Your customers are a community

Not only are your customers a community, but so are your suppliers, your partners and even your competitors. Every company should use it smartly. As long as you have a solid basis of customers, you might have access to all information you need. All you have to do is to let them interact with each other and with you and listen to them. For that you just need a good platform. Could be on-line, with all Web 2.0 tools (blogs, forums, networks...) or even off-line (fairs, focus groups...). The best being of course mixing all tools. I'm sure you're aware of the incredible strength of a community. Wikipedia is a great example that emphasizes the true power of millions of brains. Not only is Wikipedia an incredible database of information, but everything is well-organized and reliable. If someone is mistaking someone else will correct her. As a company, the main trick is to get people involved to be able to extract interesting pieces of information. You can set up a platform to let people comment on your