When I meet prospective clients, one of my standard soapbox statements is about how crowdsourcing is in their future and they should get started sooner rather than later. Ok, Ok, you’re thinking I’m required to say that, because I sell Crowdsourcing technology and services but actually, a huge part of what I do is just educating people on what crowdsourcing is. My statement is more to make the point that this isn’t a fad – open innovation is not only here to stay, but will become a standard part of how most companies conduct business in the next few years. How can I be so confident in making that prediction? Two reasons:

1. First, the concepts behind crowdsourcing aren’t new at all. Companies have always worked hard at getting market input. Beta customers, market surveys and focus groups are all part of getting intelligence and data from the crowd. Crowdsourcing represents a significant improvement in how companies can do that by leveraging new breakthroughs in social media technology and understanding how online crowd behave. If companies want market input, crowdsourcing is a better way to get it.
2. As more and more companies invite their crowds in, consumers are going to start demanding the same from all brands and products they care about. We all want to have our voice heard, and crowdsourcing provides that conduit. Just as we’ve come to expect every company we do business with to have a website, we will one day expect every company to have a place where we can provide our input on product direction, business models and more.

So, crowdsourcing will be in the future of most companies – when I can’t tell you for sure. It might be in six months, a year or three years from now. I can tell you that when your customers are screaming for it is not the time to start. By getting started now, maybe even with an internally focused crowdsourcing site to get employees more involved, you’ll get familiar and comfortable with the crowdsourcing process. You’ll understand how it works within your company culture and develop critical skills internally for successful crowdsourcing. The sooner you get going, the better off you will be when your crowd demands it.

photo by: gilderic