What is crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing involves seeking knowledge, goods, or services from a large body of people. These people submit their ideas in response to online requests made either through social media, smartphone apps, or dedicated crowdsourcing platforms.
A great example of crowdsourcing is online reviews. If you’ve ever reviewed a restaurant, gym, or bar on Google, congratulations! You’re a productive crowdsourcing contributor.
Different types of crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing can be used to find solutions to all kinds of tasks. This includes small things like a band asking its fans which cities they should play on their next tour, to ambitious projects like genetic researchers asking for help in sequencing the human genome.
The breadth and diversity of social media also offer huge potential for crowdsourcing. It can also take the form of ideas competitions such as Ideas for Action, a forum for students and young professionals to submit solutions to global innovation challenges.
Hackathons are another popular form of crowdsourcing, often hosted by tech companies to find inventive solutions to challenging problems.
A few crowdsourcing basics
While the concept of crowdsourcing may be simple, finding great ideas and solutions isn’t as easy as just asking customers and fans for their best ideas.
After all, nobody wants to give away their valuable knowledge and expertise for free. There has to be a clear incentive in place, such as a financial incentive (either a cash prize or a share of eventual sales) or professional recognition.
To be effective, a crowdsourcing project also needs:
- A well-defined scope – respondents need to know exactly what is required in terms of a suggested idea or solution
- Comprehensive background information – respondents may need access to technical data before they can make a submission
- A clear preferred format for submissions
- A defined deadline for submissions
You also need to decide whether you want to target a large group of people (e.g. through big public social networks like facebook or twitter) or a specific group with highly-developed skills and experience (e.g. through specific platforms with targeted people).
A specialized crowdsourcing platform can help to structure this process and guide interactions between the organization or business seeking input, and those looking to provide it.
What are the advantages of crowdsourcing?
Everyone knows two minds are better than one when it comes to solving problems. Even better than two minds? 10,000 minds.
By turning a question over to a wide talent pool, companies can gain access to amazing suggestions for a new product or service, or for a new solution to a challenging problem.
Not only does this help with problem-solving, but it also allows groups to feel connected to companies and organizations. Building this community of contributors can have huge benefits in terms of marketing, brand visibility, and customer loyalty.
Crowdsourcing offers a lot of other advantages, too:
- Lower costs: While winning ideas should definitely be rewarded, offering these rewards is usually a lot cheaper than formally hiring people to solve problems.
- Greater speed: Harnessing a wider pool of people can speed up the problem-solving process, especially when completing a large number of small tasks in real-time.
- More diversity: Some companies (especially smaller companies) may not have a lot of internal diversity. By crowdsourcing ideas, they can benefit from others with different backgrounds, values, and life experiences.
- Marketing and media coverage: Crowdsourcing can be an excellent and cost-effective source of marketing and media coverage.
Even with all of these advantages, you need to decide if crowdsourcing is right for your project.
Is crowdsourcing the right move for you?
Not every project is well-suited for crowdsourcing.
If you’re dealing with a sensitive problem, or a project involving a lot of valuable intellectual property, crowdsourcing may be one step too far. Although these problems may still benefit from collective intelligence, they may not be appropriate to turn over to a crowd.
While crowdsourcing is a powerful way to unlock innovation, it involves a lack of control – especially when involving online communities. Unless you oversee these projects closely, they can threaten brand reputation.
Also, bear in mind that once you turn a question or problem over to a crowd, you may be stuck with a less than ideal solution.
Lanet Team 