraging cause we’re leading the pack in the domain of (type in crowdsourcing in Del.ico.us or Technorati and you’ll see that we’re in a very good position). The biggest challenge in front of us is preaching or even more making common the concept of crowdsourcing which is far from being the case. We’re counting on the entrance of the big shots to “enjoy the waves” they’ll make with their announcements, like the one from Amazon of the dematerialization of the production of their products
(see here) which is clearly are strategy … but let’s be patient.

Extra note: We’ve put in our long term strategy the option of creating a Multilanguage platform but it’s impossible to do that in a nearby future confronted with the complexities of this task.

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RFly: I’ve seen that certain ones of you don’t like soap Opera, why is that ?
Lionel: I’m going to give you a fairly serious response, to get out of my difficult situation, But for me, I think that life is to precious to waste it in front of tv-programs however intresting… Everyone does what he wants with his life in my opinion, but I myself prefer 1000x more to pass the time with dreaming, walking (especially in the mountains), discuss with my friends and my family more then spending time in front of a television that doesn’t add (much) extra value… that’s only me and I don’t have anything against people who love Soap Opera While on the other hand some people think I’m crazy to waste my time on a crazy project!!! Everyone has the same amount of time whatever they do with it.

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RFly: Do you already have contact with certain companies? Financers?
Lionel: Yes, we’re already in contact with industrial partners but we want to wait for the perfect moment before signing contracts cause we think that the potential of our community is only in it’s infancy for the moment although it already is very important and a great supporter.

On the subject of financial partners, we have not made a single contact for the moment because we’re busy assuring our current development on our own funds. That are investors who we’ve already contacted in a spontaneous manner, which encourages us to work “freely”, which is very reassuring combined with the attraction of our business model

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RFly: How do you think you’re going to make money?
Lionel: Contrary to the many web 2.0 start ups, our business model is based on a realistic and possible economic model and relatively independent from the traffic generated by our web platform. To recap, the community will be paid based on the profit part of sales generated by sales of products to end-consumers. We think we’ll be able to sell our first products at the end of 2007.

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RFly: Do you already have an idea how the person at the base of an idea will be integrated in the process?
Lionel: Yes, we already have a good idea how we’re going to integrate those key people in our business model. You first have to distinguish 2 types of people in this case:

In the case of the person who proposes a new product idea, we call that person an inventor. This one will receive commercial offers and will accept or not accept of confronting his idea with the community to realize the commercialization. The commercial offer will be in function of the advancement level of the idea of the person. It will be about the place of the product in the market.

In the case of a person who proposes an idea improving on a current project, this person will receive a reward in function of his contributing level like all the other contributors who take part in different tasks.

Those 2 roles can be occupied by the same person and can improve his chances of cashing in. It’s free for all to chose their participation level.

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RFly: Patents, stolen ideas, simultaneous ideas… does it bother you in your sleep?
Lionel: For patents we do a precedent research before commercializing the product and when we get the green light, we send an envelope of the Soleau type to the INPI to guarantee our exploitation rights even if a competitor came to deposit a patent. If a patent has already been deposited, we wont commercialize the product unless the patentee would like to use our service to commercialize his idea which is imaginable.

To avoid the problems with simultaneous ideas, we guard a trace of the date of submission of the idea and a trace of all submitted ideas. An active guard by the community will permit the guarantee of the > and > of the idea.

For the problem of stolen ideas, that is certainly a critical problem and we’re busy at the moment thinking about using a licensing principal to guard us from this risk. When that will be done, it will be the best proof to justify the strong ness of our business model when a big group would go to commercialize one of our ideas… and I’m certain that we’re already “being watched”;).

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RFly: How will you select the members of your community? Will the work of everyone be public?
Lionel: There won’t be any selection of the members of the community. Everyone can participate, the business model is clearly universal.

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RFly: Can you announce a launch date? - the response is clearly no but when I reread the interview I told myself that I had to ask you.

Lionel: Thanks for asking Richard but you’ve nicely presented the answer. It would be dishonest to predict you a launch date when the work in front of us is huge.

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RFly: Do you daily use services from web 2.0? Which one is your favorite?
Lionel: In risk of disappointing you, I’m not a big user of web 2.0 services and I don’t really have a favorite. Nevertheless I use services like Technorati, Bloglines, Del.ico.us, Pandora, Wikipedia, Dailymotion, CambrianHouse aussi;) etc…

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RFly:Thx Lionel, for taking the time to explain us this a bit crazy concept

I will lead an event next week on OpenBusiness, which “is a platform to share and develop innovative Open Business ideas- entrepreneurial ideas which are built around openness, free services and free access. The two main aims of the project are to build an online resource of innovative business models, ideas and tools, and to publish an OpenBusiness Guidebook.“

On a logistical standpoint, I will post an article each day next week
around the crowdsourcing and CrowdSpirit . So if you’re interested in
having some very interesting new information, have a look next week on this blog

Best regards

Lionel, CrowdSpirit Founder

Hello all,

It’s a great pleasure to be part of the top 5 “crowdsourcing”
initiatives to be monitored as described on this BusinessWeek article.
I’d like to personally thank Jessi, for getting in touch with me and for
having spent time on our project.

Best regards

Lionel, CrowdSpirit Founder

Believe me or not, but this is again a good proof that Crowdsourcing works. I’d like to personnaly thank dasmenneke for having partially translated my interview on Tapahont.info

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Lionel, Crowdspirit founder

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Know everything about Crowdspirt, a French start up
I have spoken to you already a few days ago about crowdspirit, an innovating project launched in France, that wants to include the consumer in the (life)blood of creating a product.
Sinds my explenations were very relative, I’ve asked Lionel David founder of crowdspirit to respond to some questions.
The interview is very rich in information, I think Lionel gives us here a lot of concrete things necessary for understanding the raders of this project but also to make an idea of this start up already starred in a reference of the american competition Springwise, that has crowned it 4the best bussiness idea of 2006 in the Style and Design Category.

Hello, Lionel. Thank you for accepting to answer my questions.

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RFly: Can you tell a bit about yourself (you, your crew, your wife,…) in a few lines ?

Lionel: We’re a team of young thirthiers (apart from Craig who is 40) who are working in complementary worlds for this project. I for my part,
have experience in the world of elecronics chain supply, Raphael in the world of programming, Sebastien in the marketing web, and Craig in the advice world of ICT. I’m from Brittany (a Breton, FR), and I live in Grenoble (FR) being passionated by the moutains. Raphael is also
a Breton but he lives in Paris. Sébastien lives in Grenoble and Craig in Edinburgh (Scotland)

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RFly: Can you present us in a few lines the concept of the site you’re busy launching?

Lionel: The principle of Crowdspirt is the developpement of innovating electronic products meant for the big public with the help of a community called Crowdsoucing. This community will be completely involved from beginning till end in the realisation of products, and passing by distribution and sales. The membres of this community will be compensated in function of the level of their participation for different products.

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RFly: When did you start working on this idea ?

Lionel: The project has started in september 2006.

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RFly: How did you get this idea?

Lionel: I can try to make up a fancy history and say that I got the idea in a flash whle taking a shower but that would be lying. I’d say that this idea is the result of several months of researching, investigating, following of different trends and even of testings. The main goal has always been of combining web technology and the product making process, given that that lasting thing is part of my skills. That said, everything has accelerated this summer when I came back from
a concert of the Sigur Ross in the Eurokéennes from Belfort, where I told myself that it would be nice to recreate such an evenement while organising it with passionated peoplen, in that way creating some sort of community.
Raphael, who is a friend, has then oriented me to crowdsourcing and I have to say that I immedialetly saw the parallel with the electronics industrie that is the world of most suited for integrating this revolution. After that I’ve immedialetly contacted an other friend, Sébastien, and we have launched the project.

Craig, intrigued by the idea, has spontoniously made himself candidat and we’ve immedialetly accepted him in this adventure. He has been in some way the first crowdsourcing community member of this project

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RFly: Do you have trust that this is a combination of crazyness ?

Lionel: Yes, in fact, the more we return to working on the project, the more we realize that this project is really “crazy”. Not that it is unrealistic cause it is the tottaly opposite but rather that the potential amazing is. I think one has to seperate the basic idea of our bussiness model, the crowdsourcing of electronic products that are nothing more than the logical evolution of our passion. In fact, the web has recently announced the new generation of participation and we have seen in that participation a perfect combination with the product making industrie. In fact, innovation is very present in the sector of electronic products and for permitting everyone to join in, only the crowdsourcing can rationalise the innovation in a sector like that. One thing is certain; crowdsourcing announces a real revolution in the way the industry works.

The train is going and we want to become priviliged passengers that are listened to and who inspire. The leaders of the industry, like Amazon have already announced that they view the change of model and that that is part of their long term strategy!. So the objective is not to waste time and for that, the community will be completely integrated in each step of the project…

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RFly: Why aren’t there then French Version when there is a majority of french people in the team ?

Lionel: First off, our bussiness model is clearly universal and so it’s international. We have 2 types of audiences, the audience for the communicative platform and the audience mainly consistent of buyers, the 2 are intimitely connected, and the first is a prequisite for the second
For the first, we’re confronted with very little problems if our audience understands english and we’ve put a reward system in place for this geographical coverage. It would be very sad to limit it to the french community, even if not the majority of our public comes from english speaking countries most people understand it.

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rest might follow if someone is intrested … my french isn’t 100% and it’s tiresome to translate ;-(

Thanks again dasmenneke for your contribution. One thing is sure, you understand French very well