As Chaordix understands, unleashing human potential in the workplace is a delicate balance between two seemingly oppositional human needs. On one hand, all of us want to have the freedom to be in control of our own environment and have a say in determining the shape of the world around us. And alongside our need for freedom, there is an equally pressing human desire – for structure, for clarity of purpose, and for a sense of order to the world in which we live and work. Read More…

We powered PwC’s Digital Compass call on how Canada can lead in a digital economy. I’m really interested in the topic, so I spent a good amount of time in there reading the ideas, commenting and voting. The campaign lasted for 7 weeks, with 6 calls (one a week) and then a week long showdown.

It just finished Tuesday, with the top 3 idea submitters getting passes to the Canada3.0 conference in Ontario. For more information on how it worked, watch for our upcoming interview with PwC. In the meantime, here are some of the things I thought were interesting about crowdsourcing a call like this:

-          Time well spent. Compared to other solution hunt projects, PwC had high participation. The effort it took to stop, come up with an idea that could improve Canada’s digital economy and then write it down was a lot to ask of people. Yet 73 ideas were thoughtfully submitted.

-          Not a popularity contest. Community members that actively recruited their friends seem no more likely to receive votes. Before anyone could vote, they had to sign up and then hit the list of all ideas. It seems as though this extra step meant that friends voted for what they thought was the best idea. As people took an interest in the topic, the quality of submissions and comments remained high.

-          Improving quality of life. In Canada, we’re concerned about healthcare The idea on Digital Health Care took home the most votes. I think this is indicative of how the nation feels right now. Technology and gadgets are cool, but now we want to see practical applications for them that really improve our lives.

We’ll see organizations use crowdsourcing to innovate and advance more and more in the future. It can engage a crowd for breakthrough ideas, production of technology or products and problem solving that is impossible using internal employees alone. We’re hoping our upcoming project we’re working on with Oxford will bring us closer to solving some of those problems, specifically around delivering lifesaving maternal healthcare. Stay tuned for more details!

photo by: dancoulter

It’s been noted that over 2009, Wikipedia lost over 49,000 editors. According to a study by Felipe Ortega, from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, the year prior saw a loss of only 4,900 editors. What does this mean? Are people losing interest in Wikipedia, one of the top 10 website in the world? Considering most students can no longer write a paper without citing Wikipedia, should we be alarmed? What if Wikipedia dies?

Wikipedia says it is nowhere near this. They point out that Mr. Ortega raises valid challenges for Wikipedia in the future, but his numbers are off. Details aside, how many editors does Wikipedia need at this point?

Back in 2001, Wikipedia needed content, but that was years ago. Now, everything you can think of has an entry. Is it possible that we simply don’t need as many editors any more? Perhaps the time has come for experts on different subjects to review and improve the content that is already there.

Whether there is a decline in editors, or the numbers are holding steady, we don’t see this as a negative sign for Wikipedia, we just think of it as an evolution. At almost ten years old, it is a great example of the wisdom of crowds and how that collective intelligence can be used. It will be interesting to see how the next few years unfold for Wikipedia.

Does what they see affect what you get with crowdsourced input?

To get truly valid data on crowd demand do you have to remove the risk of a popularity contest? That’s one of the common questions we get asked around crowdsourcing and voting.

To shed some light on this, we thought we’d share what we discussed with good friend Veer Gidwaney, Founder of Humanity Calls – a platform where crowds of people assemble online to evaluate charities and make donations to those organizations which perform best – set to launch early 2010.

Here’s what we’ve seen as the affects of transparency in the crowds we’ve worked with:

Crowd votes totally hidden

Pros

• Makes people think for themselves & eliminates group think
• Produces incredibly valuable data

Cons

• Seeing “group think” is interesting, engaging and can foster participation
• Without ranking of ideas/solutions into top voted, it can be overwhelming for people to sort through and parse items for voting

Vote totals shown, individual votes hidden

Pros

• Presenting highest vote listing engages crowd, gets them voting
• Crowd’s time gets focused on crowd-deemed highest quality ideas/solutions

Cons

• Biases crowd energy towards top voted ideas/solutions – other high potential ideas never get seen
• Earliest in ideas/solutions biased to get most votes

Individual votes and vote totals seen by all

Pros

• With full transparency, the amount of malicious votes drops dramatically
• Crowd has means to spot and report voting irregularities

Cons

• People swayed to vote for ideas/solutions by the most popular crowd members
• As with just showing vote totals – attention biased to top voted/earliest in ideas

So with limits on all voting models – how do you best limit bias? First, pick the model with the strengths best suited to your crowd and purpose. Second, consider other means to reduce the risk of bias:

• Broaden what’s filtered & presented: Would you get more useful results and participation displaying not only top voted, but most viewed, most commented or a random display of ideas and solutions?
• Get experts to aid in filtering: Might an expert panel reviewing all ideas and filtering to top ideas for a tournament get to the most valuable winning idea?
• Pace/Batch the voting: Consider weekly or monthly showdowns to keep the volume of ideas/solutions manageably viewable by the crowd– with a tournament of finalists at the end.

These are some of our best practices & lessons learned. What have you seen work to limit crowd bias in voting?

Thanks Veer for reaching out to us!

photo by: starbright31

Making a successful shift to open innovation requires some behavioural and attitude changes and new technology adoption, but when done right the rewards can be enormous.

We’ve worked on and studied dozens of crowdsourcing initiatives, and while we, and everyone involved with crowdsourcing, continue to learn on a daily basis, there are some emerging guiding principals that seem to lead to crowdsourcing success. On the surface, crowdsourcing seems easy – shout a question out to the crowd, get their ideas and allow them to vote on the best. But we’ve found that for true performance and profit driving results, you need to pay attention to these principals:

#1 – Right Purpose
Call to the crowd for insight you will act on

A little bit of time up front in planning out your Crowdsource campaign can dramatically increase the value you will derive from it. Just like in the early days of e-commerce, the companies that truly benefited from the online business shift were those that well conceived the potential of the technology applied to their business problems, market and organizational behaviors. For high ROI crowdsourcing you need to be clear on: What issues or opportunities facing your organization can a crowd answer for you? Where can you improve product development, R&D, policy development, your brand positioning or market research by adopting open innovation? And as important, who are the leaders in your organization that will champion and commit to acting on the input from the crowd. There is no law that says you have to implement what the crowd decides, but you need to be ready to acknowledge the crowd’s input and broadcast the action you are taking and why.
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