Quirky: The Solution to the Innovator's Dilemma. Ben Kaufman was on the subway in New York City in 2005 when he had his light-bulb moment. He saw a girl--a stranger--sporting a pair of headphones he designed at mophie, the iPod accessories company he founded the day he graduated from high school. "I saw something I invented out in the world, and it was the best feeling," Kaufman says. "That's when I realized I needed to help more people experience that. " Four years later, Kaufman launched Quirky, an online consumer products company with a social development twist: products for the people, created and designed by the people. "We're making invention accessible," Kaufman says during a whirlwind tour of Quirky's offices, which occupy the third floor of a building in SoHo, one of New York City's busiest retail corridors.
The goal at Quirky is to change that, and ultimately become the global, go-to brand for everyone who's ever dreamed of becoming an inventor. Sharp-minded: Ben Kaufman with Switch, a modular pocketknife developed by quirky. Small Business | Models | Macro | The #NewEraBiz - Blog. Business Model Breakdown will be a monthly blog series where we break down a great business model into its most elementary components, so that we can see how the company is changing the value paradigm in its respective industry. A couple of weeks ago, we took a look at the heart of a business model. Today we will be examining the live, breathing business model of Quirky.com, an American company that has created an online, end-to-end product design shop and made it available to the masses.
Quirky and how it works: Quirky.com was conceived in the mind of a young twenty-something named Ben Kaufmann to turn product development into a social sport. The epiphany to start Quirky came when Ben was trying to design a new product for his inaugural business, Mophie (still in existence today), which designed accessories for Apple products. The Quirky process contains three essential steps: First, individuals (it can be anyone) submit ideas for a new product design. Quirky’s business model:
Welcome to Forbes. 10 Business Models That Rocked 2010. Quirky-process.jpg 962×812 pixels. We Built That: Will the Quirky Model Be Replicated? - Techonomy. Quirky engineers Tim Connelly and John Jacobsen At Techonomy we’ve heard tons of buzz about social product development company Quirky since our Techonomy Detroit conference, where company founder Ben Kaufman gave a high-spirited, enthusiastically received talk just weeks after finalizing a $68 million round of VC funding. But some wonder about the likelihood that other companies could easily copy the Quirky model.
Quirky combines an in-house staff of engineers and developers with sophisticated management of an online community of global contributors of ideas and suggestions, who themselves make money from products they work on. The more such companies the better, presumably, since social product companies might help more people generate incomes and lead to more desirable and environmentally-friendly products. Quirky’s advanced Web infrastructure is more than just a platform for idea submission.
“Our process is chaotic and cyclical at the same time,” he says.