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.

Thanks to Edward Boches, I had the opportunity to lead a great interactive session on crowdsourcing with some of his team at Mullen.  Edward is a strong advocate of the benefits of social media for businesses and his agency is more open to the idea than most.

During the session, one topic that came up was “how does crowdsourcing differ from surveys and contests?”  The argument could be made that anytime you reach out to the crowd for input, you are crowdsourcing.  Fair enough.  But if you stop there, you’re missing out on the biggest benefits of true crowdsourcing.

Surveys, contests and polls capture feedback from the crowd.  This is a good first step and there’s no arguing it does provide value. However, you’re missing the value derived from getting the crowd involved in evolving and enhancing the ideas. The multi-step process of ranking/selecting/brainstorming/voting that only comes with a full crowdsourcing process provides a platform for two-way discussion. It is a direct way for companies to get input they wouldn’t otherwise have on hand, or even realize they needed to ask about.

Rarely do Ideas start off perfectly formed. Ideas become more powerful as they are honed by collective wisdom.   This process of refinement not only makes the idea stronger, but also starts a coalition of support – it’s no longer just an idea that one person thinks has merit.

In crowdsourcing, you can see this exact process happen but on an even greater scale.   People from different backgrounds and demographics, who don’t know each other, can collaborate on ideas to make them better. At the same time, the company behind the crowdsourcing site can start to get an indicator of market acceptance.

It’s the cross-pollination of ideas, thoughts and critiques among a diverse crowd that not only provides the most value from crowdsourcing, but also guards against biased results.

Is crowdsourcing better than simple surveys and contests? If you’re looking for a way to quickly pull information from a crowd, not necessarily. But if you really want the most value of collective wisdom or a continuous flow of input and ideas, have the discipline to follow a full crowdsourcing path.

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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Business researchers remain baffled on the “not just yet” phenomena of enterprise declaring the desire to embrace social technology when surveyed, but making no progress a year later. For many the concern is being thrust into a conversation where the crowd will hurl insults about how their products or services or policies fall short. So how can an enterprise dip a toe in and get started on the path to open innovation? Here are some ideas.

Monitor the crowd in conversation

First step – see what people are saying. People are talking about your brand whether you like it or not. Get out into that big, open world and eavesdrop on what people think about you.

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For a business shift that’s about inviting in non-experts, hobbyists and hackers, there’s a lot of insider lingo around crowdsourcing. This begins the first of a series of straight talk on crowdsourcing principles to help us all put the theory into practice.

What is collective intelligence? Jeff Howe, the guy that came up with the term crowdsourcing, says it this way, “A central principle animating crowdsourcing is that the group contains more knowledge than individuals.” James Suroweicki says, “Even if most of the people within a group are not especially well-informed or rational, it can still reach a collectively wise decision.” This is the science that explains why when asked for a lifeline on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the crowd guesses 91% correctly, whereas experts have a 61% likelihood of getting the right answer. The answers that come from crowdsourcing are called collective intelligence or wisdom of crowds. Yes, two terms for the same thing.
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