During the spring and early summer of 2006, Jeff Howe, a contributing editor for WIRED magazine, was studying the tenets and behaviors that were driving individuals' participation in online communities. He noticed that across many fields including research, content creation, brainstorming and problem solving, out-tasking (or micro-tasking), that individuals, in large numbers were forming significant online communities.
These communities of like-minded individuals were willing to give their time for small or no monitory reward to respond to other member requests for help. He described the activity as being like "an open-call outsourcing request to a crowd" - in June 2006 he published his article, The Rise of Crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing, a model for online production and problem solving, has been forming for many years, However, when Jeff coined the phrase crowdsourcing, the name stuck and since has been adopted as the favored term for many forms of online open innovation, mass collaboration and production based models.
Crowdsourcing is a model that is relevant to small, medium and large enterprises and it's making its mark within businesses in different ways depending on the size of the entity.
Clearly for the home-office entrepreneur and the small business, the tactical opportunities for the deployment of crowdsourcing are immense. You can post your needs from anywhere (however small), identify qualified resources from around the globe, assign work and pay upon delivery.
For the medium size business, as well as a tactical deployment of crowdsourcing, you can extend crowdsourcing's reach into other areas. While medium size businesses are often too small to leverage outsourcing and off-shoring models in any meaningful way, at a business process or function level, out-tasking through crowdsourcing (labor-on-demand) platforms is viable.
For large enterprises crowdsourcing presents a different set of issues. The opportunities for embracing crowdsourcing that avail themselves to large enterprises are far more profound in their potential to be disruptive and transformational. For enterprises crowdsourcing can largely be adopted for product and service innovation, to create meaningful engagement with a broader group of constituents and (selectively) to out-task work.
A more recent incarnation of the crowdsourcing model has developed to connect individuals or small groups with financial resources through a model called crowdfunding. Most typically used to pledge financial donations to support a favorite cause, sponsor an initiative or to provide a financial leg-up to somebody with a great idea. In return, the donator may simply share in the reward of knowing they helped someone.
These communities of like-minded individuals were willing to give their time for small or no monitory reward to respond to other member requests for help. He described the activity as being like "an open-call outsourcing request to a crowd" - in June 2006 he published his article, The Rise of Crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing, a model for online production and problem solving, has been forming for many years, However, when Jeff coined the phrase crowdsourcing, the name stuck and since has been adopted as the favored term for many forms of online open innovation, mass collaboration and production based models.
Crowdsourcing is a model that is relevant to small, medium and large enterprises and it's making its mark within businesses in different ways depending on the size of the entity.
Clearly for the home-office entrepreneur and the small business, the tactical opportunities for the deployment of crowdsourcing are immense. You can post your needs from anywhere (however small), identify qualified resources from around the globe, assign work and pay upon delivery.
For the medium size business, as well as a tactical deployment of crowdsourcing, you can extend crowdsourcing's reach into other areas. While medium size businesses are often too small to leverage outsourcing and off-shoring models in any meaningful way, at a business process or function level, out-tasking through crowdsourcing (labor-on-demand) platforms is viable.
For large enterprises crowdsourcing presents a different set of issues. The opportunities for embracing crowdsourcing that avail themselves to large enterprises are far more profound in their potential to be disruptive and transformational. For enterprises crowdsourcing can largely be adopted for product and service innovation, to create meaningful engagement with a broader group of constituents and (selectively) to out-task work.
A more recent incarnation of the crowdsourcing model has developed to connect individuals or small groups with financial resources through a model called crowdfunding. Most typically used to pledge financial donations to support a favorite cause, sponsor an initiative or to provide a financial leg-up to somebody with a great idea. In return, the donator may simply share in the reward of knowing they helped someone.
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