crowdsourcing

I came across this article today and what a coincidence! I just ordered a T-shirt from Threadless a few days ago for my friend's birthday. I have made several purchases from the website and really like how it works. I, however, never knew that part of Threadless's success is from what called crowdsourcing.

Here is a video I found on Youtube about crowdsourcing.

It can be seen that crowdsourcing has created a competitive advantage for such companies as Threadless. It has helped them to generate ideas from customers. It's a great way to get customers involve in designing future products- ones that the customers are going to buy. Besides, companies will also have a better understanding of their customers through this participating process. How do you think of crowdsourcing?