While their methods might not be what works for businesses on a smaller scale the driving question behind it stays relevant; what is it our customers respond and react to, in forms of advertising, in today’s market?

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Lab Watches Web Surfers to See Which Ads Work

Like other television companies, Disney Media Networks — which includes ABC, ESPN, ABC Family and Disney XD — has long conducted intense consumer research about its programming. But now, as the Web and DVRs uproot the way people consume television, and thus rip apart the industry’s business model, the unit is adding advertiser research as a fresh focus of intense inquiry.

Disney will unveil some of the lab’s early findings, including some surprises about new forms of online ads, on Tuesday in a presentation to about 200 advertisers in New York.

It is relatively easy for Internet companies and their advertisers to measure precisely how often Web site visitors click on advertisements, and which kinds of ads draw the most clicks. But what about those who do not click, the many millions of others whose eyes merely flit across the screen? Disney and other companies say they believe that not nearly enough is known about them — what kinds of ads in which configurations are likeliest to draw them, and hold them?

Read the entire article @ NYTimes.com

There are many ways to get that answer whether it be with sales reports from like businesses, surveys and my personal favorite, good old fashioned research.

The following article  follows a large company with wide customer base: Netflix.  They need to accomplish a goal that will help them to sell more products and gain revenue by taking advantage of their own resources (sales reports, in this case customer viewing habits) and employing the help of experts to apply the needed change.

The Crowd Is Wise (When It’s Focused)

A look at recent cases and new research suggests that open-innovation models succeed only when carefully designed for a particular task and when the incentives are tailored to attract the most effective collaborators. “There is this misconception that you can sprinkle crowd wisdom on something and things will turn out for the best,” said Thomas W. Malone, director of the Center for Collective Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s not true. It’s not magic.”

“It starts out as crowdsourcing and it is culled to a set of action items,” said Jeffrey T. Kreulen, a researcher at the I.B.M. Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.

Open-innovation models are adopted to overcome the constraints of corporate hierarchies. But successful projects are typically hybrids of ideas flowing from a decentralized crowd and a hierarchy winnowing and making decisions.

OPENING the corporate doors to ideas and inspiration from the collective crowd holds great potential, but there are pitfalls, warns Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. To succeed, Mr. Chesbrough said, a company must have a culture open to outside ideas and a system for vetting and acting on them.

“In business, it’s not how many ideas you have,” he observed. “What matters is how many ideas you translate into products and services.”

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The last quote here is my favorite because it’s true!  Owners, employees and collaborators can talk about new changes, procedures or products forever; but until they take action, all of the discussion and discovery is wasted.