Cuusoo.com wanted to provide users and inventors with the possibility for producing their own designs, which can be home appliances, mobile phones ore other items. Cuusoo.com finds the ideas from members of the community and launches products based on these ideas only after a certain number of customers have committed to buy.

Cuusoo.com has 20,000 members who post their new inventions on the online platform. The user innovators are helped to actualise their product ideas by several services: Firstly, the site has tools and a service, where they are helped to visualise their ideas. Secondly, in the community of the site, the user innovator can upload the visualisation and share the design with other members. Thirdly, the concept is evaluated, and improvements are suggested by members. When the idea is ready, it is published. Finally, when enough people have made a commitment to buy, the product is produced by a factory within the network.

As a source of innovations for product designs, the community has proven to be fruitful. But Cuusoo.com realised that they have to access other partners to reach the mass market. Hence Cuusoo.com has formed a joint venture with the Japanese retail store MUJI. Selected products from Cuusoo.com are sold in MUJI stores, as a special product line called ‘invented by you’. This product line (of furniture and home appliances) has proven more successful than many of MUJI’s regular products.

By 2007, Cuusoo had brought 20 products to the market, five of which generate stable revenues. There are approximately 580 products currently waiting to be commercialised.

Source: Associate Professor, Lars Bo Jeppesen, 2009.

For more details on this case, contact FORA at FORA@newnatureofinnovation.org.