So, you’re worried about using crowdsourcing because what you want to Crowdsource about is “sensitive”.   Perhaps you really want to use open innovation to get new ideas for products, but CEO is worried about competitors joining your site, and getting almost all of the benefit of your investment in crowdsourcing.    Good news, you and your CEO are not alone, and there are ways to keep you both happy.

First of all, your CEO is right to be concerned.  If you are investing in building your crowd and leading them in a process to build value for your company, you certainly don’t want your competitors to be “listening in.”

But, fear not:  we’ve got some experience here!

One very pleasing and interesting observation is there really isn’t any “idea stealing”  on crowdsourcing sites.   In our original Cambrian House community, the crowd was genuinely supportive and effective in helping people with ideas make them better, and was not out to steal them.  Take a look at Mob4Hire as a great example of an idea made better by the crowd.

That said, it still makes sense to protect the valuable information you get from your crowd.  Some of the ways we work to protect our client’s important information include:

• Creative use of private, invitation only calls, private areas within a site,

• Using roles, privileges, and reputation management within a crowd community to allow involvement

• Using “hybrid” crowdsourcing models which utilize a blend of a “contest” and “collaboration” model attributes to enable the positive benefits of collective wisdom without giving out the store secrets.

So, bottom line?  Don’t let the fear of someone else stealing your crowdsourced ideas keep you from using crowdsourcing.   There are many ways to keep your CEO happy, while delivering the benefits of open innovation to your organization.

A while back, I had the chance to sit in on a phone call with Karin von Hippel and two members of her team, Justine and Guy about what role crowdsourcing and mobile can play in the development of post-conflict reconstruction projects. The concepts and ideas they talk about are pretty mind-blowing. Obviously, I’m a novice and really can only tell you that I know there’s a lot I don’t know, but here’s what got me excited about how crowdsourcing might be able to help post-conflict development:

Personalize it. The idea of living in a conflict zone doesn’t seem real to us (or at least, not me!). With crowdsourcing, there’s the opportunity to make it very personal. If people sent out pictures and told their stories, it would help us understand what it is like. It also engages the community there to try and protect their victims and to empower their heroes.

Understand the real requirements of the community. One of the problems with the current aid system is that by the time a proposal is submitted, funding is approved and aid is sent, it is often a couple of years late. A possible solution to this is getting real time data on what challenges aid should be addressing. Where’s the money supposed to get to and are those needs shifting? Another solution is to cut through the noise. Are the people talking the loudest not representative of what the average person needs?

Verify the information we currently have. Aggregate security information or potentially get information on suicide bomb attacks from bystanders. On a practical level, crowdsourcing and mobile can be used for gathering information as basic as, “How many sick people do you have?” or “How much food do you have for the coming year?” Imagine how this would change the look of foreign aid as we work with people to address specific needs.

This is a new frontier for crowdsourcing in many ways. Courageous discovery is required to bring value to open development. It is important to realize that we’ll need to try things and then slowly adjust as we figure out what’s working and what isn’t. We know the current system needs to be fixed and while we don’t have all of the answers, we can take steps in the right direction. It would be great to hear thoughts on how to improve strategies from a variety of people – in true crowdsourcing fashion.

Photo by: The US Army …on Flickr!

Landing the job here at Chaordix just a month after graduating from SAIT’s now renamed Computer Technology course means while I’m no longer the newest members of the team, I’m still one of the freshest. Although I was looking more to get a job than to find a ‘home,’ I was lucky to find both a year ago. What a year it has been.

Before I started here I had never heard of crowdsourcing, I had filled out surveys in hopes of winning tuition money in school and done ‘grass roots’ surveys at previous jobs, but crowdsourcing…no clue. My first step was to figure out how people used crowdsourcing, which was good, because I had one of the best tools for that right in front of me, the code for the Cambrian House website, all of its communities and for Chaordix. We all work at one big table, so sitting around listening to all of the conversations about different crowdsourcing projects was a big help as well.

Once I had a good handle on what crowdsourcing can be used for, the next step was getting to know the code itself. We have a pretty powerful platform and that means lots of complex code when you are just getting started. On top of that I learned Java in school and here, we use PHP.  While both are Object Oriented languages there are subtle nuances that took a while to get up to speed on. The development team here has been more than willing to offer their help in growing me as a developer.

Now the process is coming full circle, we have a new member of our development team, and hopefully more in the near future. I’m looking forward to seeing someone else go through the same steps and challenges that I did. I’m also hoping this time through, I’ll be able to give some help, since I know all to well how it feels to be just starting out.