Thanks for your comment – I think that the people at Best Buy definitely have it right – you are experimenting with new ways of communicating with your customers and potential customers and being bold in your efforts. What I have noticed since I wrote this post is that the teams working on your social media projects are ADAPTABLE – as you say you are working on phase 2 which means you are constantly adapting to the needs of your customers and also adapting as you redefine the role social media will play in your organization as your following grows.

Again, thanks for stopping by and I will be watching closely as Best Buy successes are compounded. ;)

I’m working on the IdeaX project for Best Buy. My role is emerging media manager and IdeaX is one of my projects. I wasn’t on the team at the birth of IdeaX but am helping to shepherd it to its next phase.

A couple points. I see your point about potentially using forums as a way to encourage and leverage customer or employee ideas, in a sense I would argue that IdeaX IS a forum. There’s an important distinction between the two. A forum is traditionally a place for questions to be asked, or complaints to be registered etc. True enough, out of those discussions come ideas for how to improve the thing that led to the issue or problem in the first place. The distinction I would make between a forum and what we are doing with IdeaX is that IdeaX focuses not just on solutions to problems, but completely new ideas as well. In a nutshell, I would say that is why we separate the two. A bit of semantics perhaps, but I think having a pure Idea place is important.

In any case, I appreciate the commentary, and I hope predictions of IdeaX’s demise are premature :). We are working on phase two of our feature sets, and more importantly a more robust plan for giving the ideas that have merit a pathway into the business.

Cheers,

Joshua Kahn