FedEx furniture
I cracked up reading this from the Economist’s "Management Reading" section this month.
this story ran in August 2005….. and it has made the management journals 20 months later.
Still, blogs are slowing going mainstream…. it’s just a question of how slow it needs to be before the intellectual business academics realise it’s out there under their noses.
Aside…. if this is happening to your company THINK before calling your lawyers!
Business Horizons (part of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business)
Volume 50, Issue 1 (January/February 2007)
“When customers get clever: Managerial approaches to dealing with creative consumers”
By Pierre R. Berthon, Leyland F. Pitt, Ian McCarthy and Steven M. Kates
What should FedEx, an international delivery company, have done about the creative young man in Seattle who used hundreds of FedEx envelopes to make furniture for himself, and then told the world about it via his website? The company sent an ill-tempered cease-and-desist letter, which predictably turned the man into a cult hero in cyberspace. The authors of this paper, from Bentley College in Massachusetts and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, argue that companies should think laterally—such “creative consumers”, who find alternative uses for products, can be valuable. Creatives may work with outdated products—witness those devoted to modifying Apple’s long-lost Newton personal organisers—out of simple curiosity, or to meet a specific need, or to look good among other hobbyists. Firms need to choose between encouraging creativity by letting enthusiasts fiddle with their products, in the hope of sharing in any innovation that emerges, or trying to protect their intellectual property in a traditional fashion.
hHere’s the link to FedEx Furniture Blog although rather historic. But the Wikipedia entry is instructional.
This really reinforces the exclusion corporates are creating for their brand by avoiding collaboration with "difficult" customers.