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I think the Kickstarter model also massively de-risked the process by introducing a pre-order model that gave you a sense of the potential revenue ahead of time before you went an invested $100k on tooling.

Quirky also derisked the process and took preorders.

Did they have any pre-order threshold for when a product would go into production?

Or a pre-order threshold below which they conclude the product has below average market potential and isn't worth investing any more time and money on actually getting it to market?

Early on, this was precisely what they did.

This makes the most sense to me. This kind of innovation was going to happen, would it be centralized or decentralized? For now looks like the latter, made sense to fund both models.

Absolutely.

Kickstarter is as much a tool for "Crowdsourced Invention" as Quirky is... yet they have significantly less effort required to launch the products.

Actually, given how many problems some Kickstarters have with manufacturing, having a company like Quirky that could come in, having experience with manufacturing, design, shipping, etc, could make many of those a much better experience.