Open innovation and the value of crowds: implications for the fashion industry

Firms in many industries are seeking to incorporate ideas from outside parties to complement their own internal resources and capabilities. Suppliers, distributors, end users, scientists, firms in unrelated industries and even competitors can be important sources of information and ideas. Furthermore, with the computing capabilities available today, firms can scan online communities for sources of ideas and even harness the ideas generated by a select few key users with insights into emerging mainstream customer needs. All of this additional input helps firms compete profitably in an increasingly difficult environment. New trends include open innovation, crowdsourcing, user toolkits, mass customization and lead-user analysis. While there is emerging academic research on all of these topics, their usefulness in fashion marketing and merchandising remains relatively unexplored. This is potentially a great research opportunity, as fashion designers can obtain key ideas that boost competitiveness by working more closely with customers, suppliers, retailers and other parties. This article presents the state of the art in each of these trends, and concludes with a discussion of the implications for fashion marketing and merchandising academic research and practice.