Dotti Berry, iDigital Media Pro Empowering Entrepreneurs

Crowd Sourcing…Wave of the Future for Businesses

Let’s first define Crowdsourcing, so you will have some idea about it if you have never before heard the term.

From Wikipedia…

Crowdsourcing is a neologistic compound of “crowd” and “outsourcing” for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an “open call” to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions.

I believe that crowdsourcing is a part of the creative, collective intelligence that is becoming the new “expert,” and is possible because of our new technology and connection through the internet.  We are moving toward a greater connecting, engaging and leveraging of the talents of all of us in positive ways.

President Obama has encouraged Americans to be innovative during this economic crisis and reminded us of the importance of working together to discover ideas that can refuel our economy.  That concept in and of itself is a form of crowdsourcing.  Like the term “new age” or “new thought” which I refer to as “original thought” or “original wisdom” because it is going back to the roots of why/how things happen and has existed since the beginning of time, I believe that crowdsourcing is not so much “new,” as it is a concept that has been reframed with a new term.  Most definitely our technology today is allowing us to utilize crowdsourcing in ways never before imagined.

All to say that many people still aren’t familiar with the term “crowdsourcing,” though it has been in the news for almost five years since first being introduced in 2006 in a Wired Magazine article by Jeff Howe.  He went on to write this book on the subject. Click on the book in these scrolling choices.

There’s lots more I want to share with you on this subject…from its connection to social networking to the work by leading researcher, Daren C. Brabham in the field of planning projects…from  Gannett News, who incorporated it into their business model in 2006, to network marketing companies who are marrying this process with their business model.

An important example of web-based crowdsourcing, mentioned also in Howe’s original book, is social bookmarking (also called collaborative tagging). In social bookmarking systems, users assign tags to resources shared with other users, which given rise to a type of information organization that emerges from this crowdsourcing process. Recent research has shown that consensus around stable distributions and a simple form of shared vocabularies does indeed emerge in such systems, even in the absence of a central controlled vocabulary.

In an article titled Where Does Innovation Come From? Perhaps more than ever, it’s a good idea to look for good ideas? But where are they hiding? by Lauren McKay in CRM Magazine, she notes that “Jeff Howe, author, Wired magazine writer, and father of the buzzword ‘crowdsourcing,’ insists that this ‘crowd stuff’—using the intelligence of groups of people to harness new ideas—has been around forever. It’s just that today’s technology lets us see it clearly.”  She quotes Jeff as saying,

“I don’t think crowdsourcing eradicates a business, it changes [the business],” Howe said at Mediabistro’s User-Generated Content Expo in October 2009. Part of the beauty around crowdsourcing, he said, is the premise that the person we think of as most qualified for the job isn’t the best to do it.

Jeff’s comments corroborate my belief that the concept of crowdsourcing is not new, but the term and the way technology allows us to use it is new.  It is very exciting to me as I believe this is offering a paradigm shift in business models that is going to reverberate globally in the future if it hasn’t already.  Here’s part of why I find this so intriguing and exciting…

Back to our “collective intelligence” being the new “expert.”  Gone are the days where the only expert is the person with the PhD. or 30 years of experience.  We are learning more and more than the QUESTIONS put before ordinary, everyday people like each of you and me are connecting. engaging, and involving the all of who we are and tapping into our collective intelligence in ways never before seen or imagined to come up with better solutions!

Gannett News adopted crowdsourcing for its newsgathering functions back in 2006.  See xr.com/GannettNews

Crowdsourcing is also referred to as collective intelligence as identified by Daren C. Brabham at the University of Utah in his article, Planning Theory: Crowdsourcing the Public Participation Process for Planning Projects.  Read some of the papers he has written at darenbrabham.com/research.html. He will begin a position at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, beginning July 1, 2010 (Teaching and research in public relations and new media).

On Brabham’s website, he says:

My dissertation focuses on the potential for the crowdsourcing model to move beyond the for-profit sector and to be put into use for government and non-profit problem solving.  Among the first to publish research on crowdsourcing, my work has appeared in Convergence, First Monday, Planning Theory, and Flow.

More detail is gleaned from his abstract:

Public involvement is a central concern for urban planners, but the challenge for planners is how best to implement such programs, given many difficulties inherent in the typical public involvement process. The medium of the Web enables us to harness collective intellect among a population in ways face-to-face planning meetings cannot. This article argues that the crowdsourcing model, a successful, Web-based, distributed problem solving and production model for business, is an appropriate model for enabling the citizen participation process in public planning projects. This article begins with an exploration of the challenges of public participation in urban planning projects, particularly in the harnessing of creative solutions. An explanation of the theories of collective intelligence and crowd wisdom follows, arguing for the medium of the Web as an appropriate technology for harnessing far-flung genius. An exploration of crowdsourcing in a hypothetical neighborhood planning example, along with a consideration of the challenges of implementing crowdsourcing, concludes the article.

The work of Daren Brabham helps explain why Crowdsourcing could be the wave of the future for businesses.

Brabham points to a quote by Bruce Mau

Now that we can do anything, what will we do?

and then says…

Like Bruce Mau, and like Buckminster Fuller before him, I believe we live in a world capable of designing the solutions to the world’s many problems, to implement our imagined paths to peace, sustainability, and abundance.

Below is a Brabham’s visual that is both simple and complex…simple in laying out a step-by-step process and complex in the potential of what it can accomplish.

I believe that crowdsourcing also shows great potential for network marketing companies.  They  can marry this business model with an idea and utilize their network of people to accomplish tasks for clients. Network marketing companies are the #1 vehicle for the 79 Million people who will start their own business during the next three years (Forbes).  Some network marketing companies  are already embracing crowdsourcing as a business model. They could indeed be onto something that is forward thinking…perhaps even ahead of the curve in people’s understanding.  The key will be the same one that either propels or plagues MLM companies who ignite a concept.  Do they have the funding to perpetuate this model vs. any other model they might incorporate? A great idea only remains a great idea if it is properly funded and can last.

I’ll end this post by saying that I believe that the concept of crowdsourcing is a business model to keep our eye on as technology continues to explode and connect people and what they can accomplish together.  Whether it is an old concept, but with a “new twist” in terminology, this isn’t the last you will hear about crowdsourcing,  If you are hearing the term for the first time, remember that you heard it from  Coach B, bringing you the “best of the best” and the “newest of the new.”

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Tags: Brabham, collective intelligence, CrowdSourcing, Obama, public participation, urban planning, Web