The Long Tail and the end of the "department of hits"

via en.wikipedia.org

An idea of mine in progress: The Department of Hits

Your product ideas come from your Department of Hits - the department also known as product innovation, product development and product management; the brains tasked with the challenge of coming up with hits. Anything less than a "hit" is a failure because we can't profitably manage or market it.

Scarcity need hits. When you only have limited shelf-space and window display at HMV you need Britney and Madonna to deliver maximum returns.

But what happens when you have unlimited shelf-space? What happens when the bottlenecks that stand in the way of distribution and marketing begin to disappear?

The world that Blockbuster built - a world built on the back of gold records, hits and stars still works but begins to fray at the edges. While we still obsess over hits, they are not the force they once were. The world outside of the mainstream is now extends beyond than the comic store and the library.

Crowdsourcing and the Long Tail are two economic phenomena yet to get hitched. The move to digital and the emergence of Long Tail economics has lowered the waterline, revealing a whole new terrain that for eternity has existed undiscovered below water.

Crowdsourcing is the strategic key to unlocking the potential of Long Tail economics enabling brands like Threadless, GoldCorp, Maruchan, @Cosme and Jones Soda to profitably accommodate customer ideas rather than their internal "department of hits"

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