Why crowdsourcing

It may seem like crowdsourcing mostly relies on amateurs, and that is partially true. There are many amateurs who participate in crowdsourcing challenges, but there are experts as well. This begs the question: what drives people to participate in challenges that result in someone else using their ideas? People long to contribute something that will make a difference in the world, and many support the causes and companies behind the contests they choose to participate in.

Most organizations have this concern. What if you put lots of time and effort into conducting a crowdsourcing challenge and then end up with nothing to show for it? Maximize your impact by choosing HeroX to host your crowdsourcing challenge. Be the first to know. The Top 5 Advantages of Crowdsourcing 1. Cost-effectiveness No matter how much they strive to contribute to the common good, every company is concerned about its bottom line. Hands-off approach CEOs and company managers may have lots of resources at their disposal, but time is typically not one of them.

Photo by Ann H from Pexels 3 Fresh perspective Unlike your employees, the crowd does not have a bias towards your company. New hires Most companies find it quite difficult to recruit creative and innovative employees to work for them.

Intellectual property rights This disadvantage has the potential to become disastrous if not managed properly.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels 4. Amateurs It may seem like crowdsourcing mostly relies on amateurs, and that is partially true. Potential for failure Most organizations have this concern. How to Poop In Outer Space. Embrace the Chaos: Designing for an Antifragile Future. Hear about new challenges first by signing up to our newsletter. HeroX is an amazing group of humans who believe in making the world a better place through innovation and crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing usually involves taking a large job and breaking it into many smaller jobs that a crowd of people can work on separately. While crowdsourcing seeks information or work product, crowdfunding seeks money to support individuals, charities, or startup companies.

People can contribute to crowdfunding requests with no expectation of repayment , or companies can offer shares of the business to contributors. For example, popular crowdfunding platforms include Indiegogo and Kickstarter, both online platforms in which individuals can contribute a small amount of money and collectively bring a new business idea or product to fruition.

Platforms like Kickstarter make money by charging a small platform fee, whereas some of the best crowdfunding platforms specialize in helping creatives Patreon , investing StartEngine , the real estate industry , nonprofits Mightycause , or even startups trying to raise capital SeedInvest Technology.

Especially as recent years have seen grassroots activism ramp up, communities have used platforms like GoFundMe to support families affected by police brutality or other violent attacks. If crowdfunding sounds like an intriguing option, read more on the best alternatives to Kickstarter for your cause. The advantages of crowdsourcing include cost savings, speed, and the ability to work with people who have skills that an in-house team may not have. If a task typically takes one employee a week to perform, a business can cut the turnaround time to a matter of hours by breaking the job up into many smaller parts and giving those segments to a crowd of workers.

Many types of jobs can be crowdsourced, including website creation and transcription. Companies that want to design new products often turn to the crowd for opinions. Rather than rely on small focus groups, companies can reach millions of consumers through social media, ensuring that the business obtains opinions from a variety of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Oftentimes, consumer-oriented companies also benefit from getting a better gauge of their audience and creating more engagement or loyalty. But that being said, crowdsourcing isn't a magic bullet for companies that hope to lighten their workload while pursuing the next shining star of an idea.

Many times, someone will have to sift through all the ideas being pitched, fundraising goals can fall short in all-or-nothing type funding platforms, and the right crowd can be difficult to find or engage. Companies that need some jobs done only on occasions, such as coding or graphic design, can crowdsource those tasks and avoid the expense of a full-time in-house employee.

While crowdsourcing often involves breaking up a big job, businesses sometimes use crowdsourcing to assess how multiple people perform at the same job. For instance, if a company wants a new logo, it can have dozens of graphic designers assemble samples for a small fee. The company can then pick a favorite and pay for a more complete logo package.

Uber, which pairs available drivers with people who need rides, is an example of crowdsourced transportation. Real estate crowdfunding allows everyday individuals the opportunity to invest in commercial real estate, purchasing just a portion of a piece of development. It's a relatively new way to invest in commercial real estate and relieves investors of the hassle of owning, financing, and managing properties.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk MTurk is a crowdsourcing marketplace that businesses can use to outsource parts of their jobs, everything from data validation to research to content moderation.

Anyone can sign up through their Amazon account to be a Mechanical Turk Worker. Netflix uses crowdsourcing to help improve its entertainment platform. Especially as the nature of work shifts more towards an online, virtual environment, crowdsourcing provides many benefits for companies that are seeking innovative ideas from a large group of individuals, hoping to better their products or services. In addition, crowdsourcing niches from real estate to philanthropy are beginning to proliferate and bring together communities to achieve a common goal.

Netflix Prize. Business Essentials. Career Advice. Investing Essentials. In fact, with crowdsourcing, the marketplace bears the cost of failure, not you. Crowdsourcing is highly complementary to existing ways of assigning and completing tasks and work and should be viewed as an important and valuable tool in your innovation toolbox. Crowdsourcing can provide a platform for bi-directional communication and collaboration with diverse individuals and groups, whether internal or external to your organization — employees, customers, partners and suppliers.

Much as cloud computing has consumerized technology, crowdsourcing has the same potential to consumerize innovation, and more broadly, how we collaborate to bring new ideas, products and services to market. Crowdsourcing service providers possess unique talent, expertise, methodologies and experience to help organizations rapidly achieve their goals, be it logo design, solving innovation challenges, or designing high profile custom prize competitions.

Most organizations have no way of even beginning to figure out how to reach thousands or even millions of diverse people from around the world. Crowdsourcing service providers already have captive communities that you can readily connect to and collaborate with in order to achieve your key objectives. Crowdsourcing can be seen as a catalyst for global innovation and is something businesses should keep an eye on going forward. Skip Article Header. Skip to: Start of Article. Crowdsourcing Enables Pay-for-Performance.

Alpheus Bingham is a co-founder and a member of the board of directors at InnoCentive. Originally posted by:.