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Quirky Crowd Invention

By Peter Lloyd

Winning is not winning. Just listen to the current top ten pop music hits. You probably agree that mass acclaim has little or nothing to do with quality. That’s just as true with invention.

Two examples that jump to the top of my mind immediately—VHS compared to Betamax and Windows compared to Mac. Somehow in both cases the inferior of the two contenders won the war of mass consumption.

Whining Is Not Winning Either
No use grousing about this fact of invention life. Come up with a great invention that depends on mass consumption and your work has just begun. Once true was the fact that coming up with a great idea was only half the work. Now coming up with a great new product idea is just the first step on a long, post-invention trek.

Then along comes Ben Kaufman. His Quirky organization looks at anyone’s invention, lets all Quirky players consider and rate it, then puts his Quirky team to work bringing all the winners to market at the rate of a few a week.

Any number of inventor helper agencies will take your money and help you go to market, but Quirky puts everybody who believes in you on your team. All contributors share in the success of the product. A Quirky diagram explains the process.

diagram

This is crowdsourcing evolved to the highest order I’ve seen so far. But one painful question remains. Who would have won the VHS-Betamax war if both had gone to Quirky for support? After a look at the kinds of inventions the Quirky community drives to market, I see rows and rows of gimmicks and gadgets, but what about something, anything that might significantly improve our quality of life?

See also:
Peter Lloyd has helped major consumer-package-goods companies generate new-product ideas for more than a decade. Among his favorites contributions to consumers—Heinz Green Ketchup.

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