A very insightful take on one of the early aspirations of social listening/analytics on accelerating product development via social research. Rather than coming from the voice of influencers or technology vendor it's via MIT Sloan. We've always preached the virtues of deep listening to understand the factors and forces of communities in making products better but still great to see this reinforced and outside of traditional platforms like twitter or facebook. Feel free to read the article below and add your thoughts.
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/social-listening-is-revolutionizing-new-product-development/