Crowdsourcing before ‘Crowdsourcing’
The only thing tougher than an impossible task is trying to do that task alone. We as humans have known that to be true for some time, and it's probably how we got to building civilizations in the first place. We've given this a new name, in a time of hyper-specialization and bit of a departure from some of our more collaborative forms as human beings, we've started to look back at that collaborative spirit and call it "crowdsourcing."
From seeking to gain an ambitiously comprehensive grasp on the chaotic framework of the English language, to the ongoing search for new interplanetary lifeforms, crowdsourcing is nothing new. It has been used for a huge variety of projects that have had an impact on both human history and the growth of economies the world over.
Early examples of crowdsourcing in modern history date back to the 1800s, when the makers of the Oxford English Dictionary, realising it might take them a while to jot down every single word in the English language, put out an open call for contributors which received a mind-boggling six million submissions and resulted in the indispensable reference material we all know and love.
It’s come a long way since those heady days though, and with the magic of the internet connecting hearts and minds the way it does, the concept has been honed somewhat. Here are the main types for you to read below.
Different Types
Crowdsourcing Design
You’ve got a great concept, product, or brand, but you're not going anywhere without a winning logo design.
You're not a designer. Now what?
Well, you just tell a crowd of designers what you want, how much you’re willing to pay, and when you want it. All the interested people then go off and scribble away, and you get a hundred or so designs to choose from, and just pick the one you like. The quality of the chosen piece is far more likely to match your needs, and the price is kept to your budget by definition. Not bad eh?
Of course, it’s not just logos, it can be videos, commercials, products, anything that needs a talented designer who can hold a crayon or use a program.
Crowdfunding
Got a great idea, artistic creation or invention, but you’re a little short on the thousands of dollars needed to fund it? This is where the benefits of the many really comes into play.
Simply submit a request to an online crowdfunding platform, stating how much you need, what you need it for, and when you need it by, and if your idea is deemed worthy (a great initial concept test if ever there was one!) then you’ll start to get donors shelling out their hard-earned cash in support of your dream.
Naturally, it’s a good idea to stop people asking for inordinate sums of money, or preying on the weak-minded, so if you don’t reach 100% of your target before the deadline you have to give it all back. A clever yet simple system that ensures only good ideas receive any money.
Microtasking
Say you’ve got a huge task to complete, such as mapping and logging all the stars in the visible sky. Might take you a while on your own, and you’ve got blogs you want to read. What about if that task can be split out amongst thousands of budding astronomers, so that they can choose a tiny portion of the sky, and take it upon themselves to map out their little part, and send you the details? Wouldn’t that make life easier?
Well, that’s the beauty of microtasking.
Of course, some of those people might have a telescope, but not be that interested in using it to look up, (they’ve also got blogs to read) so you might have to pay them a small amount, but compared to the prohibitive amount of effort it would require on your part to do it yourself, it’s a small price to pay. Some people call it the “offloading of peak demand”.
Just make sure you give them very clear instructions, make it easy for them to submit the information, and employ some form of validation system, and you’re good to go.
Open Innovation
Open innovation is the super sleek, corporate version of crowdfunding. It's where you can pull in expertise in various relevant fields to work together to create, innovate, ideate, and do all those other entrepreneurial verbs when you’re a bit stuck for ideas. It allows experts from different fields, like marketers, designers, writers, and even those people with the money, to collaborate where they otherwise wouldn’t have ever crossed paths, much less worked on breakthroughs together.
This can be done either internally within an organization, or opened out wide to the crowd community through a dedicated platform, such as HeroX. This means that the possibility for the most suitable talents being assigned or involved in the most suitable projects is maximized, thereby aiding effective evolution and progress. Which is a good thing.
The current state of affairs
Crowdsourcing, as with most good ideas, is starting to really catch on. With levels of trust being inflated by the success stories so far, more and more businesses, innovators, artists, charities and enterprise level companies are looking to crowdsourcing for talent, labor and funding.
Kickstarter, one of the biggest crowdsourcing platforms internationally, has brokered investment pledges exceeding $1 billion since it was founded five years ago.
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, being a way of getting collective human intelligence to complete tasks that cannot be performed by computers, is now providing income to workers in more economically challenging parts of the globe, whilst also being used for more social issues, such as widening the net in missing person searches.
In the B2B space, blur Group’s Global Services Exchange has now shown through over 5,000 successful projects that services can be sourced, managed, delivered and paid for, all through an online collaborative environment, if it has the right tools and checks in place.
The future for Crowdsourcing
Thankfully, we can see the usage of crowdsourcing for labor, funding, and especially services is only going to expand, as the concept continues to demonstrate its benefits and the level of awareness and trust increases.
As well as the entrepreneurs, more and more larger companies are using crowdsourcing. Brands like GE, Wal-Mart, IBM, and Intel are starting to embrace this future of crowd collaboration, where collective intelligence is no longer an oxymoron, but is a permanent and natural part of business.
With the right platforms, and systems to support it, the power of crowdsourcing is almost limitless. Look at Wikipedia, or even WikiLeaks. Despite the initial potential for both to descend into trolling chaos, we see an astounding success. In spite of its flaws, Wikipedia is now the most comprehensive amalgamation of human knowledge ever to exist in the world.
Crowdsourcing platforms are going to become increasingly sophisticated, and this will no doubt bring in the big boys, with decision makers in enterprise companies increasingly interested in the choice, intelligence, value, efficiencies and talent it can provide.
It’s all based around the symbiosis of humans and technology. And with HeroX sitting happily at the forefront of this wave of ‘innovation in interaction’, we’re looking to the sky with excited eyes.
