Okay, here’s where customer co-creation gets interesting. (John Winsor, are you out there?) A group of students at the IT University in Copenhagen, and Superflex, a Copenhagen-based artist collective have brought free beer to the world. In their words:
“The project…applies modern free software / open source methods to a traditional real-world product – namely the alcoholic beverage loved and enjoyed globally, and commonly known as beer.
The recipe and branding elements of FREE BEER is published under a Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5) license, which means that anyone can use the recipe to brew their own FREE BEER or create a derivative of the recipe. Anyone is free to earn money from FREE BEER, but they must publish the recipe under the same license and credit our work. All design and branding elements are available to beer brewers, and can be modified to suit, provided changes are published under the same license (”Attribution & Share Alike”) . The aim was to start an experiment in applying modern open source ideas and methods on a traditional real-world product (beer). At the end of the course, Superflex decided to continue the experiment and changed the name to FREE BEER.”
I look at this experiment and think, “why not?” Customers are involved in giving feedback to the product. The product continually improves and evolves to meet new market trends and ideas. (E.g. FREE BEER 3.0 contains Guarana “for a natural energy boost.”) There’s an inherent, DIY, Make-ishness about the process. And producers are free to make a profit on the product, which will be driven solely by how well they connect with and serve customers (since the product itself is not a differentiator)…and are even encouraged to improve on the product, as long as they feed back into the virtuous cycle.
I love it.
(via Lessig)
Mmmmm….Sounds tasty!