Crowdsourcing: more heads are better than one… This is the logic behind crowdsourcing. You might agree or disagree with this statement but it is a fact that in the last few years crowdsourcing became a very popular topic among bloggers. Moreover it became a widely used practice in modern business. So let’s see 3 things you should know about it.
1. What is it? – Crowd + Sourcing = Crowdsourcing. It was coined in May, 2006 by Jeff Howe when he wrote an article for Wired.com called “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”. Howe’s definition of crowdsourcing is: “Crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential laborers”. In fact this crowd is not a crowd of random people. It is a group of talented people who are experts in specific field. Forbes emphasizes this: “There is no crowd in crowdsourcing. There are only virtuosos, usually uniquely talented, highly trained people who have worked for decades in a field. They are motivated by obsession, competition, money or all three apply their individual talent to creating a solution”. Watch the“What is crowdsourcing” video. It is a short but nice video explaining the crowdsourcing concept through some interesting comparisons.
2. Why is it good?- The greatest benefits of crowdsourcing are better, faster, simpler, and more accurate. “By canvassing a large crowd of people for ideas, skills, or participation, the search for an elusive answer or design is made that much simpler and more accurate”, explains The Daily Crowdsource, source for crowdsourcing related news. Moreover it claims that this approach enables selecting the best result “from a sea of ‘best entries,’ as opposed to receiving the best entry from a single provider. In his blog post “A Visual Explanation of Crowdsourcing [Infographic]” Richard Darell, a very well known leader in social media, shares a very good infographic about some key crowdsourcing facts. He points out connecting businesses to their audiences and consumers, lower overhead and administration costs, as well as market testing of the product as it is developed as some of the great benefits of crowdsourcing.
3. What can be crowdsourced?
- Logo design: Check 99designs.com
- Software and usability testing: Check utest.com
- Brainstorming/feedback: Check kluster.com
- Advertising: Check poptent.net
- Business innovation: Check chaordix.com
- Product design and manufacturing: Check ponoko.com
- Product redesign: Check redesignme.com
If you are interested more in this topic follow this link to read about “10 things that have been crowdsourced in 2011” and this link to read about “Ten Crowdsourcing trends for 2011”.
To sum up: Crowdsourcing can be a great thing if managed properly. Getting things done by a crowd of people can be tough. Managing their submissions in an effective manner, encouraging participation while keeping clear the overall business objectives, giving clear instructions, as well as shifting from reactive towards proactive culture are great challenges that one should not underestimate before jumping in. Nevertheless, as explained in the text earlier, there are great benefits too. Thus we believe it is worth trying. So rethink your strategy and see if it is worth for your business to jump in and join the crowdsourcing market.