Internet & media

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Quirky, the social product development community, has a very intriguing multi-level business model that shows other web 2.0 projects that money making from day one is possible. Product developers all over the world can submit their ideas to the Quirky platform. Since the posting of these ideas will cost a designer 99 dollar, a first qualitative filtering will be made upfront. The Quirky team itself makes the final selection of which product idea will be produced and sold on the website but they make use the inputs of their online community to support their decision. These users give design advice on the product idea, the brand name, packaging and so on and will receive a small percentage of the 30% profit generated by that specific product idea. Of course also the actual designer of the product will get a share of this profit once the product has made actual sales. To lower the risk, Quirky will only start to produce and sell a product in their webshop once 500 people made a pre-sale of it. If the product idea never reaches this level, the designer will at least receive the marketing data gained of the platform. 99 dollar for these brief insights is still a fair price. Next to the submission fees of all the designers Quirky will gain of course a lot of money out of their webshop , once it will be running at full force. Quirky floats on top of several trends and manages to offer value for all the stakeholders involved. Design influencers win, product designers win and so does Quirky. Where other crowdsourcing plaftorms struggle to find a good balance between trading social currency (influence, exposure, reputation,…) next the ‘normal’ currency (dollars), it seems Quirky got it right. Selling user generated content is not new but this unique approach seems to have enough potential to grow large. Although this sounds promising, Quirky should be aware not to burn their money too fast since they are giving away a few dollars to those who talk about them(*) and to those who fill in a small survey. They do need of course a large community to gain momentum but the investment in new members by offering them 20 dollar (**) is maybe not that sustainable.

(*) Since we’re testing out the service as well, the quirky link in this article has a ‘referral’-identifier attached to it.
(**) You first need to submit a 1 minute survey

Consumer goods

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“What would make your Starbucks experience perfect?” On MyStarbucksIdea.com people can post their ideas and see how Starbucks puts those ideas to work. Ideas range from Birthday drinks, a punch card system, locally baked goods to Coffee ice cubes. On top of being a simple Suggestion Box 2.0, the community can vote to select the best ideas. Or as the company puts it: “Together, we will shape the future of Starbucks.”

Corporate crowdsourcing of product and service ideas is not unique, as Dell’s IdeaStorm, Innovate with Kraft and a list of other examples illustrate. While My Starbucks Idea is fully company branded (powered by the Force.com platform of Salesforce), other companies opt for a specific idea challenge on intermediary platforms like Fellowforce.com, Atizo, IdeaConnection, InnovationExchange, or IdeaMagnet. In contrast to challenges on those platforms, My Starbucks Idea does not reward customers for their ideas. Apparently the experience Starbucks offers its customers is strong enough for people to want to contribute by offering free product ideas. Underlining again the importance for companies to create unique experiences, it sparks the question whether it will be sustainable to ask for free advice. Would you be able to gather free contribution and involvement from your customers?