Crowdsourcing and inventors: the future of product development

by Sara Brown, Intern

We all have those crazy relatives or friends who constantly tout their newest invention that will soon be “sweeping the nation.” We’ve heard the impassioned pitches and enthusiastic projections but aren’t surprised when nothing ever really gets made or sold. That is, until now.

I recently stumbled upon the newest incarnation of crowdsourcing, a website called Quirky. For a mere $99 (a tiny fraction of the thousands you’d have to raise or fork over to develop a product on your own) you can post your fabulous product idea on the Quirky site. The Quirky team and the site’s community then judge your idea and decide if it’s the best one that week.

If your idea is the best that week, then you’ve won the social product development jackpot. Not only will Quirky create sketches, 3D renderings and prototypes of your product, but you’ll also get the input of thousands of Quirky members on everything from your product’s design to its logo. No market research or focus groups required here, Quirky has done all the heavy lifting for you.

There is one last hurdle to jump. Since you’ve only put up $99, Quirky’s developers set a minimum number of pre-sale commitments your product needs to reach before it goes into production, basically ensuring that the product is commercially viable. However, they do lend a helping hand by posting the item to their online store and providing social media tools for you and Quirky members to share the product.  If you hit your pre-sell number and the product goes into production, Quirky pays you (and the Quirky members who influenced you) a percentage of the profits.

Even if your idea wasn’t voted the best that week, Quirky still provides you with the detailed analytics on why it didn’t make it. You can learn who did or didn’t like your product, and everything from their ages to occupations. You also get the chance to edit your product based on your analytics and resubmit it for only $10.

If Quirky takes off, it could do for small inventors what e-books have done for independent authors. Removing the high costs of developing and testing a new product means anyone can get in the game. Add to that the removal of the risk of investing a lot of money in producing a product that doesn’t sell. Just as authors no longer need big publishers to get their books to readers, inventors may no longer need big investors to get their products from idea to store shelf.

I doubt Quirky is making any of its inventors millionaires, but it’s certainly creating cool, useful products that may never have seen the light of day otherwise. It’s also allowing its consumers to be a part of the product development process in a way big companies can’t. Garage inventors have created some of the most innovative products of our time; just look at the origins of Apple. Add social networking and crowdsourcing to ingenuity like that and you’ve got the future of product development.

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