The promise of crowdsourcing/collaborative design is filled with frothing-at-the-mouth hype juxtaposed against old world skepticism. Consider me squarely in the middle of this debate.

Consider that Nokia, Motorola, etc spent millions of dollars 'listening to their customers' yet were unable to come to the market first with a breakthrough device like the iphone (in an industry that is their 100% focus, no less). It was the design brilliance of an individual mind that won here (Steve Jobs).

However, consider Mountain Dew's remarkeable Dewmocracy campaign (https://www.dewmocracymediahub.com). Through this effort, Mountain Dew has incredibly outsourced almost the entire product launch process to its fan base, from concept to design to marketing tactics. Clearly this is a homerun case study of using social media to drive the product development process.

In the end, both a vision-of-one and extreme customer collaboration work, it just depends on who is steering the ship. Expect exciting stories of both failure and success as more companies push against each of these models. Only time will tell which side will emerge as the definitive victor.

Aveek Guha, President, MBA Day Camp