The Future is About Customization

By Dave Celento

October 28th, 2008

Along with Sustainability, one of the hottest trends in design and manufacturing pertains to Customization. People for years have tricked out Harley Davidson’s and VW Beetles into all manner of curiosities, from the wondrous to the macabre. What is motivating this is a desire to express one’s individuality, while still maintaining membership to a given identity group.

The digital milieu is an ideal place for romps into the land of customization, for one simple reason—it’s easy to pre-visualize options without having to physically construct them. Simple change a pattern, color, texture, or geometry in a digital model and, as Emeril might say—BAM! You can see a vivid 3D digital model that is as realistic as a photograph. And what is even better is that once a person likes the look of what they’ve created, the web offers a total of all the options and they can one-click order their desired creation from BMW Mini Cooper, Scion, Nike, Puma and countless others.

Not news, I know. But for industries that haven’t adopted this model of product delivery it’s worth speculating why it’s such a success and what are the necessary ingredients to enable this process. First, when it comes to products people wish for solutions, not services. Second, the only way to enable such a process is to develop standards that allow interchangeability. The computer industry was one of the first to do this in a publicly configurable and purchasable way—think online computer purchase options from Dell or Apple.

Thus any corporation that offers products that aggregate or assemble into a greater whole can easily let consumers previsualize their solution, explore options, check the price, order, and deliver the assembled goods. A great example of this is Lego’s Digital Designer where rather than buying a predefined house, car, jet, or space ship, one can make their own crazy concoction then order all the pieces in one convenient kit (well, at least it’s possible, even if Lego doesn’t yet do this). If Lego can do this, surely a number of industries that support the building trade can do the same by assembling components into a greater whole—like say, the prefabrication industry could do if there were universal standards. And since that’s what I’m exploring currently, I’ll have to get back to you on this!

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