It seems somehow appropriate that I should start this blog by writing from MCPC 2007, the Mass Customization and Personalization Conference, which is being held at the Stata Center at MIT. This is the fourth time the conference has been held, and it’s actually split into two parts; the first here in Boston is headlined Research and Innovation, whereas the second part in Montreal (which I won’t be attending) will concentrate on the business and services side of things.

I spent most of today in a pre-conference workshop discussing the MIT City Car concept, a project which is part of Professor William J. Mitchell’s Smart Cities Research Group. But I want to write about this in a future post, so I won’t go into any detail here. After some introductions, the conference proper started with an opening keynote by Joseph Pine.Although Pine didn’t invent the term ‘Mass Customization,’ (that credit goes to Stan Davis, who will speak here tomorrow), he introduced many people to the concept through his 1993 book “Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition.” In his presentation today Pine talked about the past, present and future of mass customization, and began by showing how mass customised markets had emerged.

Traditionally markets were local, if you wanted something made, you visited a craftsperson, told them what you wanted, and they would make it as best their skill allowed. With industrial production, mass markets offered consumers a deal: you can have this product much cheaper than previously, but it will be exactly the same as every other product - the Henry Ford model. This began to break down with competition, and markets first became segmented, then focussed on niche consumer groups, and finally where we are today, with products mass customised for individual consumers. The notion that as production technologies have become more flexible, so markets have been able to offer more variety, has lead to the belief that mass customisation is just the latest manifestation of mass manufacturing. But Pine argued this is wrong. Variety is mass manufacturing’s last gasp. True customisation demands that you know who the customer is, rather than simply offer them a lot of choices.

Pine went on to talk about customer satisfaction, which he defined as “the difference between what a customer expects and what the customer perceives he gets.” This contrasts to customer sacrifice, which is “the difference between what a customer wants and what he settles for.” Reducing the sacrifice is the goal of mass customisation.

The second keynote speech was by Brennan Mulligan of Zazzle, who is also the guy who set up Timbuk 2 cycle bags. To be honest I didn’t find this talk so interesting, probably because to my mind the products Zazzle sells are derivative crap. I find what Ponoko and Threadless are doing to be much more interesting. Then again, Zazzle definitely shows just how far into the mainstream mass customisation has reached, although perhaps it also serves as a reminder of exactly what the mass market finds desirable.