So many high profile crowdsourcing initiatives happen in North America, you might imagine that the movement is a western thing, or a mostly American thing. Not so. Just like crowdsourcing can’t be pigeon-holed into a single purpose like finding research or tech solutions, or task production, or only uncovering product or service ideas – it’s also not a single continent thing.
In the last month, we’ve announced two European partnerships. Our latest alliance is with InnoCrowding Group. They’re a leading service provider in crowd-based innovation in Europe, with particular strength in Italy.
Many of the government organizations, corporations, universities and civic groups that come to us are from across Europe, Latin America, and other regions. They are looking to draw wisdom, production or funding from crowds of employees, partners, or the public, often in languages other than English, with crowdsourcing models that are more collaborative and community-centric than commonplace in North America.
We are choosing allies who can assist not just in translation, but localization with different cultures so we continue to get right how to engage participants, motivate them with incentives and rewards, and enable collaboration that fosters human connections and productivity. We have lots to learn about crowd behaviours abroad and, with our partners, we’re up for it.
What do you see as the vitals to making crowdsourcing work anywhere? Will participation be driven by mobile access, rise in social online behaviours, governments’ investment in leading innovation? Share your thoughts.
The vitals to make crowdsourcing work, in our opinion, is the acceptance of the output of crowdsourcing by the broader public (the early majority). At least in our project we feel that is the most crucial thing.
People work and think together to produce something that benefits a group that is broader than the contributors. The motivation, commitment and growth of the contributors will rise substantially, if the output is valued by a bigger slice of the public.
This means that for our project we need to introduce high standards of quality input from our crowdsourcing. Just working together is not enough, we need to work together producing high quality content. At least, in our project.
Robert Eikelboom
The First Financial Institution In The World Run By Smart Consumers