Jeff Howe is well known for his work on the leading edge of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing, for anyone who may not know, is essentially outsourcing a job to a crowd of people and then using the group itself as a filter for ideas. You can see this through the plethora of “web 2.0″ sites that include commentary and voting systems, allowing the audience to upmod or downmod various stories, links, ideas and more. The basic premise is that if 2 heads are better than 1, than two hundred heads are better than 2.
Jeff’s interview with Daniel Terdiman of Cnet goes a bit more in depth on how crowdsourcing is evolving and how it may begin to affect businesses and industries in the future. This obviously raises a number of questions throughout a multitude of industries. Courtney McColgan of Wokai ask can we put faith in the wisdom of the crowd? JoeLogon puts fourth a pretty solid arguement in response to a Washington Post article about a new restaurant in the DC area called Elements. It brings up a number of points, including the classic debate about participation inequality and the fact that most commentary is going to come from people who are unhappy about something, rather than people proposing praise.
While some media companies are built entirly upon the premise of crowdsourcing - istockphoto, wikipedia, digg, reddit, youtube and a multitude of others - most offline based business have used crowdsourcing on a per project basis. Perhaps for an advertising campaign, product innovation, or new event. One company however plans to crowdsource the entirety of the company. Benrowesayshello of Digital Jury gives the scoop on BeerBankRoll - a company that plans to take everything from initial funding to end product decisions into the realm of crowdsourcing.
I believe there is a certain balance that will be found with crowdsourcing fitting in with other styles of working. Some models, like iStockPhoto, have a great business plan that takes advantage of this crowdsourcing. The Apple Apps store is another. Situations where everyone can win, where the big company and the little individual share in the profit and satisfaction of delivering a usable and enjoyable product.
Management of these massive crowd operations will always be in demand, as will business plans that can be constantly supported by the masses.
All that being said, doesn’t it seem like crowdsourcing is just a natural progession of brainstorming and ideas banks?
Thanks to Mr. Fish for the above. While it sounds a bit outlandish, I’ve certainly heard the equivalent of what was said above said in corporate offices. It most often happens in the marketing department. Numbers or down, or a new campaign has been slow in coming and some new ideas are needed to make an impact. Not just the same ideas repackaged with different graphics and slightly different copy. Something NEW!
This is often the case when most companies or people could use an outside opinion. Whether it be reaching out to a firm that has created new ideas time and again (wink wink, nudge nudge…) or just asking a friend who works in a different industry. I call it “puzzle vision,” you’ve probably experienced it in some way as well. You’re sitting at the table, maybe with a few friends on a slow day toying around with a puzzle until you get to one part you can’t get passed. After hours of staring at this thing, you can’t get any further. Suddenly, a friend passing back from the kitchen glances down and solves the problem in less than an effortless minute.
I have yet to encounter a situation where calling a few friends and picking a few brains hasn’t been rewarding in the end. Sure they may throw some joke ideas at you, or things that don’t quite fit - but just some out of the box suggestions can get you moving in a new direction.
Good luck and Godspeed.
