Adopting the Web

      Products with unproven market adoption are often disguised with adjectives like next generation, groundbreaking, and even beta.  While unintentional, the semantic underlying of such words deter potential consumers.  Why conform to a next generation (read unfamiliar) product when waiting has no consequence?  Outside of technophiles, sci-fi geeks, and a few frivolous spenders, next generation is usually passed for a current generation (exlcude Apple, Inc products from this argument).    

      An abundance of product wars have emanated from this argument; the home video industry survives through these battles.  Fortunately, several startups including Chicago based Inkling Markets are attempting to lessen the casualties of product/service adoption wars.   The company initially launched in 2006 as a closed prediction market, helping corporate clients harvest the opinions of employees, consumers, and observers through a stock-like interface.  Success prompted addition of user-generated markets, the most popular of which include titles such as  ”Will Blu-Ray be the standard for high density disc storage?” and “What will employees, in 2009, use as their Primary tools for everyday learning in the workplace?”

     Both O’Reilly and Simon & Schuster have created markets to gauge sales of pre-published material.  The Government of Singapore employs a market to better understand implications of technology on life.  The value of commoditizing uncertain issues, however, is not exclusive to large producers and social institutions.  Consumers benefit by shaping manufacture decision and also discover how their intuitions compare with others.   

     

Filed under: Infonalysis