I started an online social media experiment a year ago with R&D in mind. However, I quickly discovered that a responsive online presence was a far more valuable tool as a new method for learning from customers.

Encouraging creativity, ideation and collaborative brainstorming doesn't really fit into traditional PR, marketing, R&D, or customer service roles. It's an exploration of methods for innovating new business models and playing with the concept of co-creation. I've been thinking of it as open-sourcing innovation.