Following up on Igor's post about user-centered innovation:

Clear Ink's Kiwini Oe participated in a focus group conducted by Avaty's Rein Spire, a grad student from Innsbruck researching innovation management in virtual worlds.

Rein Spire introduces the topic to the group:

"Companies now start to integrate their customers into their development process of new products, because they strive to develop and produce exactly what customers want. Compared to traditional market research, toolkits that draw on ideas of innovative customers exist. Examples for Open Innovation projects are platforms where customers can develop their own products and bring in their own ideas. I guess not only to me, Second Life offers enormous potential for the development of innovative real life products."

The transcripts are available here.