Very cool to see a company change the way it does business as a result of the ideas in What Would Google Do?
In another first, Tower Systems launched Software Ideas on Friday, a facility at its website which gives its newsagent users a greater say in the direction of the software and delivers greater transparency over the product development process.
The Software Ideas initiative is as a direct result of several Tower team members reading Jeff Jarvis’ book What Would Google Do? The book struck a nerve with the Tower team which was already working on ways to give newsagents more say in development.
While we have always discussed changes with users, parts of the process have been behind closed doors. Now, all users – anyone coming to our website including competitors – will see the change requests and the votes. This transparency and our acting on requests from users will make the Tower software the most valuable software for newsagents. It is the only software where users have a self-managed, transparent, democratic role in determining the direction of the software.
(These Australian news agencies also sell books – so I hope this also inspires them to sell lots of WWGD?s.)
