Watch this space!

A couple of days back, I wrote about Dell's new IdeaStorm project - the one where they allow anyone to make suggestions to Dell regarding their product and services offering. I hailed it as a highly innovative and courageous decision. I still believe it is.

But, what's next? After recently reviewing new posts, the newer ideas generated less than thirty days after the opening of the site seem very narrow and specific. The major (most popular) ideas seem to be unchanging. The two most popular ideas suggest that Dell offer Linux as an O/S option (and make their PC drivers Linux compatible). The second most popular suggestion is for Dell to offer OpenOffice2.0 as an installation option.

If anyone out there has ever participated in a brainstorming session, all the great ideas (most obvious?) seem to get generated in the first 5 minutes, followed by dozens of suggestions with ever declining value. Can it be that after only a couple of weeks, Dell has mined all the great ideas?

So the trick will be - how Dell tries to generate sustained interest and participation in the site. In my estimation they need to:
1. Quickly identify the best ideas and respond to them (They are doing this).
2. Implement some of them.
3. Archive the IdeaStorm database and clean the slate every 6 months to allow other ideas some prominence. Right now, there is so much clutter that even if a great idea was submitted today, it's unlikely that members would find it, to vote for it.

Another idea I would have would be to duplicate IdeaStorm for each country where they do business. In this way they could solicit country/cultural ideas that might help them better serve Global customers.

I applaud Dell for their courageous initiative and truly believe that we need to "Watch this Space".