Toymaker’s Open Innovation Success Story

November 2, 2014 By IdeaConnection

littlepeopleToymaker Fisher Price has revealed how its crowdsourcing strategy is paying dividends with the creation of new products at lower cost and in truncated timeframes.

At a recent iMedia Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, Olga Patel, Senior Manager of Open Innovation at Mattel (owners of Fisher Price), told the assembled throng about the open innovation success story of its Little People line of toys.

Meet the Little People

Little People are for pre-schoolers and are small figures with cylindrical bodies that were first launched onto the market in the early 1950s.  The toy brand was looking for two new characters and decided to bypass its traditional method of character creation and went to the crowd instead.

By soliciting ideas from its social network, Fisher Price was able to create the characters in about four weeks at a cost of $10,000.  The conventional approach can cost upwards of $50,000 and take several months as teams meet to brainstorm solutions and then put them out to focus groups.

There is an added bonus in co-creating in this way with consumers in that it generates an inbuilt body of supporters who are eager for the product to hit the shelves and will act as brand ambassadors.

Play Ambassadors

Fisher Price also turns to the crowd in other ways, for example with its active community of parenting bloggers known as Play Ambassadors.   They are given a first look at products and their feedback is important.  They also help to enhance the brand’s presence with parenting communities across a number of social networks.

One example of their importance is that by tapping into their conversations, Fisher Price gained insights into the needs of Gen Y mothers and their babies which informed its brand refresh and positioning.


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Reader Comments


Can these early versions of the finger people be purchased anywhere?
Posted by Chris on November 2, 2017

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