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Check out this thread at D*I*Y Planner:

Look through the forums and comments on this site, and you’ll see folks with an all-too-common problem. This problem is not relegated to paper productivity fans, but high-tech gadget users as well — the chief distinction often being the amount of money spent, and the technical ability required. I’m sure you’ve suffered from it yourself. You’ve wandered the aisles at your local office mega-store, browsing the shelves and looking in vain for the perfect solution for your productivity crises or creativity ailments. You’re convinced it’s there somewhere, probably covered in rich leather, sporting multiple pockets that miraculously organise your clutter, holding sumptuous paper that just inspires you to write all the right things. You don’t know what size it is: it might be tiny, it might be large. It might consist of index cards, it might be loose paper on rings, it might be fixed pages in a special journal. It may have forms with all the right prompts, it may be blank and free-form. You’ve tried multiple products and approaches, and none have stood the test of time, and now all you have is a mass of half-written pages of different sizes and shapes and methods and mappings. Still, you think, it’s out there: the perfect solution. The Grail quest continues, and like Galahad, you plod wearily onwards and blindly follow the next vision, taking home the next item on the shelves.

Here is a comment in the thread, not from just anybody with an idea, but a Levenger employee whose job includes keeping an eye on what the Productivity Community is doing with their products:

An interesting thing happened over the last few months.

In my last ‘report from the blogosphere’ at headquarters, I spoke to a broader group of our managers about ‘hacking vs. cracking’ and the creative talent that lies within DIY communities. Like one big ‘Show & Tell’ I pulled out a hacked CircaPDA full of official DiyPc forms and Matt’s hipster satellites, a “nano PDA” full of business cards, and a junior notebook full of Bill’s Recipe Jotter pages. Using DiyPc members by name and state, and detailing the projects they were working on, I noticed a stunning irony.

Instead of a shirt and tie, it would have been more appropriate had I presented in an official DiyPc T-Shirt designed by our resident artist. ;)

***

Building interactive opportunities for customer control over the products and services we should offer is what I hope to be just the beginning of an experiment in open innovation. Discussions of issues like shipping (work in progress, but there now is at least the choice of Smartpost vs. FedEx ground as a result of everyone’s input) are essential to address before we can fully take advantage of peer production, and explore new methods for adding back to the community. Much of the direction this takes is in your hands, so keep me informed of any new ideas that are in their incubation stages. I’m open to all manner of feedback. ryan.rasmussen[at]levenger.com

Levenger makes some of the highest quality planner and organizer materials that I have found, and it is very exciting to see ideas and requests from the Productivity Community showing up as real products from a trusted company. Quickly.

Go ahead and take Ryan up on his offer, because you know he truly is listening. And while you’re at it, check out D*I*Y Planner.

Update: Bubble Planner is another company that Gets It, check out their shop here for some innovative planning products.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6yzgan. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen