End of a Quirky dream: Community design is dead @ MNN – Mother Nature Network.

Quirky has given up on producing products altogether, and if anyone in the Quirky inventing community wants to see an idea come to fruition, that idea will have to get picked up by big company partners like GE, Harman and Mattel. As Adam Clark Estes of Gizmodo notes, it’s the end of an era:

So say goodbye to Quirky products, as we’ve always known them. We loved those weird but useful things that our friends invented. But now those friends are stuck shoveling their good ideas to boost the profits of giant corporations. It’s the real American dream, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, even with all that hive mind working together, it was still tough to get a product out the door. And it will be even tougher to get the idea inside the door of companies like GE and Mattel. Most big companies won’t even look at something they didn’t design in-house because if they ever turn out a product that even vaguely does the same thing, they could get seriously sued.

Read more and previous Quirky coverage here.