...Crowdsourcing In this information age and the emergence of social media, marketers are turning to crowdsourcing. Jeff Howe coined the word “crowdsourcing” in 2006 to label the practice of business issuing an open call to a wide community to solve a problem using either corroboration or competition. Today, companies commonly crowdsource when they outsource tasks performed by an employee, to a large group of individuals or crowd. Crowdsourcing uses the collective ideas and knowledge of the public to complete business tasks that a company would normally perform itself or outsource to a third party. Large companies like Amazon, Netflix and Wikipedia utilize crowdsourcing but it is just as crucial to small companies’ success. Most crowdsourcing is covered by four categories: crowd wisdom, crowd creation, crowd voting and crowd funding. Crowd wisdom or collective intelligence is a common form of crowdsourcing where a group is gathered with conditions and crowd knowledge is shared. Examples are an employee suggestion box or idea jams. Wikipedia utilizes crowd wisdom. Crowd creation is when a business turns to the public to actually create or co-create a product/service. The open source moment is a case of crowd creation. Crowd voting uses the crowd’s vote to organize vast information. Reality TV shows, like American Idol, use crowd voting to eliminate unfavorable contestants. Crowd funding allows the crowd to participate in online micro-lending. By donating a small amount...
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...creativity and foresight methods" – Crowdsourcing Abstract Crowdsourcing has been around for many years in different forms, but since 2006, it is being increasingly adopted as a creativity technique for development of ideas and problem solving. This essay looks at the history and extant of crowdsourcing and analyses its different types in terms of value creation, along with the typology of tasks to which crowdsourcing can be applied. This essay also explores some key insights and how crowdsourcing helped in HIV research through an online game called fold.it. What is Crowdsourcing? The magnitude of intelligence, knowledge and talent spread throughout the human race has always exceeded our capacity to harness them. As a creativity method, Crowdsourcing is one of the best tools to utilize the collective power of the many to undertake and accomplish tasks that are usually the responsibility of a specialized few. Howe (2006) used the term crowdsourcing for the very first time in a Wired magazine article titled ‘The Rise of Crowdsourcing’, and he later elaborated upon the concept in his book. Howe (2008) defines crowdsourcing as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.” He primarily describes crowdsourcing as a web-based business model although there are retrospective examples of crowdsourcing found before the internet years as...
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...Roxy Du Toit 22811478 Case Study : Crowdsourcing Managing Knowledge and Collaboration -Crowdsourcing 1.How would you define Crowdsourcing? 2.Why does crowdsourcing require a large, undefined community to work? Why not a small, defined community of passionate people who you know and have worked with before or with whom you are already friends? 3. Can you think of other examples of crowdsourcing besides photography? Is photography a good example? What kinds of products or services might not lend themselves to crowdsourcing? 4.What is the impact of crowdsourcing on business? 5. Why does the IdeaScale video criticize online surveys? What is wrong with online surveys? How doeas Ideal Scale do any better? 6. IdealScale claims to produce “actionable” ideas when compared to traditional market feedback mechanism like online surveys, focus groups, and review of customers comments on Web sites. Do you think this might be true? 7.Pick an online product or service you would like to deliver as a business firm. Outline how you would use IdealScale. How would you select the people for your online community? How would you prompt them to participate? What new ideas would you propose them? Or what questions would you ask them to respond to? Answers 1)Crowdsourcing is like a distributed problem-solving system in which tasks are being outsourcing to a number of people referred to as the crowd. So the problems are broadcasted to the crowd maybe via Internet where voluntary and ordinary...
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...Issue 14.06 - June 2006 Subscribe to WIRED magazine and receive a FREE gift! The Rise of Crowdsourcing Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D. By Jeff Howe 1. The Professional Feature: The Rise of Crowdsourcing Claudia Menashe needed pictures of sick people. A project director at the National Plus: Health Museum in Washington, DC, Menashe 5 Rules of the New Labor Pool was putting together a series of interactive kiosks devoted to potential pandemics like the Look Who's Crowdsourcing avian flu. An exhibition designer had created a plan for the kiosk itself, but now Menashe was looking for images to accompany the text. Rather than hire a photographer to take shots of people suffering from the flu, Menashe decided to use preexisting images – stock photography, as it’s known in the publishing industry. In October 2004, she ran across a stock photo collection by Mark Harmel, a freelance photographer living in Manhattan Beach, California. Harmel, whose wife is a doctor, specializes in images related to the health care industry. “Claudia wanted people sneezing, getting immunized, that sort of thing,” recalls Harmel, a slight, soft-spoken 52-year-old. The National Health Museum has grand plans to occupy a spot on the National Mall in Washington by 2012, but for now it’s a fledgling institution with...
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...Week 2 Assignment 1. How would you define crowdsourcing? Crowdsourcing is when people self-organize via the internet to create a virtual crowd. The virtual crowd forms based on similar interests, shared hobbies, shared perspectives and ideas. 2. Why does crowdsourcing require a large, "undefined community" to work? Why not a small, defined community of passionate people who you know and have worked with before or with whom you are already friends (think Facebook communities which are smaller, and defined)? Crowdsourcing requires a large “undefined community” to work because the larger the crowd the greater the impact. It is like sampling data - the larger the sample, the more accurate the prediction or estimations than if it were a small group or sample. Collective intelligence engages the community in collaborative work and is beneficial when problem-solving. 3. Can you think of other examples of crowdsourcing besides photography? Is photography a good example? What kinds of products or services might not lend themselves to crowdsourcing? Logodesignguru.com is another example of crowdsourcing. For a nominal fee, companies go online and describe what type of logo, website or stationary they envision for their business. Graphic designers from all over the world then draft several different designs and post it for the business. The business determines which design they prefer and the designer gets paid a for their work. The business is entitled to the trademark...
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...Stephanie Lee Ethics of Crowdsourcing ‘Crowdsourcing’; Innovation or Exploitation? Abstract Crowdsourcing is the concept of mass collaboration of external outsourced tasks typically from an institution to its community (Howe, 2005). This paper explores the two sides of crowd sourcing; whether this net-enabled community collaboration is accelerating innovation or exploiting the laborers with menial tasks of little to no benefit through an analysis of Soylent, one of the latest innovations in crowd sourcing using John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, the Veil of Ignorance, I aim to demonstrate how can we all benefit from crowdsourcing and harness the true power of collective intelligence and mass collaboration just by maintaining a fine balance between the two extremes as according to the Aristotle’s Golden Mean. Introduction David Brent once said; “A problem shared is a problem halved, so is your problem really yours or just half of someone else’s?” In terms of an ideal crowd sourced task, the problem would be diminished by half, or even more because it is shared between dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of active community participants eager to solve it to the best of their abilities. Crowdsourcing, as first coined and defined by Jeff Howe, is the concept of mass collaboration of tasks that are outsourced externally typically through the Internet to the community at large. He says it is “the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor...
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...'Sucessful Crowdfunding campaign’ Introduction: Crowdsourcing: Crowdsourcing emerges as a new paradigm of organization used by companies to reach out to distributed talent in the context of a globally interconnected society (Villarroel et al 2007, 2011a, 2011b). Although the term “crowdsourcing” is relatively new (Howe 2006), and it has only received theoretical attention by management academics in recent years (Geerts, 2009) (Malone, et al., 2010), crowdsourcing initiatives led by companies have over two decades of existence, finding roots in the software industry (von Hippel & von Krog, 2003). Crowdsourcing offers a new business model that allows companies to gather faster and at a lower cost, the knowledge distributed among the population, specific to each one of us, the knowledge of time and place. (Hayek, 1945) (Schenk & Guittard, 2011)(Villarroel 2008, 2011c; Villarroel & Taylor 2007). (Malone, et al., 2010) Even though crowdsourcing is emerging recently to the understanding of a wider audience, it has stuck the eye of a few lecturers as early as 1998, whilst Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher, noticed the organizational changes in motion and expected long term consequences (Malone & Laubacher, 1998). The Linux case has highlighted these new flexible businesses which might be assembled at some point of the initiatives and then are dissolved once the venture is done so staff can then seek for long term projects to paintings on. (Malone & Laubacher, 1998) This new...
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...“Crowdsourcing” is a relatively recent concept that encompasses many practices. To a superficial analysis, it could result just as the outsourcing of tasks to a large group of people, instead of assigning such tasks to an in-house employee or contractor. But in my opinion, there is more to it. We have to consider it as a strategic model to attract an interested and motivated crowd of individuals, capable of providing solutions superior in quality and quantity to those that even traditional forms of business can. It’s community, involvement, empathy and transparency, are all made possible and facilitated by web 2.0. The new behaviors and new mental structures that emerged with the rise of social networks allow a constant interaction between "equals" (with no defined hierarchies) at a global level. The paper explores different kinds of crowdsourcing, describing differences and similarities between them. The first kind of crowdsourcing analyzed, is the “Contest”, in witch the sponsor (the company) identifies a specific problem or request, offers a cash prize and broadcasts an invitation to submit solutions. Google offers us a best case in this field: in March 2014 the company has hold a contest called "Pwnium”, in which hackers could put their skills to the test by trying to hack into either the HP Chromebook 11 or the Acer C720 Chromebook for a combined total price of nearly $3 million. At the end of it, Google profit from this action by discovering several bugs then being...
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...dynamically from just a method of communication to more important medium of exchanging information, dealing with multi billion dollars worth business value. Information as a key asset in the business world is highly valued by anyone who knows what that piece of information can benefit them thus, information generally is neither something cheap to obtain nor is made available freely out of the thin air. However, newly evolving method of seeking information called “crowdsourcing” has made information much cheaper to obtain if not free. But then, what is “crowdsourcing”? What is the relation to the internet and information technology? What are the advantages it brings to the society? Is there any challenges of “crowdsourcing”? This essay will discuss and elaborate in details on concept, characteristics, advantages, challenges and future trends of crowdsourcing. INTRODUCTION Jeff Howe, a well-known inventor of the term “crowdsourcing” when it was first use in his article appearing in Wired magazine (Howe, 2006), defined “crowdsourcing” as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”...
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...Assignment 2 Crowdsourcing for Innovation For the course Innovation Management 2014 Handing in your assignment This assignment regarding the InnoCentive.com case should be delivered through the Assignment Section on Blackboard before Sunday, April 27, 2014, 23:59 hours. Be sure to use internet explorer when uploading your assignment! Delivery after this date and time will be rejected. If you have any problems or questions about this assignment or the delivery process, please send an email to: im-iba@rsm.nl Naming the file you hand in The name of the file to hand in through the Assignment Section should be in the following format: Student number- surname- first name-Assignment2-IM2014 Answering the Assignment Questions You are asked to answer the assignment questions in a copy of this document. Please use the answering boxes in the assignment. Please provide answers in the following format: Times New Roman, size 10, and single spaced. There is absolutely no necessity to use more space than given in the box (in fact correct answers can easily be given in about half the space in the box). In the assignment, yellow boxes are reserved for grading purposes. Please do NOT use these for the answers to the questions. In total you can earn 100 points for this assignment. 10 points are given for grammar and clarity of communication. 30 are given per sub-question. Notice that there are 4 pages in this document including 3 questions! Student number: ...
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...Crowdsourcing: Positives and Pitfalls Sarah McCracken IT 100 05/01/2016 Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing is a way for a company to outsource certain task that normally would be handled from within the company. One well-known example of this is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia in which users and site operators alike can edit or create content freely. (Wikipedia, n.d.) This aspect of the site makes it a more well-rounded reference source. While Wikipedia is mostly accurate, opinions and bias occasionally slip through the cracks. All crowdsourcing has its pros and cons. As with anything, there are positive and negative aspects to crowdsourcing. Businesses can use crowdsourcing to draw creativity or opinions from their target markets. For instance, Doritos has had a Superbowl commercial contest for the past decade. This allow this company a chance to gather creativity from thousands of people while only having to promise to pay one person, the winner. There are costs involved with running the contest like the million-dollar prize. Also, Frito-Lay has to hire outside companies like Goodby Silverstein and Partners, The Marketing Arm, Ketchum PR, OMD and UEG to handle the marketing and judging of the contest. However, in this particular case of crowdsourcing, the pros certainly outweigh the cons as Frito-Lay has seen very positive results. (Powers, 2013) On the other hand, when using crowdsourcing in more serious scenarios, the results can offer entirely too many opinions...
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...Crowdsourcing: A better mousetrap or another trick? The art of gathering information for a prospective product has long been a tedious task of advertisers, manufactures, and entertainment producers since the inception of advertising. It was realized that if a company could figure out what consumers wanted or needed they could tailor their products or services to them and save money from making things no one wanted. However, to do this, companies or advertisers would have to gather large groups of people together and present the products or services and gather feedback from those people. While this was the model for decades, and still is the primary method of gathering information, there is a new and possibly better way to present new ideas and gather even more data. It’s called “Crowdsourcing.” The old way of handling focus groups would see a company gather as many as 500 people to get their opinions, but now with crowdsourcing that same company can get opinions from hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. As discussed in the article in chapter 13, the company ModCloth.com is using crowdsourcing to decide which products it will sell. (Evans, Martin, & Poatsy, 2014) By doing this, they are able to keep their inventory down to only those products that will most likely sell, rather than having a large inventory that may move very slowly, thus increasing overhead. Using the old method of gathering the opinions of the public, companies had to factor in one consideration...
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...The longer I’ve been around and designing/writing – I’m a fresh-faced 32, full disclosure – the more I’ve realized that this requirement also comes with a corollary: Just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should do something. In other words, not every tactic that’s out there is either worth it or right for everyone (or anyone). Today’s tactic du jour that I hope to never hear about again: Crowdsourcing. Before we go any further, I want to say what crowdsourcing is not. Crowdsourcing is not a blanket term used to define the many ways companies are able to actively and appropriately engage with their customers. Asking folks who own your product to submit videos about the unique ways in which they use it is not crowdsourcing. Nor is asking them to take “action shots” of your product in use that they would, in turn, post on their company blog. Just two of the many healthy ways companies interact with their customers, to say nothing of using social media outlets like Facebook or Twitter to start a conversation. For our purposes, I’ll narrow down what crowdsourcing is to this: Asking people to compete against each other to produce significant branding collateral for only the promise of pay to the ultimate winner. Here’s how it works: Let’s say, for instance, a company needs a new logo. That company turns to the “crowd” – you, me and everyone else out there who wants to participate with the promise that, if chosen, there’s money waiting at the finish line. We submit our...
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...anniversary. We have a number of new initiatives, and we felt now would be a great opportunity to shake things up and create a new "identity" for the company. We have a comprehensive plan that starts with the simply task of developing a fresh, new logo that captured the new company vision and the free-spirited, adventurous culture we encourage. There was one problem. Because we had developed our original logo and have been married to it for so long, it has been difficult to break the emotional bond we have to it. Indeed, every attempt we made internally fell short, and we were certain no outside firm could create a respectable replacement for our beloved "eyes." We were a victim of the IKEA Effect. Then we decided to try crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining ideas, services, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, or more specifically, an online community rather than from traditional employees or service providers. We submitted a project on 99designs.com, the "world's largest online graphic design marketplace connecting passionate designers from around the globe with customers seeking quality, affordable design services." The service is easy to use. You submit a project on the website with a description of your needs (in our case, a new logo). The online community of graphic artists then springs into action, submitting ideas with the ultimate goal of earning the project fee. Remarkably, for as little as $299, we had access...
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...Business Information Systems Introduction With the advent of modern technology, the Internet has replaced most ways of obtaining information. One such method of obtaining information is crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing has revolutionized the way services are rendered, with an online community taking up the tradtional role of suppliers. Forever 21, the popular American fashion retail chain has hired a leading international consulting firm to advice on global crowd sourcing. As a junior consultant, specializing in Information Systems at the firm, I have been tasked with recommending crowdsourcing strategies for Forever 21. In doing so, I shall investigate the crowdsourcing phenomenon and aim to identify the best crowd sourcing strategy for Forever 21. The client has identified platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), Freelancer, oDesk, Would You Rock This (WYRT), and Spoonflower to be off particular interest. As a junior consultant, I have thus evaluated these platforms and then put forward my recommendation on the best crowdsourcing platform. One that I believe is capable of posing radical challenges or opportunities in line with Forever 21’s objectives and operations (Allen, 2011). In-Depth Analysis of the Various Types of Crowd Sourcing Platforms In this section, I shall conduct an in-depth analysis of the aforementioned crowd sourcing platforms on the basis of their target markets (Barnes, Hinton, & Mieczkowska. 2003). Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk): The Amazon...
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