This article is timely in light of our article overview earlier today speaking to the revolution taking place in the car industry as well as highly successful Boston companies like Communispace and BzzAgent.

From the post: “There is a major trend in the design of physical products. It is the gradual opening up of the lab and the engineering department to co-creation with customers and other parties. … Engineers are no longer design experts; they are mediators who structure and enable design interactions between imaginative customers and innovative suppliers of technologies and systems.”

This HBR contribution (authored by a co-creation consultancy) speaks specifically to the car industry’s need for “engagement platforms” — co-creation platforms that help designers understand what their customers really want. The author discusses how traditionally these large companies have focused on automating the design process, versus opening it up to the customers. She notes that current approaches to gathering this type of customer data is costly and not efficient, suggesting that a “broad-based engagement platform that attracts car customers and their social partners and gives them tools and structure to interact effectively with car company designers, their automotive parts, and software suppliers.”

What do you think this platform would look like? Would it be somewhere between BzzAgent and Communispace, or something entirely different?