Thanks to Edward Boches, I had the opportunity to lead a great interactive session on crowdsourcing with some of his team at Mullen.  Edward is a strong advocate of the benefits of social media for businesses and his agency is more open to the idea than most.

During the session, one topic that came up was “how does crowdsourcing differ from surveys and contests?”  The argument could be made that anytime you reach out to the crowd for input, you are crowdsourcing.  Fair enough.  But if you stop there, you’re missing out on the biggest benefits of true crowdsourcing.

Surveys, contests and polls capture feedback from the crowd.  This is a good first step and there’s no arguing it does provide value. However, you’re missing the value derived from getting the crowd involved in evolving and enhancing the ideas. The multi-step process of ranking/selecting/brainstorming/voting that only comes with a full crowdsourcing process provides a platform for two-way discussion. It is a direct way for companies to get input they wouldn’t otherwise have on hand, or even realize they needed to ask about.

Rarely do Ideas start off perfectly formed. Ideas become more powerful as they are honed by collective wisdom.   This process of refinement not only makes the idea stronger, but also starts a coalition of support – it’s no longer just an idea that one person thinks has merit.

In crowdsourcing, you can see this exact process happen but on an even greater scale.   People from different backgrounds and demographics, who don’t know each other, can collaborate on ideas to make them better. At the same time, the company behind the crowdsourcing site can start to get an indicator of market acceptance.

It’s the cross-pollination of ideas, thoughts and critiques among a diverse crowd that not only provides the most value from crowdsourcing, but also guards against biased results.

Is crowdsourcing better than simple surveys and contests? If you’re looking for a way to quickly pull information from a crowd, not necessarily. But if you really want the most value of collective wisdom or a continuous flow of input and ideas, have the discipline to follow a full crowdsourcing path.