Excellent post by Ted Mininni on Mprofs today about the recent launch of Starbuck's MyStarbucksIdea web site. The site allows interested users to submit ideas, vote on ideas, add comments to ideas and view responses from others - including Starbucks "Idea Partners" (48 trained Starbucks employees tasked with championing good ideas). This is good stuff and we're going to see more of it. Starbucks illustrates perfectly the point I keep making about staying close to your customers. Evidently, Shultz realizes the importance of the pulse of customers... I am rooting for them, but I still question whether this will be enough to help Starubucks in a lagging economy? The idea "Lower Your Prices" has 19610 votes, so far. Guess we'll see!