Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing – At a Glace

• Definition of Crowdsourcing: Crowdsourcing refers to outsourcing tasks to a large, often anonymous online community to speed up processes, reduce costs, and benefit from collective intelligence.

• Cost-efficient solution: By working with the crowd on a project basis, companies can save significant costs since individual services do not need to be commissioned.

• Speed and scalability: Many tasks can be processed simultaneously by crowdworkers, significantly accelerating project execution and allowing for flexible scaling.

• Creativity through diversity: The heterogeneous makeup of the crowd leads to creative and unconventional solutions – particularly valuable for product ideas, marketing, and problem-solving.

• Impactful examples: Successful crowdsourcing examples like Wikipedia, LEGO Ideas, and the navigation app Waze illustrate how involving the crowd in development leads to practical outcomes and creates real value.

What is Crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is the practice of outsourcing tasks or problem-solving to a large group of people, usually via the internet. It allows organizations to access collective skills, new ideas, or resources from a diverse and often anonymous online community.

Crowdsourcing is more than just a trend, is a powerful method that allows organizations to involve large groups of people in solving problems, generating ideas, or completing specific tasks. By engaging the crowd, often through online platforms, companies can access a wide range of skills, experiences, and perspectives and can achieve a significant shift in the generation of ideas.

This diversity often leads to innovative and creative solutions that might not emerge from internal teams alone. It is particularly effective in fields such as design, product development, market research, and data processing. Crowdsourcing also enables scalability, as many tasks can be handled simultaneously by a distributed group. In addition, it can significantly reduce costs, since contributions are often voluntary or rewarded based on results.

What does Crowdsourcing mean?

The term crowdsourcing is a combination of the words “crowd” and “outsourcing.”

“Crowd” refers to a large group of people, often from diverse backgrounds, who can contribute ideas, skills, or time. “Sourcing” means obtaining something – such as labor, ideas, or content – from a particular source.

So, crowdsourcing means obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.

Origin of the Term Crowdsourcing

The term Crowdsourcing was first coined by American author Jeff Howe. To illustrate the term, Howe provided several practical examples:

• He described how a project manager at the National Health Museum in Washington was able to carry out various projects quickly and inexpensively through a photo-sharing platform.

• The photos were taken by amateur photographers and made available for download for a small fee.

Howe also cited examples such as an online video platform with reusable content, and a portal offering specific human services that computers couldn’t yet perform.

Today, there are countless examples of crowdsourcing, and the method has become established in many companies. Delegating tasks and collaborating with crowdworkers is essential in various fields for cutting costs effectively.

How does Crowdsourcing work?

Crowdsourcing works by tapping into the collective knowledge, skills, and resources of a large group of people to complete tasks or solve problems. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how a crowdsourcing project typically works:

1. Define the Task or Challenge: The first step is for an organization to clearly define the problem or task that needs to be addressed. This could be anything from product design to data analysis or even generating creative content. The goal is to articulate a clear and specific request that the crowd can respond to.

2. Choose the Right Platform: Organizations select a platform where they can access the right crowd. This might be a specialized crowdsourcing website, a social media platform, or even their own website. Platforms can range from open communities (like Wikipedia) to more structured services (Kickstarter is the most famous crowdsourcing company with crowdsourcing applications).

3. Invite Participation: Once the task is set and the platform is chosen, the organization invites participants to contribute. The crowd may consist of experts, everyday users, or even just anyone willing to participate. Invitations can be through advertisements, emails, or open calls for contribution.

4. Engage and Collaborate: Participants start working on the task, either individually or collaboratively, depending on the nature of the project. For example, a company might ask the crowd to submit design ideas, provide feedback, gather data, or analyze large datasets. Communication and collaboration tools may be used to facilitate this process.

5. Evaluate Submissions: As the crowd submits their work, the organization or community evaluates these contributions based on pre-established criteria. This may include quality, feasibility, or relevance to the task. In some cases, peer review or voting mechanisms are used, where the crowd itself helps to judge the value of each submission.

6. Select the Best Contributions: The best ideas, solutions, or work are selected for implementation. This could mean a winning product design is chosen, a new solution to a problem is implemented, or a valuable piece of content is published. Depending on the task, contributors may be compensated financially, with recognition, or with other incentives.

7. Implement the Results: After the best ideas or solutions are chosen, they are implemented in the business or project. For instance, a winning design might be produced, or a new marketing idea could be rolled out. The outcome benefits from the diverse perspectives and collective intelligence of the crowd.

8. Provide Feedback and Acknowledge the Crowd: Successful crowdsourcing processes often involve giving feedback to participants and acknowledging their contributions. This can help build a relationship with the crowd, encourage future participation, and increase loyalty or engagement.

In essence, crowdsourcing utilizes the power of large groups to achieve goals more quickly, cost-effectively, and innovatively than traditional methods. It allows organizations to access a wide array of talents and ideas through methods like creative crowdsourcing and to discover powerful crowdsourcing solutions that drive real-world results.

Crowdsourcing vs. Outsourcing: What’s the Difference?

Crowdsourcing involves delegating tasks or gathering input from a large, often anonymous group of people, typically via the internet. It relies on the group intelligence, creativity, or skills of a diverse crowd, often without long-term contracts or defined relationships. Participants in crowdsourcing can be volunteers, customers, or individuals with specific expertise, and they contribute to various aspects like idea generation, problem-solving, or content creation. Crowdsourcing is typically used to speed up processes, reduce costs, and harness innovative ideas from a broader range of perspectives.

Outsourcing, on the other hand, refers to the practice of contracting specific tasks or services to external vendors or companies. Unlike crowdsourcing, outsourcing involves formal agreements with specialized organizations or professionals to complete particular functions. The external service provider is often a dedicated team or individual, and the relationship is usually long-term, with defined terms and expectations. Outsourcing is primarily used for tasks that require specialized skills or resources that the hiring company may not have in-house, such as IT services, manufacturing, or customer support.

What are the 4 main Types of Crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing takes many forms depending on the goal. Whether it’s gathering ideas, solving problems, validating concepts, or raising funds, each type uses the power of the crowd in a different way.

Here are the four main types at a glance:

• Crowdcreation: The crowd generates creative content such as designs, articles, or videos. Common on platforms with design contests or user-generated content.

• Crowdvoting: People vote on ideas, products, or proposals. Helps identify popular concepts or guide decisions based on public preference.

• Crowdsolving: The collective knowledge of the crowd is used to tackle complex problems, especially in science, tech, or data analysis.

• Crowdfunding: A large number of individuals contribute small amounts of money to support a project. Popular for startups, creative work, and social causes.

The Benefits of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing offers significant cost savings by allowing organizations (especially nonprofit organizations) to tap into a large pool of contributors or community members to tackle complex problems, often at a lower cost than traditional methods.

It enables faster problem-solving and innovation, as tasks can be completed simultaneously by many participants with diverse skills. Additionally, crowdsourcing fosters creativity and access to specialized knowledge, allowing companies to discover unique solutions and fresh perspectives.

Risks and Challenges of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing can lead to inconsistent quality, as contributions from a large, diverse group may vary in expertise and reliability. There is also the risk of intellectual property theft or misuse, as ideas and solutions are shared publicly without adequate protection. Additionally, managing a large crowd can be challenging, requiring clear communication, effective moderation, and incentives to ensure participants remain engaged and focused on the task at hand.

Popular Examples of crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing has been widely adopted across various industries, leading to successful and innovative outcomes. Platforms that harness the power of the crowd have transformed everything from knowledge sharing to product development and problem-solving. These examples demonstrate how crowdsourcing can tap into collaborative intelligence to drive progress and creativity.

Wikipedia: A collaborative online encyclopedia where users contribute, edit, and verify articles, relying on the wisdom of the crowd to maintain high-quality content.

LEGO Ideas: A platform where fans submit their own design ideas for new LEGO sets, with the chance for selected designs to be turned into commercial products.

Waze: A navigation app that uses real-time input from drivers to provide traffic updates, route recommendations, and road hazard alerts.

Kickstarter: A crowdfunding platform that allows individuals to fund creative projects, such as films, games, and gadgets, through contributions from the crowd.

InnoCentive: A crowdsourcing platform for solving scientific, business, and technical challenges, where companies post problems and offer rewards for solutions from global problem solvers.

Popular Examples of crowdsourcing

Yes, Netflix leverages crowdsourcing in several aspects of its operations, most notably in gathering user feedback. By allowing users to rate movies and TV shows, Netflix gathers valuable data that helps improve its recommendation algorithms. These ratings and reviews from millions of subscribers help the platform tailor content suggestions and enhance the viewing experience for each individual user.

Additionally, Netflix has used crowdsourcing for more technical purposes, such as the famous “Netflix Prize” competition. The prize offered a substantial reward to any team that could improve the company’s recommendation system by 10%. This initiative attracted global participation from data scientists, who worked collaboratively to refine the algorithm and contributed to Netflix’s ongoing efforts to personalize content for its users.

Is Wikipedia an Examples of Crowdsourcing?

Yes, Wikipedia is one of the most well-known examples of crowdsourcing. It operates by allowing anyone with internet access to contribute, edit, and update articles on a vast range of topics. This collaborative model relies on the collective knowledge and efforts of millions of users worldwide to ensure the content remains current, accurate, and comprehensive.

The crowdsourcing model of Wikipedia is powered by the “wisdom of the crowd”, where volunteers take responsibility for creating and refining content. While experts and enthusiasts contribute to specialized articles, the community also self-regulates, with editors reviewing and correcting each other’s work. This open and participatory approach has made Wikipedia one of the largest and most widely used online knowledge resources in the world.

Sources:

• Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung. ARBEITSWEISE – Strategische Vorausschau. BMZ, Berlin.
  https://www.bmz.de/de/ministerium/arbeitsweise/strategische-vorausschau-52858

• Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz. ForeSight – Plattform für kontextsensitive, intelligente und vorausschauende Smart Living Services. BMWK, Referat Soziale Medien/Online-Kommunikation, Berlin.
  https://www.digitale-technologien.de/DT/Redaktion/DE/Standardartikel/KuenstlicheIntelligenzProjekte/KuenstlicheIntelligenz_ErsterFoerderaufruf/ki-projekt_foresight.html

• Foresight-Plattform. Forschungsvereinigung Elektrotechnik beim ZVEI e.V. c/o ZVEI, Frankfurt am Main.
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