A creative consumer describes any “individual or group who adapt, modify, or transform a proprietary offering”. Traditional consumers simply use and consume products and services. Creative consumers not only use and consume products and services, they also change them in some way. Consider for example the hacker George Hotz, who unlocked the original iPhone and hacked Sony’s PlayStation 3. He gave these hacks away free. Other examples, include Jose Avila who made FedEx furniture for his apartment exclusively from Federal Express boxes and Jim Hill a devoted Disney fan who designed and delivered guided, but unauthorised tours of Disneyland.
In 2005, The Economist published an article about the future of innovation that was entitled ‘The rise of the creative consumer’. This article explains that increasingly smart companies rely on identifying and leveraging the innovation potential of creative consumers. However, many companies feel threatened or upset by the actions of creative consumers. George Hotz, Jose Avila and Jim Hill, all received negative and in some cases threatening reactions from the companies whose products and services they had got creative with. Consequently, it has been proposed that companies can have four general stances to creative consumers. These are defined by whether the company’s actions toward these creative consumers are active or passive, and whether the company’s attitude towards creative consumers is either positive or negative. The four resulting stances are: