In the marketing world there's been a phrase rolling around called "crowdsourcing".  It's the concept of getting input for an idea from the masses, or gathering content from the literal crowds.  Crowdsourcing is nothing new in the digital world of bits and bytes.  The internet is essentially a gigantic exercise in crowdsourcing... endless pages of content written by the people, for the people.  As social media tools continue to oust traditional 'controlled' delivery of corporate marketing messages, brand giants and mom n' pops alike need to understand that crowdsourcing is an unstoppable force.

There are even companies that take the power of crowdsourcing and turn it into an amazing business.  In a recent Wired Magazine article, Chris Anderson talks about Threadless, the open source t-shirt company.  I personally ordered about 10 t-shirts from Threadless due to the originality and quality of designs by people from all over the world.  It's just plain neat to wear clothing made by some ordinary Joe or Jane who has a incredible talent that would normally never see the light of day.

So the internet...whoopee.  T-shirts... cool, but so what?  Okay, cynics... how about crowdsourced cars.  Or do-it-yourself (production quality!) electronics or Lego accessories.  Read more in Chris' article if you're intrigued about the future of manufacturing...