Month: March 2008

by Monica Hamburg

This is Part 4 of my 4 part Crowdsourcing series. Check out Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3  if you missed them.

(Thank you, Miro Slodki and Alex Orlando of InnoCentive, for your "crowdsisting")

Ah, so we’ve come to the “conclusion” part.  (If you’ve read any of the others in this series, what do you think the odds are that I will be brief… ?) 

Although it’s clear that soliciting input is not new in and of itself, the internet has broadened the scope of consultation and collaboration, and innovative companies are rapidly throwing their hat into the ring.  Great strides are being made by tapping into the collective and connecting nature of the internet.   And Crowdsourcing companies such as Cambrian House and InnoCentive are expanding (respectively) “into business, engineering and computer science, among other things” and “to accommodate projects across a broader range of industries”.)

Certainly concerns about the process are valid, but the assumption that Crowdsourcing generally involves a bunch of people collaborating to arrive at a decision is somewhat false.  Such “complete collaboration” does exist but, by and large, Crowdsourcing companies tend to apply the “public agreement” phase mostly to the voting concept (if they apply it at all).

Further, going outside the 4 walls of a company is not (necessarily) a comment on the lack of efficiency or innovativeness of the company or its employees.  No one business can have staff that possesses every possible skill.  And allowing “an outsider” to look at a problem can sometimes produce innovative solutions.  Goldcorp and Colgate-Palmolive both used Crowdsourcing to find solutions to problems they were not able to solve in-house.  They understood that someone “out there” could look at their issue from another angle.   (If you’ve ever asked anyone to proofread something you’ve read 40 times only to have them notice a glaring error you understand this situation exactly.)   Jeff Howe, in his upcoming book, “Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business”, describes this concept:

"The untrained are also untainted. Their greatest asset is a fresh set of eyes, which is simply a restatement of the truism that with many eyes, all flaws become evident, and easily corrected." 

Doin’ Good

Activism has always been a matter of gathering people with similar viewpoints for a cause and the Internet is ideal for bringing people with similar interests together.  Crowdsourcing allows for uniting and adds more opportunities to take action.  For instance, the National Resources Defense Council has created “Beat the Heat” which encourages people to “fight global warming – one person at a time”.  (And humanitarian organizations have also applied Crowdfunding to fund charitable ventures, e.g. Kiva).

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