You can’t crowdsource anything without a crowd, but what groups of people might you think about for your crowdsourcing initiatives? What qualifies as a crowd and how many people do you need to get the results you are after?

Crowds worth considering…

Your employees/stakeholders – crowdsourcing all aspects of your your business – benefit as much as possible from your employees’ knowledge and experience, ask them what you should sell, how best to operate & deliver, who to partner with, who to recruit and so on. Crowd size will be determined by the size of your company. The method is more important than numbers in this case. The key to success here is flattening your organization so that every employee feels they can contribute their ideas.

Your customers – crowdsourcing products & services – getting direct feedback from your customers on what they want to spend money on – Crowd should be made up of people who are already passionate about your brand, people who are passionate about what you sell and (if possible) a few people that think what you do is horrible. Constructive criticism is good! To make this work, you’ll want to make sure you are rewarding the people who are helping you strengthen your business.

The broad public including expert outsiders – crowdsourcing innovation – bringing qualified diverse thinkers together to assess and discover solutions has proven to lead to breakthroughs. To achieve the critical mass of hobbyists, hecklers and experts for new thinking, you’ll want a healthy sized crowd – think thousands or tens of thousands. To make this work you’ll need people with a variety of backgrounds, as everyone will approach situations differently.

Citizens at large – crowdsourcing public policy – bringing democratic practices down to a grassroots level. Crowd size is dependent on number of citizens in the jurisdiction (city, country, voting ward). You’ll want to structure things so there is a good cross section of those directly affected by the policy, not just those with a keen interest in being politically active.

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