Quirky, another Web-based startup, enlists people to participate in both phases of Weitzman’s recombinant innovation— first generating new ideas, then filtering them. It does this by harnessing the power of many eyeballs not only to come up with innovations but also to filter them and get them ready for market. Quirky seeks ideas for new consumer products from its crowd, and also relies on the crowd to vote on submissions, conduct research, suggest improvements, figure out how to name and brand the products, and drive sales. Quirky itself makes the final decisions about which products to launch and handles engineering, manufacturing, and distribution. It keeps 70 percent of all revenue made through its website and distributes the remaining 30 percent to all crowd members involved in the development effort; of this 30 percent, the person submitting the original idea gets 42 percent, those who help with pricing share 10 percent, those who contribute to naming share 5 percent, and so on. By the fall of 2012, Quirky had raised over $ 90 million in venture capital financing and had agreements to sell its products at several major retailers, including Target and Bed Bath & Beyond. One of its most successful products, a flexible electrical power strip called Pivot Power, sold more than 373 thousand units in less than two years and earned the crowd responsible for its development over $400,000.
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