The 'crowd- sourcing' economy

This website mentions customer-driven and mass customization as key to economic growth and quality of life, essentially a trend towards authenticity and uniqueness. The most relevant of this movement however, is crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing - "a business model akin to outsourcing. The difference is that instead of professional vendors, crowdsourcing relies upon mass volunteer participation and self-organization to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R&D"

Thus, crowdsourcing is the industry term to describe how cooltowns will be built, and the specific version of crowdsourcing to building cooltowns is what we've long described as the beta community - allowing the group of tenants (residential and commercial) to be involved in the design and development (and by default, the investing**) of their future buildings in the neighborhoods of their choice.

**See August 18, 2006 entry.