Five good reason why it is time to believe again in Santa Claus

1. Integration of customers in the idea generation process

Scientific studies have recently shown: more than 80 percent of all products in market fail. Why should this actually be different with presents like the numerous attempts for exchange in big stores and the extensive offers on Ebay after Christmas impressively show? Wish lists are therefore an ingenious invention of Santa for making a present of something the presentee really has a use for. The acceptance of presents is thereby maximized by the same value as the exchange rate is minimized to the satisfaction of all people involved. And for all of those who already possess anything or are perfectly happy, Social Commerce offers the opportunity to receive a gift again.

2. Reduction of the in-house services by integration of agents

Who still does anything self today? Not only the large management consultancies, but also Santa Claus has long ago realized that thanks to globalization he can cost-efficiently outsource the whole process meanwhile. The more so because he has identified lead users, preferably parents, who gladly and first of all freely of charge take over these crowdsourced tasks in order to bring a joyful Christmas to their children. But even commercial providers have realized which market potential exists for professional Santas for instance in stores or shopping malls and since then they are successfully participating in the franchising-concept of Santa Claus.

3. Massive reduction of distribution costs by decentralization

Regarding the running costs incurring by the all-year maintenance of a logistics infrastructure only used at one day a year, the huge potential for savings becomes clear. The strategic decision of Santa to do without the maintenance of a sleigh and reindeers opens new potential for a decentralized organization of his channels of distribution. Presents are therefore the most time only delivered just-in-time by courier services, sparing Santa not only high storage costs, but also the burdensome way through sooted chimneys with a wealthy belly.

4. Outsourcing of all marketing activities

The cleverest decision of Santa Claus though was to have his whole marketing organized externally – by no less a figure than: Coca Cola. How else should the world have had found out that Santa is a corpulent, white-haired beard bearer with a red jelly bag cap? Especially through viral marketing activities like reading out loud or singing Christmas songs this message was spread to such an extent that meanwhile not any Christmas merchandising article can escape from the produced branding and every child in the whole world should have quite an exact idea of Santa’s appearance and his character.

5. Reduction of transaction costs by virtual organization

Writing to Santa Clause was practically always possible. Though, one got to consider the gigantic costs for sending a letter to the North Pole and the desired present back. No wonder therefore that Santa was one of the pioneers of networking worldwide in the course of a virtual organization. At northpole.com every small and big child can inform oneself about the organization of Santa Claus or write him an e-mail.

Santa Claus has so adjusted his business model very successfully on Open Innovation and has perfected creation of wealth in networks as an entrepreneur. Thereby he has some decisive comparative advantages in regard to other present service providers as the Easter Bunny for instance. This will as well ensure market shares in the future for Santa as a quasi-monopolist in Christmas businesses and will provide him keeping a high market value. The only question that now arises is, what actually does Santa Claus at Christmas time? – Damn right: holidays!

So therefore, not seeing him is a far cry from saying that he does not exist which is no prove at all! Therefore it is actually time to believe again in Santa Claus. What a dark world would that be, if there were no wishes, dreams and hope anymore? What a world would that be, if Santa Claus did not exist? ; -)

With this in mind, we wish all readers a merry Christmas & all the best for 2008!

B. Jospeh Pine II hold a very interesting keynote speech at the World Conference on Mass Customization & Personalization 2007 at Stata Center, MIT Boston about the topic “The Past, Present, and Future of Mass Customization”. We want to provide some outtakes out of this very interesting opening keynote because the topic correlates in very many ways as an addition to the interactive creation of value shown by Reichwald and Piller as well as a guideline for entrepreneurship in the area of individualizing mass products.

B. Joseph Pine II is the author of “Mass Customization” and “The Experience Economy”.

Here the following parts of the keynote video:

Happy Birthday! Openeur has grown out of babyhood and is celebrating its first birthday. It is exactly one year now that we started this blog with our Mission Statement in order to deal with conneting Open Innovation and Entrepreneurship starting from the opening of the innovation process.

Over the course of this, we could develop our own approach of Open Entrepreneurship in regard to that we want to refer to several posts in the following, supporting a coherent understanding of our concept.

1. Reinventing a Networked Creation of Wealth
2. When Virtual Is Virtuous
3. The Paradox of Openness
4. The Analogy of Digital Networks
5. What Commons Really Have in Common
6. The One and the Many
7. The Entrepreneurial of Open Entrepreneurs
8. Distinguishing Open Entrepreneurs
9. Blowing in the Wind
10. Connecting the Creative Class
11. Paradoxes of Open Entrepreneurship
12. Networking Network Incubators
13. Jamming on Open Entreneurship
14. The Potential of Open Entrepreneurship

Starting from this, we looked for examples from practice over the last few months supporting our approach and could attend some very inspiring conferences like MCPC 2007 at the MIT in Cambridge/Boston. Through the work on the topic, we got the opportunity to functionally discuss with very many very interesting people as well as becoming friends with some of them. Here and now, we want thank again all our conversational partners for their sugestions and support. We should definite stay in dialogue!

In next few weeks and months, we will actualize our approach of Open Entrepreneurship by means of the insights we found in the last time and will continue to further develop it together with all partners of Openeur. We are looking forward to another year with Openeur!