LEGO has launched a new crowd sourcing web platform LEGO CUUSOO to search for new ideas for its products. CUUSOO asks the LEGO fans to submit and vote for their favorite ideas for new LEGO products.
Photo: LEGO CUUSOO
Ideas that will score 10,000 votes have a chance of being selected to become part of the LEGO Group’s product portfolio and sold in LEGO Brand retail stores and the LEGO online shop. The winning consumers will earn 1% of the total net sales of the product.
CUUSOO means ‘imagination’ or sometimes ‘wish’ in Japanese, and has been developed with CUUSOO SYSTEM, a subsidiary of Japan-based Elephant Design, says Dexigner.
The LEGO Group has been collaborating with CUUSOO, which has more than 10 tears of open innovation and crowd sourcing, since 2008 on a Japanese site. The platform attracted hundreds of ideas and seen thousands of votes cast by a 20,000-strong community. Now the concept will be tested internationally. LEGO has thousands of fans, especially among the youngest consumers. The Danish toy manufacturer is one of the British kids’ favorite brands, occupying the 14th position in the Kids Brand Index 2011.
The first CUUSOO-winning Japanese product, the Shinkai 6500 submersible, went on sale in Japan in February 2011. The next Japanese LEGO CUUSOO model will be the Hayabusa unmanned spacecraft launched in the first quarter of next year.
LEGO CUUSOO is also enhanced with a Facebook page and a Twitter handle for users to share their ideas there as well.
«Our fans and consumers have proved time after time that they have great ideas that can lead to products,» said Paal Smith-Meyer, head of the LEGO New Business Group.
«We have worked with our consumers in the past and continue to do so, for example in the LEGO Architecture series, which we developed with an architect and LEGO fan. LEGO CUUSOO is an attempt to gather more great ideas while streamlining the way we innovate and become inspired.
We see this as an investment in the future rather than for immediate sales gain. We are moving from a local Japanese pilot to see if the model is sustainable. We were pleased with the initial results, but we need to see how it will perform on a global platform with global distribution.»
