How can you harness the power of the blogosphere for innovation? Here are some strategies that Seybold mentions in her book:

Track what bloggers are saying about your firm and your products: "Staying in touch with what users, customers, critics and other influencers are saying about your company and its products is essential." I believes that blogs can also be a useful form of competitive intelligence, because influential bloggers are increasingly relied upon to help build excitement about new products and services under development, sometimes months before their launch. Fortunately, tracking this type of information is easier than ever with RSS feeds.

Find and acknowledge fans and critics, and support their blogs: "End users’ or critics' blogs are big opinion influencers... You can get great buzz and credibility from a small mention in a popular blog." I believe that developing close relationships with bloggers may provide you with important intelligence about your industry or market, because key bloggers tend to be well-connected and talk with many people. Thus, they tend to be conversant in the latest trends.

Invite customers to blog on your site: One idea that Seybold shares is to invite customers to share how they are using your product, what works and what doesn't.  This type of campaign could help to uncover new applications of your product that you may have never considered, or it could help to surface problems that you need to address. But be aware that doing this opens up your company to both positive and negative responses. If you attempt to “sanitize” or kill negative responses, bloggers could reveal your heavy-handed actions on their own blogs, leading to a backlash against your firm. On the other hand, if you can show that you value negative feedback by taking action on it on a timely basis, you’ll gain credibility and trust.

Put your fans to work: "Ask your fans to co-create with you." Seybold says that contests with prizes may work well to incentivize your fans to submit their ideas, desired product features and other forms of content to you.

Gain insights from users’ own blogs: "You'll be amazed at how much customers will tell you about their lives and their workplaces. You can engage in virtual anthropology by looking at users blog offerings.“

Participate in the blogosphere: "By 2000, any company or organization that didn't have a web address was considered ‘out of it’ as a business without a fax machine or a telephone.  Now, the same can be said of blogs. You aren't credible if you don't have blog."

I think there are several important lessons to be learned here:

First, if your industry or market has many blogs, they can be a great source of information about and users’ and consumers’ wants, needs, desires and challenges.  You can mine this information for useful insights that could lead to new products and services, as well as opportunities to add features or functionality to your existing products. 

Second, the blogosphere is incredibly open; its participants are accustomed to sharing and linking with one another, building upon each others' posts and creating a virtual web of information about specific topics and issues. With a little bit of coaxing, you can solicit their input and ideas on your company and its products or services. This only works, however, as Seybold points out, if you are viewed as being credible and trustworthy. Remember, the insights or "scoops" you share with bloggers must benefit them as well as you. 

Third, I believe the opportunities for "virtual anthropology" will only increase as the number of blogs continues to grow at an exponential rate. Your biggest challenge will be developing a system to effectively search for, track and interpret bloggers’ posts.

Finally, here’s an idea you may be able to use: Many companies now operate customer or dealer advisory boards, which typically meet in person only once or twice a year and provide valuable feedback on what’s working, what’s not, industry trends and more. Why not create a private group blog that can function as a “virtual customer advisory board.”  This would be an excellent and inexpensive way to solicit an advisory board's feedback on an ongoing basis, year-round!