I’ve seen this coming for a while in the development of real products: auctioning off development services to the highest bidder instead of developers submitting competitive quotes to get a project. I think for Industrial Design it’ll happen pretty soon, especially when companies start to see the profession as filled with distinctly different kinds of designers: from the “make it pretty” crowd that doesn’t think too much to the “design the entire experience” people who also understand a client’s business (including their limitations). It’ll happen because along with most everything else, manufacturing is slowly becoming democratized.<\/p>\n
Posting stuff like the entry on the architecture plans that were up for auction (reLink<\/a>) is all about this shift. It’s why I followed eBay’s move to offer\/endorse digital downloads last December and finally blogged about it in February (reLink<\/a>). It’s where I plan to be … and why I delayed mentioning it to be honest. Anyway, back to the main topic, here’s a good example of where things are going: a videogame development team is reportedly on the auction block (Link<\/a>). No clue how legit this is, but even if it’s some mod team looking to get noticed, it’s important that it happened because it puts the idea into more people’s heads. I bet we see a full product development package up very soon.<\/p>\n This sort of news being spread via online media channels (from semi-MSM to little blogs like this) is why I expect more of this in the future. Imagine if musicians like Ludacris (who I caught a bit of on Jimmy Kimmel last night and who impressed me with his on-air demeanor) decide to make their own videogame as a vehicle for their work using a dev team they won at auction. It could happen. As evidenced on the late-night talkshow, Ludacris understands how to play the marketing game. And lots of other people know it too; increasingly so.<\/p>\n Plus, jumping into the auction market is a unique way to build a reputation. It may be risky, but the rewards are there. It’s a public way to put a team’s services in front of willing customers and – if the project is a success – the reward is priceless. In an increasingly flat world, people are definitely going to have to brand themselves more aggressively and this is a great way to do it. Anyway, you can read about Ludacris and his thoughts on leveraging new technology to promote product over on Yahoo News (Link<\/a>). Who knows, maybe he’ll make his own movie instead (if it hasn’t already happened, I bet a film production team will be up for auction soon, too). Then he can use the fat pipes coming in the next five years (apparently – Link<\/a>) to stream it. Seems AT&T is already looking to do that (Link<\/a>).<\/p>\n And all this rambling came via Blue’s News<\/a> links. It’s definitely getting easier to connect the dots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve seen this coming for a while in the development of real products: auctioning off development services to the highest bidder instead of developers submitting competitive quotes to get a project. I think for Industrial Design it’ll happen pretty soon, … Continue reading
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\nBy the way, take notice of the ringtone comment in that last link, and then take a look at news that eBay-owned Skype is looking to get into the surprisingly lucrative ringtone market (Link<\/a>). Things become increasingly transparent (I just posted a long comment over on Blogspotting about AOL’s increasing transparency and how the major players are slowly starting to align in understandable ways). <\/p>\n