Ideas brew at Starbuck’s online community

The coffee giant is engaging customers with an online community that’s only the second of its kind

The idea is simple: put the suggestion box online.

You remember the suggestion box, right? The quaint notion that customers will drop their handwritten notes into a cardboard container.

Starbucks is changing that. The coffee chain has turned its suggestion box into an online community, complete with corporate blog, called MyStarbucksIdea.

Like Dell Computer’s IdeaStorm, MyStarbucksIdea provides a forum for people to share ideas on improving the Starbucks experience. Visitors to the site can add ideas, comment on others and vote for their favorites. Innovative ideas from this site might be implemented at Starbucks locations.

“This is your invitation to help us transform the future of Starbucks with your ideas—and build upon our history of co-creating the Starbucks Experience together,” CEO Howard Schultz blogged at MyStarbucksIdea.

It also lets people vent about Starbucks—a company that’s drawn ire from some—as long as those comments stay within the context of the conversation.