Thinking small will no longer cut it.
In today’s atmosphere of instant information and multiple mediums, the idea of a “well-rounded” professional has been completely redefined – individuals must be creators, editors, producers and consumers. Businesses can no longer afford to remain local and expansion ideas are revolutionizing the current market.
“Your business should be international from day one. You can’t limit yourself to the local market,” said Mohsen Akhavannia, a graduate student at Carleton’s Technology Innovation Management program.
This idea of global businesses has led to the creation of crowdsourcing. A term coined by Wired writer Jeff Howe, crowdsourcing is basically the latest form of outsourcing. But instead of going to a different company to resolve their issues, companies go to the public. And while the most common example of this is Wikipedia, more and more businesses are adapting this practice to deal with the expanding market.
“Collaborative initiatives such as Wikipedia started an era of revolutionary online services where anyone can contribute. From a marketer’s perspective, the power has shifted from companies to their customers. It means that now customers are those who produce and consume products, technologies, services and content,” said Sprott School of Business assistant professor Mika Westerlund.
One example of this is 360Cities, the web’s largest collection of geo-referenced panoramic photos – think Google Earth. The actual company is run by six individuals living in Prague, Czech Republic. Their photographs, on the other hand, run the scope of the entire world (and even a bit beyond). They have pictures from Niagara Falls all the way to the West Wall of Jerusalem. They even feature a panorama of the surface of Mars.
The photographs are taken by HD virtual reality photographers from around the world, who then upload their photographs to the website to create a comprehensive picture of the world we live in.
“Without crowdsourcing they’d have to go to each location. This way, they can run a global company with only six people,” Akhavannia said.
But crowdsourcing has been used for more than photo sharing. Threadless is a retail company based out of Chicago who encourages the public to submit designs for their t-shirts.
“Threadless was probably the company that started the popularity of the crowdsourcing model in early 2000s,” Westerlund said.
Crowdsourcing’s recent popularity has even led to the creation of “middlemen.” InnoCentive is an organization that connects companies who are interested in crowdsourcing solutions with the appropriate crowd.
It has even been adopted this past summer by Carleton’s Campus Card Office for their “Redesign the Campus Card” contest.
The contest had over 60 people submitting multiple designs and over 3,400 people voting for their favourite design. David Townsend, Carleton’s campus card co-ordinator, credits both the student and the office’s marketing for the success.
“We did a decent job raising awareness. We had a large number of people following us on Facebook and we used a variety of different mediums to get the word out,” he said.
And it seems the internet does play a big part in crowdsourcing.
“The Internet, social networking, helps people to communicate and share their ideas,” Akhavannia said.
But, according to Townsend, the contest did require a lot of work for the Campus Card Office.
“The biggest issue was the sheer number of designs, good designs. If we had gone outside or designed it internally we wouldn’t have had so many to chose from. Narrowing it down for 140 designs to the seven we posted took quite a bit of time. There was a lot more involvement on our part.”
And commitment is one of the most important requirements for successful crowdsourcing, Westerlund said.
“Crowdsourcing projects is a waste of time, effort and money if the company and its management are not committed to using those ideas.”
Akhavannia also added that crowdsourcing requires trusting the crowd with your ideas and concepts, which is not always easy to do.
But ultimately for the campus card office, the benefits outweighed the costs, Townsend said.
“Getting people involved and letting them have a say gave them a sense of ownership of the situation.”
As for outside of Carleton, Akhavannia said there are many reasons companies would want to participate in crowdsourcing.
“It allows for a variety of ideas and skills at the exact time you need them. You’re not limited to your own resources.”
Akhavannia also said it allows you to create a local market in a place where your business isn’t even established. If you get a crowd from China to work with you, he said, they feel a local connection to your company, even if they don’t have a physical one.
And it seems the one thing crowdsourcing isn’t missing is the one thing vital to its success: a willing audience.
There are usually three reasons why the public participate in crowdsourcing, said Akhavannia: money, reputation and passion. The first is self explanatory – some people treat crowdsourcing as a type of employment.
Most, however, treat it as a way of making a name for themselves.
“360Cities puts the names of the photographers on each photograph,” Akhavannia said “Threadless puts the designer’s name on the t-shirt tags.”
But some participants simply enjoy the work they do. They have a passion for the product or the process, Akhavannia said.
“Another motive is the possibility to do something creative not limited by any party,” added Westerlund.
The problem, according to Westerlund, is that as crowdsourcing becomes more popular, it will become more difficult to motivate the crowd.
“The crowd will be ‘over-crowdsourced,’ as more and more companies are trying to utilize the crowd for their specific needs.”
But regardless of motivation, Westerlund said the future of this trend is clear.
“The popularity of crowdsourcing will keep growing.”
