This document discusses the potential for product innovation through online communities. It notes there is currently a "clash of contexts" between how vendors think about and market their products based on features, and how consumers think about products based on the functions they perform. The document proposes a Product Innovation Ontology that can bridge this gap by allowing users to better define their purchase intents and needs at a conceptual level, providing insights for vendors to innovate new products that meet latent consumer demands. By leveraging user-generated knowledge, online communities could harness a new mode of production and take innovation to new levels.

1. Product Innovation Potential of Online Communities
the Semantics of Purchase Intent, Online Offers and Product Innovation
Davor Meersman
in collaboration with: Tharam Dillon and Christophe Debruyne

2. “Phonographs will be used to record wishes of old
men on their death beds.”
Thomas Edison

3. “We are selling a thing and know how you will use it”
• vendor perspective
• products as isolated entities
• “this is what we have, please come to see it” (and then buy it)
• we have an offer to fit your needs
• attention based

4. “I’m looking for something but the internet is dumb”
• ideal image, original intent, imagined product
• queries & taxonomies
• “yes, I guess that will do”
• “does it even know I’m looking for a product?”
• trying to sift through other contexts
• what were they thinking?
• intention based

5. Clash of contexts: features vs. functions
• vendors think in terms of features: look what we HAVE!
• consumers think in terms of functions: what can it DO for me?

6. Let’s have a look at what is going on
Customers on the Web Vendors on the Web
application product e-commerce
domain
Producers

7. “So let’s give users the ability to really express what
they want!”
• Great idea, but...
• serious discrepancy between what concepts and level of granularity the user
thinks are important in defining an intent (the “ideal image”) and what is offered
by vendors.
• most discrepancies concerned peripheral data
• peripheral data is data that is used by the customer in the purchase decision
process, but that is not part of the offering of the product or service provider.
• relates to the function the user want to see performed by the service they
book: to be relaxed, to have fun, to be satiated with good foods, to enjoy the
scenery, to be safe, etc.

8. Did you say ‘clash of contexts’ earlier?
• Semantic technology offers solutions for product data interoperability
• eClassOWL
• PRONTO
• SWOP
• GoodRelations
• Manufacturing, design, commerce
• But no functions, no product application domain = no innovation

9. Product Innovation Ontology
• Main concepts:
• Actor: any actor using objects in any process in the domain
• Object: products and components used in processes by actors and objects
• Process: any process in the domain, executed by an actor with the use of
objects
• Quality: concepts that define how, to what extent, when etc. something
happens; properties and functions of objects, actors and processes. Also
contains concepts pertaining to more intangible customer knowledge such
as satisfaction and opinion.
• Properties, functions and application context

10. Innovation potential of online communities
• Users are able to define intent and get relevant results
• matching
• data has to be present
• Vendors bridge gap between intent and click
• insight into what customer wants
• innovation based on intent definitions
• knowledge no longer lost - conceptual dynamics bottleneck
• leverage user needs into usable enterprise knowledge

11. “Peer production is about more than sitting down
and having a nice conversation... It's about
harnessing a new mode of production to take
innovation and wealth creation to new levels.”
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO