An interesting event with lots of inspiring conversations was this year’s german conference by Frank Piller about Mass Customization. Besides speaking to Frank Piller we were excited about talking to Jochen Krisch and Lukasz Gadowski about the german founding scene. It is nice to see that something seems to come into gear.

We have also interestedly talked with Reinhard Prügl of the User Innovation Initiative of Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien who currently develops a promising approach to a better identification of Lead Users and who has already been employed several years in researching the creation of value in networks. We will anyhow intensivate the exchange in this regard and will see whether there will develop opportunities for an even deeper cooperation.

The cases discussed at the convention reached from the famous customization examples Spreadshirt and mi:adidas to the Austrian ski manufacturer Edelwiser. From our point of view are thereby especially the different degrees of customer integration into the creation of value important regarding development, design and sales. In our opinion, Mass Customization is an interesting link to Open Innovation and a span of application for companies using external resources within the scope of Open Innovation. By Mass Customization there is an opportunitity to reach scale effects for user orientated customization of products and to bank on a consequent modularization of components. Its full potential however, Mass Customization may only be achieved in the interplay with Open Innovation, if the customer as a creator of value is set in the focus of the company.