I saw this from crowdspirit which are looking to 'rethink product development', initially with consumer electronics worth below 150 Euros, and thought it is really interesting.
This is how they say it works
Step 1
The community sends ideas, fine tunes them & votes for the best one.
Step 2
The best ideas and their product specifications are jointly defined with Partners. Community Investors start financing the product development.
Step 3
The first prototype is tested and fine-tuned by the community.
Step 4
Customers purchase products thanks to the CrowdSpirit Supply chain. The community ensures the product support and recommands products to retailers.
I was about to do something on 'participation payments' or all the models springing up for renumerating the contribution of individual's content (and will get round to that at some stage), but this seems to take it a bit further, applying a much more structural / mainstsream approach to the idea of crowdsourcing (reference through Springwise )by offering a numer of ways of being involved. From inventor to Investor to ambassador, hence involving end-users in every aspect of a product's life-cycle.
I'm not sure exactly how the renumeration works, but it does go a bit deeper than the Intel Core Challenge for instance, offering an ongoing, overlapping opportunity to contribute to loads of projects and contribute at lots of different stages.
