However you say that “all Quirky products are designed by the crowd”; I
don’t really agree with that. I think Quirky’s strength is that they
have in-house designers & engineers etc. who THEM design the
products. The crowds is only providing idea input, voting, commenting
but they don’t design anything. Quirky has been funded $ 120 million by
VC, and that money is basically there to transform consumer ideas into
actual products. Don’t you think?

A better example of people who actually design something might be Local
Motors (i.e. The Forge) because its community is qualified in a way,
they’re mostly designers & engineers… and the consumers actually
build their cars! This is, according to me, a better example of products
REALLY designed by the crowd.

Wishing you the best, and cool stats at 17:30 ;-),

Yannig