One of the tenets of The New Product Economy is that big companies should make size an advantage. The idea of a cumbersome, slow-moving big company has to be eradicated if big companies want to survive in the nimble, niche-oriented new economy. And size is an advantage – compared to smaller companies they have financial and human resources, distribution channels, brand recognition, customers … oh, and patents!
A great example of using present assets to fuel new products is the recent partnership of G.E. and Quirky, a cloud-sourcing product development platform. In this partnering G.E. is offering up 100’s of their patents to inventors who use the Quirky platform to launch their ideas. And – this is the good part – G.E. will profit from the products that are sold by taking a cut of the profits (not yet disclosed). (Quirky and even online participants in the development cycle also get a cut.)
Hats off to G.E. for figuring out how to benefit from existing assets at the same time as they are helping the makers of new products bring their things to life.