Is that something you’ve said, or heard said in your company?    We’ve heard it from many of our clients and potential clients, and doubtless, most of us have experiences with collaboration attempts that started out OK, but somehow, well, fizzled out.

For example, perhaps someone set up a wiki for a group project.   People probably started piling stuff into it, but quickly it became disorganized, and hard to find what you wanted, so it fell into disuse and people went back to the old email-blast collaboration technique.   Or perhaps you had an idea management tool that was designed to capture everyone’s new ideas whenever they had them.  But it was always unclear what, if anything, happened to the ideas, so again, people stopped using it.

We’ve heard all these stories and many more, and often get asked “how is crowdsourced collaboration different?”  The answer is in the process.  If you’ve followed Chaordix, or attended any of our webinar series, you know we believe strongly that the crowdsourcing model, or process, that is applied for a specific crowdsourcing objective is as important as, if not more important than, the technology that supports it.

Successful crowdsourcing is way more than just getting people to suggest ideas to a common online area.    It’s a well thought-out (ahead of time!) process where there are specific stages of idea submission, enhancement, and selection by the crowd, a panel, or combinations of both.   It requires having specific goals for the crowd to accomplish.  It involves communication mechanism that provide just the right amount of information to keep people in the loop and participating, without overwhelming them.  It incorporates incentives that make participating rewarding and fun.   And its also about making the goal, process and incentives transparent, so everyone knows how it’s going to work, how long it’s going to take and what the outcome is going to be.  It’s about getting the crowd to collaborate with a specific purpose in a specific period of time, with a technology platform and moderation that provide the essential ingredients.

Successful collaboration doesn’t happen by just bringing people together and saying “collaborate”.  Successful collaboration happens by good design, knowledgeable implementation and ongoing moderation/oversight.

And the best part is, it feeds on itself.  If you run a successful crowdsourcing engagement, and the crowd sees the progress and results,  the crowd members are that much more motivated to participate again, and again.

So, if you’ve tried collaboration technologies in the past and they haven’t worked out the way you thought they would, think about why they might have failed and think about the process used (or lack thereof).   But certainly, don’t assume that crowdsourcing is the same.    Crowdsourced collaboration, implemented correctly,  is truly different (and it works.)

So, we’re not all that surprised to see Pepsi Refresh in the news again, only this time with allegations of voting fraud, as covered in The New York Times.

If you’ve been following Pepsi Refresh since the beginning, you remember that it was initially conceived as an alternative to doing Super Bowl ads.  In other words, it was conceived as a marketing and awareness program.  And most of the articles I’ve read mention that the program has been a “huge” success, not only because they’ve given away more than $20M to charities,  but because,  as Fast Company put it last week,   “Pepsi has received more positive PR than it ever could have by spending the same amount of money on advertising.”

Now don’t get me wrong.  I think it’s wonderful for a company to build its brand and get market awareness for doing good and being socially responsible.    Throughout the Refresh program though,  I’ve wondered if Pepsi has put enough thought into where the money goes, how it’s used, or even if it’s given fairly.

To do crowdsourcing “right”, it’s critical to care about the outcome and make it priority number one.   Also, if you run a campaign with a big prize you must recognize that, unfortunately, there is high likelihood that someone will try to game the outcome, and be prepared beforehand, not scramble to cover after the fact.

It’s important to care about the outcome because the entire design and execution of the campaign flows from there.  We always start by identifying the desired output from the crowd and work backward to design.  It just doesn’t work to do it any other way.  The model you use, the incentives, the crowd you engage, and many other considerations all flow from the desired outcome.

When it comes to gaming, your technology should have safeguards in place and reporting alerts to identify any suspicious activity so you can address immediately.  Yes, with good data access you can always eliminate the votes of suspected “gamers”, but its always better to nip it in the bud and either prevent gaming altogether or eliminate it when it starts.

One of the most fundamental concepts of crowdsourcing is that crowds can be remarkably intelligent.  So, if the playing field isn’t level for your crowdsourcing campaign, you should count on your crowd figuring out that it isn’t.    Better yet, make sure your campaign is designed right up front, with the right safeguards in place to help ensure that the playing field is level, otherwise it might come back to haunt you.  Pepsi might be finding this out the hard way, again.

(I love the spike in 2006 right after Jeff Howe’s Crowdsourcing book was published. )

So for all this hype, expectations are perhaps getting a bit out of hand.    Yesterday I read a blog post saying that crowdsourcing really isn’t all that useful for humanitarian efforts.   Isn’t it just a bit early to declare that?   That’s kind of like concluding in 1990 the Internet isn’t all that useful.

We all hear daily about great examples of success with crowdsourcing (and some not as successful) but let’s remember we are still very early on.  I’ll be the first to say we don’t have all of the answers, yet.  There is so much more to discover, learn and improve on for tapping collective wisdom.  We constantly come up with new crowdsourcing models, adjust incentives, voting styles, and find better ways of analyzing the data that results,  and there is just SO much more room for growth.

That’s what makes what we do here at Chaordix so exciting.   Not that there is so much hype, but that we know the best is yet to come.  So maybe Ushahidi isn’t that useful for the relief aid worker on the street today, but in the future, I’m positive relief agencies will learn how to use this valuable crowdsourced information and network for their benefit,  and the benefit of the victims of natural disasters.   Just as I’m equally sure for everyone reading this post, your company or organization will also soon be benefiting from some sort of crowdsourcing in the not too distant future. (even if it’s just to design your next donut.)

@liman from SAP joined @shelleykuipers for the day at CrowdConf (Chaordix had a panel slot and sponsored the event)

The planned keynote was Jeff Howe @crowdsourcing but he unfortunately missed the event – Lukas Biewald (CEO, CrowdFlower) @l2k from @CrowdFlower did a great job of kicking off with Leila C. Janah (CEO, Samasource), who spoke of the opportunity to “tap 4 billion global super computers in developing and underdeveloped regions.” Crowdflower said their crowd members earn 5X the average wage through their community.

Liveops, CEO Maynard Webb was next on stage… “we are just at the beginning, only 4% of commerce happens online…work is the next killer app”. Webb shared some interesting stats: 22% of employers can’t find the right resources, even with 9.6% unemployed. 30% of employable workforce are working on their own terms as freelancers. Somewhat shocking was the research finding that most high school students do not expect to work for a corporation. Recommended read – “The Future Arrived Yesterday.” Maynard shared his view on the new rules of engagement – meritocracy, transparency and accountability.

1st panel – Possible vs. Impossible: Determining the Power of Crowdsourcing moderated by Dan Scholnick (Principal, Trinity Ventures). In talking about challenges, Barney Pell (Partner, Search Strategist and Evangelist, Microsoft) said what’s not quite nailed is demonstrating the benefits of learning and the incentives to make it happen – need to integrate for the big win. Today, the learning curve presents a problem – people gain mastery over time, then grow bored and move on to something else. Successful organizations may be the ones who excel at getting members of the crowd to share their knowledge before leaving for the next level task, enabling the crowd to advance up the learning curve. Sharon Chiarella (VP, Amazon Mechanical Turk) noted that transition from outsourcing to crowdsourcing is a challenge for organizations that don’t know their workers – geographically and politically. Loved when Ville Miettinen (CEO, Microtask) talked about our role as practitioners is ‘collective evangelism’. Leila Janah said the biggest challenge is that organizations aren’t looking to buy crowdsourcing but rather the output and power of the crowd…we need more LiveOps – where people can earn a real living — where they live. Martijn Lampert (Research Director, Motivaction International) said the real opportunity is when micro networks can self organize on the available platforms.

Wolfgang Kitza (CEO, Clickworker.com) shared with us Crowdsourcing in Europe.

Okay, now onto the super smart researchers…

John Horton (Harvard), spoke about the challenge of finding a fair price for work, when work can be done anywhere and wages differ greatly within each geography. How does a single buyer negotiate price in a microtask context, when there are many workers? Mass haggling is challenging. The solution? The Hagglebot — simplified bargaining using Algorithmic Wage Negotiations. (we’ve asked him for a blog post! )

Adam Kapelner (University of Pennsylvania) and Dana Chandler (MIT) presented their findings in “Preventing Satisficing in Online Surveys” said surveys of the future must increase perceived value, force a slow down of information/questions and attract attention to what’s needed. An interesting finding is: for best survey results, target women 25 years and older – you will get lots of feedback!

Lauren Schmidt (Headlamp Research) spoke about “Crowdsourcing for Human Subjects Research” the need to make policies clear, provide participant anonymity, provide ethical compensation, protect vulnerable populations, offering fair compensation, not to cross the line into coercion were some of the through-provoking topics she introduced.

Next up was David Alan Grier, Author of “When Computers Were Human” David’s presentation is a must watch. Social aspiration is a powerful force — everyone wants to be recognized as special. He shared what it takes to get a crowd to work — well.

2nd Panel - Make it work: Big ideas and great successes moderated by Ethan Kurzweil (Bessemer Ventures) (BTW, did you know that Ray Kurzweil’s movie, “The Singularity is Near“ - is touring the globe?). Brian Goler (VP, Marketing oDesk) discussed strategies for tapping global talent, making work transparent, the importance of building long term relationships, and the impact of guaranteeing payment. The formula? Seed (micro marketplaces of skill sets), feed (PHP developers, etc.), and weed (programs and policies). Doron Reuveni (CEO, uTest) discussed how they maintain quality with a crowd of 30k testers by building a community to test their own software as they were developing it. Expert software testers from around the world are now engaged. Each gets a profile, and uTest on-ramps them by helping them build their rating up in a way that is visible and makes potential customers confident that the tester has the skills they need. He spoke of the need to ensure incentives are aligned with the direction you want to go. How to compensate a team that works together to accomplish a goal vs. each individual? Fabio Rosati (CEO, Elance) has been crowdsourcing since 2001. The 1998 paper “The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy“, discussed the devolution of the large corporation into “flexible, temporary networks of individuals” – amazing that this trend was already visible over 10 years ago. As an early entrant, Elance had to educate potential buyers to get them comfortable hiring online. With a useful and easy UX, and great perseverance, earnings have now topped the $300m mark. Wyatt Nordstrom (CEO, Maven Research) get high quality people into the fold by building friction into the hiring process, and having this challenge serve as the litmus test for joining. By passing the “test,” uTest learns something about them. They continuously refine their understanding of their population to understand micro communities – 50 measures plus feedback. Patrick McKenna (CEO, Keniks) spoke of 3 types of crowdsourcing: transactional, relational and creative. Shared his “formula” – (1) find a pile of cash with transactional tasks. (2) understand how you add vale to the transaction – lowering cost, increasing quality, increasing the speed of answers, (3) build a process that leverages the crowd and an interface that enables the crowd to optimize the transaction.

Jonathan Zittrain, Professor, Harvard provided a fascinating and often hilarious perspective as he talked about “Minds for Sale“. This talk was the best-in-show at CrowdConf. In his view, we are all treading into ‘illegal’ employment law territory – though he encouraged us to drive on and keep innovating. The generative enterprise is now running on the crowdsourced operating system. How might we match the marginal time of people who are passionate about the work potential employers are trying to crowdsource? How much context do we disclose for micro tasks? What the task is for may be important – e.g., might someone use mechanical Turk for bomb making? What is the impact of pseudonyms? And what about the implications to do with the form of payment? Will this result in a tax on virtual currency? He sees more crowdsourcing in civic realms next. Flash mobs for protests, anyone?

3rd Panel – Distributed Creativity: The Softer Skills of Human Intelligence moderated by Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-hour Work Week) new friends, Jason Aiken (Community Director, 99 Designs) spoke of the need to be sensitive to personal interests in crowdsourcing design work, and creating a climate where designers wouldn’t be giving away their work on spec. John Winsor (CEO, Victors & Spoils) thinks the next big thing in crowdsourcing is reliable reputation information for individuals and teams. Keith Kegley (VP, X Prize Foundation) spoke of the shift to designing systems for addressing systemic problems vs. designing things. Saad Khan (Partner, CMEA Capital) is interested in moving from crowd sourcing to crowd action. Chaordix CEO Shelley Kuipers shared cool projects they are doing in collaboration with Orange for mobile activism and Oxford for maternal health.

Some thought provoking questions:

• “If you had 10,000 people, what would you use them for?”
• “How might we make work look and feel more like gaming to incent behaviors we want?
• “How do you find people with fresh perspectives that are orthogonal to problem space?” (critical for new innovation spaces, like those of the X Prize)
• “How does crowdsourcing fit into the global economy?”

Thanks to CrowdFlower for an amazing conference, we look forward to participating again next year!

Originally posted at 100% Open.

We are excited to announce that we are launching our latest project with Orange called Mobile Volunteering which brings together a healthy and expert mix of technology developers and social entrepreneurs and NGOs.

On the site we are creating everyday opportunities for social action, kick-starting a new movement. Through an app on their mobile phone, people could for example volunteer to map and tag wildlife photos, make an audio map for the blind, or complete a charity’s survey. Imagine the potential of millions of people regularly contributing in this way.

The project itself is an collaboration between Orange, Chaordix, 100%Open and Good Business which has been lots of fun so far too. See below a short video about the project.

Else do keep an eye out on the site and start sharing and building your ideas or apps.

Originally posted at Innovate on Purpose on August 31th, 2010.

I’ve just finished reading a book called Intangible Capital (more on that in another post) by Mary Adams.  The book does a good job describing the value and importance of knowledge, intellectual property and other intangible assets, and why innovation is key to the creation of those assets.

But that’s not the subject of today’s post.  Today’s post deals with the fallacy that innovation “starts” with idea generation.  I’m picking on Mary’s book because it was at hand and the latest to suggest that innovation starts with idea generation.  I know this because it says so on page 85, but Mary’s writing does not stand alone.  Far too often I hear people suggest or read that innovation starts with idea generation.  Sorry, no – and my apologies in advance to Mary for calling out this small problem in what was otherwise a very good book.

Idea generation is at best the “mid point” of an innovation process, because by the time you start generating ideas you need to have:

1. A good sense of the strategic goals and direction of the organization
2. A good sense of trends and the unfolding future
3. An understanding of unmet or unarticulated needs

Only when you are armed with this knowledge can you generate ideas that are worth anything.  We at OVO call this “ideating in context”.  The obvious alternative to “ideating with no context” which is what many teams do, and why idea generation and brainstorming have such poor reputations.  Let’s examine why all three factors need to be complete before you can brainstorm effectively.

First, you need to understand the strategic goals, direction and strategic intent of the business, and how it will remain constant or change.  This aspect forms the “framework” for your idea generation.  If your firm has the goal to be the best at customer intimacy or experience, then that should inform your idea generation – you’ll want to spend far more time focused in those areas than in operational excellence.  Too often there are no clear guidepost or guardrails to shape your thinking and in those cases all ideas and all strategies seem equal.  They aren’t, and if you present ideas out of sequence or out of context with strategy then you’ll find that out.

Second, you need to understand something about the future.  After all, the average time to market for an idea in most large firms is between 24 and 36 months, idea generation to commercialization.  That means an idea you generate today will be birthed into a world two to three years from the one we are in today.  How much change will occur in that space?  If you create an idea today that assumes the world will be the same as it was when the idea was created, you’ve shot behind the curve and the idea will seem dated from the start.  Not to mention the fact that observing trends and understanding where the future may evolve is important. You may spot entirely new opportunities by spending time understanding the future, and your products or services may arrive at exactly the right time.

With those two factors safely covered, you can also understand what customers want and need.  You do this through many different qualitative exercises – voice of the customer, observation, lead users, ethnography, etc.  What you are seeking are the unrecognized, unmet or unarticulated needs that align to your strategic goals and to the unfolding future.  At the intersection of those three converging factors are ideas that will be relevant, valuable and in line with your capabilities.

These factors create the “context” that identifies customer needs in line with future trends and aligned to strategic goals.  Within that context or framework, generating ideas becomes far more easy and far more robust – actually becomes safer, since you are generating ideas you know link to strategic goals and to customer needs.  It’s less arbitrary since you know the goals, potential futures and customer needs.

Innovation doesn’t start with, and doesn’t end with, idea generation.  In fact we should place far less emphasis on the idea generation phase than we do, but it seems to get the most focus, probably because it is the easiest to organize and any one can participate, while the other tasks require real thinking, real planning and real work.  Generating ideas should be the outcome of good strategic thinking and careful assessment of customer behaviors and needs.  If that work is done well, idea generation is almost an afterthought, but it certainly isn’t the first step in the process.

Originally posted at rediff.com on August 16th, 2010.

Social media is no more a buzzword today. Given the rate at which it is growing and the impact it is making in our everyday lives, we will soon see the answer to this question: ‘Why should I care about social media?’

Over the last three years, I have closely observed and actively used this medium, as one of the most powerful tools to solve and address multiple business challenges, ranging from hiring an employee to acquiring a new customer.

In the following pages are my learnings and points of view on why should a business pay attention to and invest in social media.

Statistics speak loudly: Given the volume of action on social media web sites, as measured by some of the key statistics mentioned below, it is evident that social media is no more a small or niche medium:

1. Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users, TV took 13 years, Internet took 4 years, iPod 3 years and Facebook reached over 200 million users in less than a year.

2. The top two Twitter accounts — Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears — have more followers than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, Austria and Panama.

3. Wikipedia has more than 15 million articles out of which over 75 per cent are non-English.

4. There are over 200 million blogs.

5. YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.

6. Social media has overtaken pornography as the most popular activity on the web.

There are endless reasons to use social media: Contrary to normal belief, social media is much more than just a channel to acquire new customers.

Here are some of the key business objectives, which can be met using social media:

CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Whether you want to continuously engage with your customers, take their feedback or provide them support, social media is a great tool. Dell is a classic example of using social media (especially Twitter and Blogs) to transform their customer’s experience.

ORM (Online Reputation Management): Social media has given the power of media in the hands of an ordinary user. More and more people will continue to express their opinions about a brand, a product or a service on tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I don’t think that brands have a choice to not listen to the conversations about them. ICICI Bank is an interesting example of a large Indian brand, which is doing a great job in effectively managing its reputation in the digital world, especially through Twitter.

Brand Building and Promotion: Social media is all about ‘word of mouth’, ‘building relationships’ and ‘conversations’. Where else can a brand get an opportunity to promote itself than on social media? Ching’s Secret is a great example of leveraging social media for brand promotion.

B2B Lead Generation: Given more and more professionals (LinkedIn has over 75 million users in over 200 countries) will continue to spend their precious time on social media, almost every organisation has an opportunity leverage this medium for lead generation. Evalueserve, a company who coined the term KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) has highly effectively used Social Media as a great B2B Lead generation tool to acquire global customers.

Crowdsourcing: What can be a better choice than to include your customers and users in the creation of a product or a service? That’s what ‘crowdsourcing’ refers to and that’s what Social Media makes available. Among various examples, Starbucks asking their community members to provide inputs on the next coffee flavour, is an interesting one.

Human Resources: In addition to employee engagement (like CRM), social media is a great medium to hire new employees. It is not surprising that LinkedIn Profile is increasingly replacing conventional resume.

Timings can’t be better than today: The last but the most important reason to care about social media today is the timing. Given that only a few brands in few industry verticals have started to give a serious look to social media, the opportunity for early movers is immense.

I would like to share a personal example here. We happened to use search engine optimisation (SEO) way back in year 2000, for our first business. Today, I would know ten times of what I knew about search engine optimisation in 2000 but the returns on investment then were ten times more than what we get today.

Why? Obviously for the timing; we were among the early adopters of SEO. So, can be you for social media!

Do you need more and better reasons to start embracing social media?  Honestly, I don’t think so! You will not get a better opportunity to leverage social media than today. Embrace this medium before it’s too late.

Pradeep Chopra is CEO and Co-founder of DigitalVidya

http://www.linkedin.com/in/pradeepchopra

There are tons of books, blogs and podcasts that have been hooked onto the topics of crowdsourcing, co-creation and innovation. Here’s a small sampling  of our must-reads (think of it as our version of #FF/Follow Friday but with books &  blogs rather than tweeps).

Books

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

Published in 2005, by New Yorker business columnist James Suroiecki it argues that “Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.”

Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe

Jeff Howe coined the term crowdsourcing in his June 2006 Wired magazine article The Rise of Crowdsourcing. With this book he investigates case studies and the history including iStockPhoto, Wikipedia and Barak Obama’s political campaign.

Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future by Patricia B. Seybold

Full of case studies and guides advising and inspiring you to engage your customers to co-create and thus innovate with you.

The Open Innovation Revolution by Stefan Lindegaard
Filled with case studies and outlining a clear, top-down, pragmatic approach, the Open Innovation Revolution lays a foundation for any company looking to pursue an open innovation approach.

Robert’s Rules of Innovation by Robert Brand

Robert Brand, president and founder of Brands & Company, LLC,  is a luminary and the driving force behind  the blog innovationcoach.com. The book is a step-by-step guide to innovation, from concept to full market launch.

Extra Credit: Democratizing Innovation by Eric Von Hippel

Eric Von Hippel is a leading scholar in innovation management and Democratizing Innovation is a book which presents a plethora of concrete examples on the subject.

Blogs

Blogging Innovation

We’ve posted a guest blog from Blogging Innovation recently, but there is a constant stream of high-quality, interesting posts on innovation, business and social media.

15inno

Stefan Lindegaard is an entrepreneur,  strategy consultant and thought leader when it comes to open innovation. Definitely one for your RSS.

Creativity_unbound

As a principal at Mullen, Edward Boches is great at shaking things up and turning things on their head.  He is also pushing (or pulling) the traditional ad agencies into the social media era, step by step.

Jason Spector

Jason brings a great viewpoint to the world of crowdsourcing, design and user experience.

Trends in the Living Networks – Opportunities for business and society in a hyper-connected world

Ross Dawson shares the perspective of a futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and strategy advisor. He has equal curiosity in how people behave and shaping behaviours that propel business. Oh and and he’s bestselling author Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships.

Extra credit:  Spark –It’s a blog, podcast & radio show created through online crowdsourcing with a focus on topics about innovation, co-creation and other interesting technology issues.

Photo credit: ibevymay

Crowdsourcing isn’t just about the explicit outcome of a top idea, or best loved brand strategy. There are hidden gems that prove just as, if not more valuable than the planned outcome. Here are three things you may not have considered:

Engaging your employees.

Let’s assume you’ve hired smart people to work at your company. If so, they probably have good ideas. Empower them to share their ideas through crowdsourcing. It could be anything to getting tips on being more efficient, to asking for new ideas in exchange for some skin in the game. As with any business, involving your employees means giving them more incentive to care about what they are doing and caring means doing a better job.

Knowing where the market headed before it gets there.

The cable industry, the music industry…no behemoth is immune. While you might think you know more about what you do than your customers, they are the ones footing the bill. Stay on top of trends by being in constant contact with them. Listening to what they want, and how they choose to use/consume it could be what makes or breaks your company. Don’t agree? Ask Blockbuster if they ever thought people would stop renting movies, or American car manufacturers if they ever thought bigger might not be better.

Discovering what your customers value about your organization.

Asking customers to help with your branding isn’t about getting an ad made for less money. It is about knowing what they value about the product or service you provide. How do your customers perceive your brand? Getting clients to explain what you do provides insight into what is important about your organization.  On a recent call, Steven Adler, of IBM Data Governance Solutions, said of Chaordix, “Everybody gives a little bit and in return, they get the rainbow of what everyone else has contributed.”

You can’t ask for a better explanation than that.

Photo by: Neovain

After reading “The Scary Economics of Crowdsourcing” posted by Phil Wainewright over at eBizQ, I’ve been thinking about why people are so concerned at the prospect of crowdsourcing. Do they think it is so powerful that crowdsourcing will be the only way of work in the future or is this just sensationalized journalism?

Here at Chaordix, we always talk about crowdsourcing in a positive way – enabling faster innovation, deeper brand engagement, community development – but we see what people worry about as well. We understand the fear, but disagree with some of the logic. Here are some arguments on crowdsourcing discussions gone awry:

1. Crowdsourcing will get all of your work done for free. There is no way to trick the time/money graph. Whether you are Netflix with a million dollars kicking around, or a small startup without the cash to hire someone to design a logo for you, the graph still applies. The rumor that you’ll get a massive crowd to complete all of your work for your business, for free is not true. For example, The Guardian was able to quickly get through massive amounts of data by asking its readers to go through documents, but without having some type of incentive, people were not willing to invest very much time into it. After the initial push, it stalled.
2. Crowdsourcing will destroy corporate structure. While crowdsourcing can help find new solutions in unexpected places, it won’t be the end of business as we know it. Crowdsourcing gives mangers and executives access to more data, people and options than before, but all companies still need people to bring it all together. What we learned from our original crowdsourcing community, IdeaWarz, is that you cannot crowdsource a founding team. Experienced leaders are still key to any successful endeavor. A successful leader will recognize that they might not have all of the answers, but the experience to find and implement them.
3. Crowdsourcing is threatening my job. Unlikely, if you are good at what you do. Crowdsourcing is the democratization of talent. Yes, the new kid fresh out of school can make a logo or write a few lines of code for way cheaper than you, but this frees you up to do more involved, more complex work. Think about the attending/resident relationship of doctors. There will never be a world where we don’t need people with experience to guide people just learning. Instead of thinking about crowdsourcing as some young, inexperienced punks taking your job, why not look at crowdsourcing as a way to promote your experience – either through being a mentor to fresh ideas without experience, or as the “expert” who helps guide the decision making process?

Implementing crowdsourcing isn’t a magical solution for everything – it requires a combination of easy to use technology and thorough planning. As with any other business initiative, it has to be a good fit for the end goal. While we believe it represents an exciting opportunity for new innovation and open conversations, we don’t believe all the hype – just the facts.

Photo by kiki99