Threadless: The Business of Community Case Write-Up

1. What are similarities and differences between a community-driven product development
process and a traditional product development process within a firm?
Similarities:
 Both the methods work on similar processes that aim to decrease cost, increase revenue,
expand market share, customer base and survive in market.
 Both the processes undergo design phase, production, marketing, sales and distribution
phase during product development.
 Both the methods aim at satisfying customer needs. To understand the customer needs they
conduct research, surveys in traditional product development and voting in community
method.
 Both the methods offer reward programs to satisfy existing customers and invite new
customers.

Differences:
 The time taken to produce a product in traditional product development is more when
compared to community driven product development.
 Community product development has the advantage of getting a budding product critiqued
during its design stage whereas Traditional development cannot do so until the product has
taken complete shape and is released into the market.
 The overall cost investment and maintenance is cheaper in community product