Everything from the Crowd
Your company is deciding on giving your audience a new kind of product that would answer their common day-to-day dilemma. And with your company’s personal touch.
But you just can’t seem to find the right idea for the project. Your team seems so inadequate at times that you wish you have an access to a larger volume of ideas. Ideas that are out of the world, fresh, yet possible.
Recently, companies have been trying into different schemes to come up with new ideas and answers to problems that are encountered in their operations. They do this through a new and rising service from the Outsourcing industry.
Crowdsourcing is the practice of tapping a universe of ideas, directly from the unidentified crowd. The idea is to introduce new or more developed skill sets or a larger work force to achieve some specific goal. This process involves groups of people and can occur online or offline.
The rising service from the outsourcing industry, where tasks, commonly done by a single employee, is given to a large undefined crowd, through an open call for submissions. Ideas are submitted by the people, and the best idea is given with a financial compensation.
Simply putting it this way, a company lets the people answer problems or create new ideas on a certain project, and the company chooses the best from the bunch and awards the person behind the solution or idea.
Some of the earliest forms of crowdsourcing are:
The concept has become so popular among businesses of all sizes and types, including government and non-government sector and non-profit organizations. The benefits of crowdsourcing can include the following:
Problems can be explored at comparatively little cost and potentially very quickly
But, despite the advantages that crowdsourcing brings to an organization, not everyone produces quality ideas or answers; thus, companies who use crowdsourcing should have moderators to filter the results. Also, professional agency brokers emerged where the crowd is vetted in advance and the exchange between the crowd and the organization is facilitated.
The Outsourcing industry has provided yet another innovation to help companies further enhance their products/services, at the same time save on cost. But all forms of services also have some flaws; therefore, using these flaws to the business’ advantage is a challenge that should be embarked upon to avoid future incongruity.
But you just can’t seem to find the right idea for the project. Your team seems so inadequate at times that you wish you have an access to a larger volume of ideas. Ideas that are out of the world, fresh, yet possible.
Recently, companies have been trying into different schemes to come up with new ideas and answers to problems that are encountered in their operations. They do this through a new and rising service from the Outsourcing industry.
Crowdsourcing is the practice of tapping a universe of ideas, directly from the unidentified crowd. The idea is to introduce new or more developed skill sets or a larger work force to achieve some specific goal. This process involves groups of people and can occur online or offline.
The rising service from the outsourcing industry, where tasks, commonly done by a single employee, is given to a large undefined crowd, through an open call for submissions. Ideas are submitted by the people, and the best idea is given with a financial compensation.
Simply putting it this way, a company lets the people answer problems or create new ideas on a certain project, and the company chooses the best from the bunch and awards the person behind the solution or idea.
Some of the earliest forms of crowdsourcing are:
- The collection of words for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). In 1858, a group called the Philological Society contracted with over 800 volunteer readers to collect words from all available books and document their usages. Subsequently, the group solicited broader public input and received over six million submissions over the 70 years of the project.
- In 1936, Toyota held a contest seeking a new logo design. The winning design from over 26,000 entries remained the company's corporate logo until 1989.
- Wikipedia was launched as a collaboratively written and edited online encyclopedia in January 2001. Free registration enabled anyone to submit or edit an entry. The multilingual site now hosts several million entries in English alone.
- After the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010, an ad-hoc 911 service was created and established in response to a tweet sent out asking for help.
- An astronomy project called Galaxy Zoo solicited help in classifying more than a million galaxies. Within an hour of the website launch, volunteers were submitting 70,000 classifications per hour.
The concept has become so popular among businesses of all sizes and types, including government and non-government sector and non-profit organizations. The benefits of crowdsourcing can include the following:
Problems can be explored at comparatively little cost and potentially very quickly
- Payment is by results or none is required
- The organization can tap a much wider pool of talent
- Organizations can gain greater insight on their customers and what’s happening in their market places
But, despite the advantages that crowdsourcing brings to an organization, not everyone produces quality ideas or answers; thus, companies who use crowdsourcing should have moderators to filter the results. Also, professional agency brokers emerged where the crowd is vetted in advance and the exchange between the crowd and the organization is facilitated.
The Outsourcing industry has provided yet another innovation to help companies further enhance their products/services, at the same time save on cost. But all forms of services also have some flaws; therefore, using these flaws to the business’ advantage is a challenge that should be embarked upon to avoid future incongruity.
About the Author
Miche is a self-employed blogger and copywriter from Philippines who has a love on writing and always happy to share his passion on blogging.