I hope that you have enjoyed the article, \u201cProcurement & Cultural Trends\/Movements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here!<\/p>\n
The first cultural trend I mentioned was supplier pre-payment<\/em> and I made specific reference to crowdfunding<\/em>. \u00a0Crowdfunding, as defined by Investopedia, is the \u201cuse of small amounts of capital from a large number of individuals to finance a new business venture. Crowdfunding makes use of the easy accessibility of vast networks of friends, family and colleagues through social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to get the word out about a new business and attract investors. Crowdfunding has the potential to increase entrepreneurship by expanding the pool of investors from whom funds can be raised beyond the traditional circle of owners, relatives and venture capitalists.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the most notable crowdfunding websites is Kickstarter.\u00a0 While many associate Kickstarter with bands trying to raise money to record an album, we are seeing it being used for funding other ventures as well.\u00a0 The example I used in my keynote speech at the 2013 NLPA Conference was Beacon Audio essentially pre-selling its Blazar portable speaker system.\u00a0 The manufacturer did not build these units en masse before starting to market them.\u00a0 Instead, they teamed up with artists that helped raise visibility enough to get people to pledge to purchase them prior to them being made.<\/p>\n And it worked.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a screen shot of their Kickstarter.<\/p>\n So, consumers committed to over $300,000 in purchases of this innovative device before it was made.\u00a0 Can you see this happening in corporate procurement? \u00a0 I can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I hope that you have enjoyed the article, \u201cProcurement & […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n