Open Innovation - Davit Danelidze
Open Innovation - Davit Danelidze
Open Innovation - Davit Danelidze
For experts: All people outside the company who have the required knowledge to give
relevant input.
We have selected the following 4 areas to define different use cases in companies:
Mountain Dew is no stranger to open innovation. In the good, as well as bad, or at least so it
would appear.
In 2009 they released a platform named DEWmocracy where customers were able to develop
new lemonade flavors together. This venture was a huge success. Not only did they get new
flavors that accurately matched customer demand, but this project also worked as a marketing
channel for their new products.The success was, unfortunately, short lived.
Excited of their earlier positive experiences, they dove straight into a classic pitfall of open
innovation, the naming game. In 2012 Mountain Dew released their Dub The Dew campaign
with the apparent intent of getting a crowd-pleasing name for their new green-apple product.
Long story short, the campaign was an epic fail. At least on paper it was. The names that
gained traction were anywhere from practical jokes to atrocious profanities. Mountain Dew
later closed down the campaign and admitted their failure.
This may, however, also have been a strategic way to get viral media coverage. After all, in
the aftermath Mountain Dew didn’t look like an amateur out of their depth, but rather a victim
of unfortunate circumstance. The fault was with the trolls, while Mountain Dew was getting
great attention from media outlets around the world.
In conclusion, if viewed purely from the viewpoint of finding a new name for their product,
Mountain Dew’s worldwide open innovation challenge was very unsuccessful.