Reuters has just published a very interesting article which describes the production costs of the iPhone. ISuppli, a market research company, “calculates that each 8-gigabyte iPhone, which retails for $599, costs 265.83 to build, including hardware and manufacturing“..You have well understood, Apple will earn more than $300 per product !!!. In fact, that’s not 100% true because this cost doesn’t include Marketing, research and logistics costs…but it will remain anyway a lot of $ at the end ;-).

Knowing that “ISuppli analyst Tina Teng estimates 4.5 million iPhones will be shipped this year, rising to more than 30 million by 2011“, it means that the apple Gross Margin will be around $1.3 billion only for this year and $9 billion for 2011…even if it’s theory, that’s not too bad

Best regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit Founder

Here is an interesting list in progress of non-software Free / Libre / Open Source goods from guy Snir Blog. Let’s have a open source beer

Best regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit founder

Carl from the great Crowdsourcing directory blog wrote an interesting article on crowdspirit. Carl is well summarizing the expectations around our project because “it will be an important testcase to show if, and to what extent, Crowdsourcing can be used to turn ideas into real products“.

Is last question is “Is Crowdsourcing the next industrial revolution? I think this will depend on how entrepreneurial spirit is integrated with the ideas of the crowds.” And you….what is your opinion ?
Best regards,

Lionel David, Crowdspirit Founder

CrowdSpirit will be mentioned in a book that will be published on the 12th of June. The 2 authors, Brice Auckenthaler & Pierre d’Huy, are speaking about collective imagination and crowdsourcing in their book called “Imagination Collective”. This book should be available in English and French.

best regards

Lionel David, CrowdSpirit Founder

CrowdSpirit is part of the Assignment Zero effort. As indicated on the website, Assignment Zero is

“Inspired by the open-source movement, this is an attempt to bring journalists together with people in the public who can help cover a story. It’s a collaboration among NewAssignment.Net, Wired, and those who choose to participate.”

So keep an eye on this website to get some news about CrowdSpirit

Best regards
Lionel DAVID, CrowdSpirit Founder

here is a very interesting article about the power of crowd in general which is refering to CrowdSpirit. This is on the very famous Trendwatching.

best regards

Lionel DAVID, CrowdSpirit founder

I’ve found 2 very interesting articles which explains the difference between CrowdSourcing and Community production . The first one is from Austin Hill and the second one from Kempton’s blog. Here is an extract from Austin Hill ’s article which defines 3 properties for the “community production”:

• Something to believe in - Open source, Librivox, Creative Commons and Wikipedia are all examples of a community forming around some common community cause that surpases any single entities interests.

• Community interactions are integral to how production occurs - Librivox works because of the community. If a company uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to hire contract laborers to read public domain books then crowdsourcing might have occurred - but there is no community involved with the production of the audiobooks.

• Sharing for a common cause - Even in the case of iStockphoto there is a sharing of work for the common cause of creating a marketplace of affordable royalty free photos. Flickr users share for different reasons, but there is a common community that has formed around sharing. The open business competition conducted by Goldcorp had no sharing among competiting teams, no common community cause.

Here is now an extract from Kempton’s blog which makes a lot of sense:

Now, I would like to add a few more properities that distinguish “Community Production” (CP) from “Crowdsourcing” (CS),

• CP – People tend to be more loyal because they enjoy and have strong tie and feelings for the community. Less willing to jump ship for small gains.
• CS – People tend to be less loyal as the people are more task-based. Will have no problem to work for the highest bidders.

• CP — People tend to grow and learn from each other. As in the case of iStockphoto new photographers, they actually take better photos as they get feedback and comments from the iStockphoto community.
• CS – People tend to not know about each others. So there aren’t really any opportunity to grow as a “crowd”.

So we can clearly state now that CrowdSpirit is not only a “Crowdsourcing” project but definitively a “Community Production” project. Thanks to Austin and Kempton for the very interesting articles. Waah now we need to change the logo of our company

Best regards

Lionel, CrowdSpirit Founder

Dell has launched a new Digg like website called www.dellideastorm.com in order to gather valuable input for end-customers in recognition that they are a valuable source of innovation. So this adds further weight to the Crowdspirit business model if companies like Dell are addressing this trend !!

What is a little bit concerning is their “low-end offer” proposal to the community. Let me explain why:

• As a summary, you submit an idea with all the Intellectual Properties
• The”digg” system will promote the best idea
• If you’re lucky and if Dell looks at your idea, they will commercialize a new product without rewarding you
  • Extract from the DELL Terms and conditions –> “You grant to Dell and its designees a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive fully-paid up and royalty free license to use any ideas, expression of ideas or other materials you submit (collectively, “Materials”) to IdeaStorm without restrictions of any kind and without any payment or other consideration of any kind, or permission or notification, to you or any third party. “

Great system, isn’t it you send all your IP for FREE !!!! Come on, let’s be serious, as I originally forecast on this article large company will never offer you a “high-end offer ” like CrowdSpirit. The answer is simple, they do think that they can make business without you, which is true on a short term period but not on a long term…so why would they pay you for your idea as they’re more thinking that you have an opportunity to send an idea to the THE BIG company DELL

Our approach is drastically different, WITHOUT YOU …WE DON’T EXIST . Our strategy is to design our business model around you. So of course, you will be rewarded for all you contributions but the best will be that you will participate to the full design of the products….I’m not sure that DELL will offer you such proposal…so let’s join our community instead of wasting your good ideas on the Dell website !!!

Best regards

Lionel, CrowdSpirit Founder

Here is an interesting article which gives some interesting information about the crowdsourcing world

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