Blogs for Innovation Panels?.

 ...... What captures the imagination -- is the idea of giving product managers a 24/7 focus group on steriods. Some of us might say that bloggers already get this.   Renee again:

"In a social network sense, our consumer panelists can serve as connectors between small worlds, with those of us who work with the panel serving as facilitators that make the actual bridge (at least, if we do our part right). We had not really thought of our panelists as lead users…but in a sense, that’s exactly what they are.  Another approach is to mix our consumers with a company’s lead-user customers and/or internal R&D people, so that the product knowledge of the one group plays off the creativity skills of the other."

I think blogs are a good fit.  Here's another example of where a semi-structured community - of panelists will create substantially more valuable information when their thoughts, lives and exchanges get the opportunity to flow.  Panels in a modified Live Journal?  Panelist that can reach out... to RSS feeds and insert new ideas... the ones that are shaping their perspectives easily today.  Now that might make leading edge panels even more fashionable. 

So is anyone out their using blogs in consumer panels?  Anyone willing to experiment? It is also easy to integrate the blog component with a hub with questionnaires – online profiles chat etc.  Sharing diaries… would also enable a “learning experience” for panelist… better diaries and thus insights may emerge.  [Unbound Spiral]

This is exactly one of the things i've been experimenting with in developing a tool to research youth in India.  The benefits are many and i see potential for blogs as a tremendous tool for gaining insight into a community.  The youth is doing it anyways with their LiveJournals and Blurtys and Yahoo groups. 

Bring them together in a space, set up a panel, make them blog about their lives and thoughts and preoccupations - what you get is real-time youth speak, real voices as opposed to posturing that may happen in focus groups or the indifference with which questionnaires are usually responded to.  And much much more - narratives, stories, pictures, audio clips, moblog messaging ........ all elements bringing together the youth idiom in a flow, each feeding the other.

Leading edge innovation circles, youth speak panels, youth tribe and community panels, youth encounters - blog panel where marketers can interact on a subject with his audience ...... many many 'blog panel' opportunities come to mind .... 

Another thought on how blogs can be brought into the corporate world.  Chunking it down and simplifying the process of adoption by fitting it into an existing system. Triggered off by the fact that Unilever India has a system where all managers across department and level, spend a few hours a month on the field, with customers.  The intent is to get them to shift from 'see-hear' to 'touch-feel'.  And it is meant for managers across departments - finance, HR, admin, R&D, legal, technical, etc.  - and not just sales, marketing and research to experience this. 

Picture a Customer Empathy Blog (or any other fancy term) in the company, where the manager writes up a short description of his/her key learnings from the visit with the customer.  A blog for pooling of knowledge, insights and observations of customers, where the different perspectives brought in by varying grades of employees with their own areas of expertise can infact broaden and deepen the insights that could be generated.

Easy to post with one click,  won't take too much time - and wow - a shared pool across the company, accessible to all with one click.  Then categories can be built, news feeds subscribed to, threaded discussions encouraged ... and the experience is enriched further.