Springwise has a post on a company called CrowdSpirit that’s doing “crowd-driven” product development:
How it works: inventors submit ideas for innovative new products and contributors submit problems for inventors to work on. Members vote, define a product’s specifications, and can invest money to finance development. After a first prototype has been created, selected members test and help fine-tune in cooperation with manufacturers. Once the stage of product development has been completed, contributors continue to be involved, for example by acting as a product’s ambassador and promoting it to retailers, or by providing product support, like translating instruction manuals.
Neat. Collective intelligence and decision markets strike again.
The Springwise article speculates, and I agree, that it will be hard to convince people to generate valuable intellectual property for free. Giving contributors a share in profits would be a suitable incentive. Update 4:40pm, Dec 13: Lionel from Crowdspirit explains in the comments that contributors will indeed share in the profits.
It’ll be a powerful day for democracy when this sort of approach manifests itself in politics. Imagine real citizens actually having a direct voice on policy, rather than being forced to filter it through self-interested politicians.
