What Is Crowdsourcing?
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To start a new section, hold down the apple+shift keys and click to release this object and type the section title in the box below. What is crowdsourcing? “Not everyone in the crowd wants to make silly videos.” Jeff Howe 37 Right crowd, right problem Crowdsourced problems can be vast in scope, such As Jeff Howe said in his book, crowdsourcing is not a silver as SETIlive, a ‘citizen science’ project conducted by bullet for commerce.38 But the crowd does provide an Zooniverse in conjunction with the SETI Institute, which array of different approaches to help enterprises operate asked people all over the world to help with the search for more efficiently amid ongoing shifts in policy, science, extra-terrestrial intelligence.39 Or they can be exquisitely technology and skills, and the fluidity exhibited by the precise, such as seeking a new technology to remove wider economy. Businesses and other organisations are microbubbles from extracorporeal bloodstreams, a current finding that the crowd can help with a wide range of challenge competition managed by InnoCentive.40 challenges, from simple rote tasks, like image labelling, raising money or voting, through to far more complex problems, like brainstorming ideas, designing new products or even strategic planning. Figure 1. Choosing the right crowd for the right problem [double-page spread] Collaborate Crowd collaboration e.g. openIDEO, Quirky Do you want respondents to Compete Crowd competition collaborate or e.g. TopCoder, Kaggle, InnoCentive compete to find a solution? Unresolved Crowd labour (microtask) problem e.g. openIDEO, Quirky Do you have a defined task to be Processing completed or an Crowd labour (mesotask) unresloved problem? Non– Do the tasks require e.g. Lionbridge, Samasource Defined specialist processing skills or task Does the task complex problem require specialist or solving skills? Crowd labour (macrotask) Best non–specialist skills? e.g. 10EQS, Wikistrat, OnFrontiers response Specialist Do you want the Business best response or as Crowd funding need many responses as e.g. Kickstarter, CrowdCude possible? Funding Many responses High quality Crowd curation e.g. Wikioedia, LINUX Do you want high quality or any quality Do you need Information content? Any quality information, funding User–generated content or some other e.g. YouTube activity? Other Active activity Crowd voting Do you want active e.g. Crowdtivate, Threadless or passive participation? Passive Crowd processing e.g. ReCAPTCHA 4 To start a new section, hold down the apple+shift keys and click to release this object and type the section title in the box below. Some attempts have been made to classify the astonishing Enterprise crowd platforms diversity of use cases into a standardised set of general Open approaches to innovation have long been the norm crowdsourcing approaches. But even these typologies for some companies. P&G’s ‘Connect + Develop’, for are in disagreement: some are problem-based while instance, has enabled the company to establish more than others are task- or even platform-based.41, 42, 43 Crowds, 2,000 successful agreements with innovation partners too, can be widely varying in size and skills of their around the world.46 In 2001, IBM started an internal members. For example, the freelance workers registered innovation experiment that has now evolved into its with on-demand micro-tasking platform TaskRabbit ‘InnovationJam™’ platform, which it uses to work with help consumers with everyday tasks, including cleaning, clients, helping participants to ‘jam’ by contributing their moving or delivery work, whereas the business challenges expertise and opinions in various topic areas.47 run by the competition site Kaggle, “the home of data science”, typically require members of the crowd to have But more and more companies and public sector high-end computer science, physical science, statistical or organisations are now ditching traditional innovation mathematical skills.44, 45 processes and are, instead, working with enterprise-scale platforms to reach broader crowds capable of generating So how can you choose what crowdsourcing approach is answers and executing tasks faster and more cost right for you? In Figure 1, we illustrate the paths to various effectively than their own employees. crowdsourcing models. Figure 1. Choosing the right crowd for the right problem [double-page spread] Collaborate Crowd collaboration e.g. openIDEO, Quirky Do you want respondents to Compete Crowd competition collaborate or e.g. TopCoder, Kaggle, InnoCentive compete to find a solution? Unresolved Crowd labour (microtask) problem e.g. openIDEO, Quirky Do you have a defined task to be Processing completed or an Crowd labour (mesotask) unresloved problem? Non– Do the tasks require e.g. Lionbridge, Samasource Defined specialist processing skills or task Does the task complex problem require specialist or solving skills? Crowd labour (macrotask) Best non–specialist skills? e.g. 10EQS, Wikistrat, OnFrontiers response Specialist Do you want the Business best response or as Crowd funding need many responses as e.g. Kickstarter, CrowdCude possible? Funding Many responses High quality Crowd curation e.g. Wikioedia, LINUX Do you want high quality or any quality Do you need Information content? Any quality information, funding User–generated content or some other e.g. YouTube activity? Other Active activity Crowd voting Do you want active e.g. Crowdtivate, Threadless or passive participation? Passive Crowd processing e.g. ReCAPTCHA The three billion Enterprise crowdsourcing and the growing fragmentation of work 5 To start a new section, hold down the apple+shift keys and click to release this object and type the section title in the box below. Figure 2 illustrates different types of crowdsourcing platforms and their relative strengths and weaknesses. Figure 2. Enterprise crowd platforms Crowdsourcing model Good for Not so good for Examples • Tasks requiring the aggregate • Promoting individual • 99Designs Crowd collaboration ‘wisdom of the crowd’ capabilities or expertise • X Prize • Predetermined outcomes • Quirky • Generating outside ideas • Creating actionable solutions • Predetermined outcomes • TopCoder • Developing prototypes • Kaggle Crowd competition • Building a sense of community • InnoCentive • Generating outside ideas • Applause • ‘Gamification’ • Well-defined, everyday tasks • Poorly defined, unstructured or • TaskRabbit for individuals that require non-routine activities • Amazon’s Mechanical Turk general skills only • Tasks requiring subjective • Streetbees judgement • Gigwalk • On-site manual work, such as • Tasks requiring specialist or • Samasource store restocking, furniture higher-level cognitive skills Crowd labour assembly and cleaning (microtasks) • Large crowds • When you don’t want to hire permanent employees or contractors • Real-time market intelligence or data gathering • Well-defined tasks that require • Poorly defined, unstructured or • Lionbridge specialist processing skills non-routine activities • CrowdFlower Crowd labour • Routine but time-consuming • Tasks requiring subjective (mesotasks) activities, such as data entry judgement or specialist skills • When you don’t want to hire permanent employees or contractors • Poorly defined or unstructured • Routine tasks and activities • 10EQS tasks or problems, such as • Wikistrat strategy development, • OnFrontiers research or consulting • Applause Crowd labour • Tasks requiring subjective (macrotasks) judgement or specialist skills • When you don’t want to hire permanent employees or contractors • Fundraising • Financing ongoing operations • Kickstarter Crowdfunding • Start-ups • Loosely structured initiatives • CrowdCube • High transparency • High short-term expectations Crowd curation • Building and sharing • Solving defined problems • Wikipedia knowledge • TripAdvisor User-generated • Building large content • Ensuring the best possible • YouTube content repositories quality of content • iStockphoto Source: Deloitte 6 To start a new section, hold down the apple+shift keys and click to release this object and type the section title in the box below. Five billion workers by 2020 Figure 3. Number of internet users in the world The internet is the engine of the modern-day crowdsourcing platform. It provides both a broadcast 3500 mechanism for organisations to set or announce challenges and a network for connecting people and their 3000 diverse ideas, skill sets and knowledge. The number of internet users worldwide is growing exponentially, and 2500 has risen from just 414 million in 2000 to over 3.4 billion 2000 in 2016.48 At the current rate of growth, there will be approximately five billion internet users by 2020. 1500 The countries driving this growth include India, China, 1000 Brazil, Indonesia and the US, which collectively added over 136 million internet users last year (China, alone, 500 accounted for over 108 million).49 The change in India’s Number of internet users in the world (million) online population last year was over 30 per cent and, 0 despite their comparatively small populations, the other (est) 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 fastest risers, with 12-month growth rates in excess of 2016 Year (as of 1st July) 15 per cent, include Mali, Lesotho, Cameroon, Vanuatu, Source: Internet Live Stats Mauritania and Liberia.50 Mobile access to the internet is also growing, with 52.7 The implications for enterprises of this growth in per cent of the global mobile phone population accessing connectivity