• Three important areas emerged
  • People
  • Processes
  • Technology
• Crowdsourcing has 3 role players
  • Client Organization
    • The organization wanting a problem solved
  • Platform Operator
    • A platform where the community and client organisation collaborate
  • Community
    • People that provide solutions to the client organisations problem
• The platform provides the foundation for crowdsouring. The platform operator facilitates the global communication (using technology) with the people (community members) in order to complete the process of crowdsourcing.
• The notion of opening up problems to a world outside the boundaries of an organisation on a global scale is still new and emerging
• As a  emerging concept, this is a radical shift away from traditional thinking, where it is assumed that the best talent and best ideas sit within the walls of an organization
• People play an integral part in crowdsourcing and the correct and justifiable incentive will have to be provided in order to build a community
• Organizations need to be careful of exploitation by not providing the appropriate incentives and think that community members will solve problems without being appropriately compensated
• There are two types of benefits for community members
  • Direct
    • Financial compensation
    • Public recognition
  • Indirect
    • Keep metrics to measure performance amongst community members
    • Break a project into smaller modules, which allows community members the opportunity to work on parts of a project that they want to
    • A platform to meet like-minded individuals
    • Networking

To read more about my findings an in depth case studies click here.

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The rapid development of new technologies has given rise to new forms of collaboration. Organisations are able to collaborate on a global scale with individuals around the world, in order to conduct R&D activities as a result of Web 2.0 tools and technologies. This study focuses on three areas relating to global collaboration; people, processes and technology.

The purpose of this study is to understand the motivational factors of people that partake in global collaboration, the change of process with regard to bringing to new products and services to the market and how technology has changed the way organisations collaborate to achieve this. The research was conducted in the form of case studies to analyse how products were brought to the market through the use of global collaboration. This was achieved by examining two organisations, On Point Technology and SunNight Solar, making use of global collaboration platforms, TopCoder and InnoCentive.

The findings reveal that motivational factors can be classified in two categories; direct and indirect. Both play apart and are significant. The process of opening up an organisation to collaborate on a global scale differs significantly from collaborating internally within an organisation, bringing greater benefits and new risks. It was also found that Web 2.0 software tools assist these organisations collaborate on a global scale.

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The Crowdsourcing Process

1. The process is started when a client organization recognizes that it has a problem that could be solved by the process of crowdsourcing.
2. The client organization approaches a platform operator who then distributes the problem via an open call to its community members.
3. The platform operators community then provides solutions to the problem
4. The solutions are then evaluated by the the client organization and the best solution (s) selected.
5. The winner(s) are then provided with a reward.
6. The final step would be the transfer of intellectual property if applicable.

An example demonstrating this crowdsourcing process was a challenge started by SunNight Solar (client organization) and InnoCentive (platform operator):

1. SunNight Solar required an affordable solar-powered device to prevent or limit the spread of malaria (problem).
2. InnoCentive, a platform operator with over 160,000 members distributed the problem via an open call to its community members
3. The InnoCentive community submitted 18 solutions to the problem
4. These solutions were evaluated and the winning solution was selected
5. The winner was awarded $40,000 for the solution
6. The IP was then transferred from the winning solver to SunNight Solar

To read more about the winning solution and how it works read more on the InnoCentive Blog.

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The main difference is that an exisiting platorm will have an established community. Opting to create your own platform will require investment in attracting and establishing a community. Examples of crowdsourcing platforms include:

• InnoCentive

A platform with a community of over 200,000 members. InnCentive posts a wide range of problems from organizations in  areas such as engineering, computer science, chemistry, life sciences and business

• TopCoder

A platform with a community of over 247, 000 members. TopCoder posts computer programming problems from organizations in the form of competitions. The community are then asked to design, develop and test the software developed in the competitions. More information can be found here.

• Amazon Mechanical Turk

• A platform with a community of over 100, 000 members. Allows anybody to post tasks that need to be completed like writing product descriptions or finding broken links on a website.

Deciding on whether to create your own platform or use an existing platform depends on the circumstance. Although creating your own platform will require advertising in attracting people to be apart of the community it also means you will have exclusive use of the community. Pepsi did this with a campaign that allowed people to design the look of a Pepsi can. The winners received a $10,000 prize with their design been featured on Pepsi cans. This was also seen as a marketing campaign by Pepsi.

Opting to make use of existing platform means that you have an established community so the chances of reaching a wide audience are likely. These platforms have experience in running successful crowdsourcing projects so there is no experimenting on trying to make the project succeed.

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Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business

We-Think

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation (Theory in Practice)

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Facebook have now launched a system that rewards translators who will receive special icons when they reach certain milestones in the Translation application in order to highlight recognition. The awards are grouped in three categories:

• Voting Participation
• Words Published
• Translations Published

The are also various levels for the categories which are based on frequency and accuracy with regard to translating words and voting for the best translation.

A common mistake that companies make when opting for a crowdsourcing model to complete a project is that they forget to provide a rewards system. In a previous blog post “People Participation in Crowdsourcing Platforms” I highlighted direct and indirect benefits of crowdsourcing for the community that are essential to the model’s success. Facebook have provided a key indirect benefit which is recognition amongst peers. Facebook’s success with this crowdsourcing project will continue to evolve and with its ever expanding userbase which has now exceeded 350 million users. Could Facebook be offering rewards via financial compensation next?

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Last year I blogged about the Charter for Compassion, the TED prize wish of Karen Armstrong. The aim of the Charter for Compassion was to build a peaceful and congruent world by bringing together the voices of people from all religions and highlight that all faiths share the principle of compassion. An open call was made for people from different faiths to contribute to the charter.

This open call and collaborative effort drew upon  thousands of people from over 100 countries in a six week period. Over 150 000 visitors commented on the submissions. The Council of Conscience then sorted through the contributions in order to complete the charter. The charter has been released and can viewed on the Charter for Compassion website.

The website also provides various resources to learn about other faiths and spread the word about the charter. There are various talks on compassion that can be viewed and there are various ways to participate online and offline. Now that the charter has been completed a key element is to spread the word about the charter, so participate by finding different ways to do this on the Charter for Compassion website. A video about the Charter can be viewed below.

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Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing as defined by Jeff Howe is

“the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call”.

If a company needs a product designed they would define the requirements and have an open call for solutions. The best solution is selected with the winner usually receiving a reward, which is often in the form of financial compensation.

It is important to note that for a particular crowdsourcing project multiple submissions are received and the best one chosen with the rest being tossed aside. Are those that submit solutions that are being tossed aside being exploited? They get nothing in return. For the company partaking in a crowdsourcing initiative they get the to select the best and only pay for what they want or deem reputable. A key factor for these platforms to succeed is to continually grow their community base and encourage those that are not successful to try again in other crowdsourcing projects. One of these platforms, TopCoder, has implemented a model that has benefits for both those that win and those that do not.

Developing software often requires hiring software developers to develop software in order to achieve business goals. Software projects are infamous for late delivery and high costs. A company rectifying this impression on the software industry is TopCoder.

TopCoder is a software development house for outsourced projects. What separates TopCoder from its competitors is that the work is crowdsourced to a community of over 180 000 members from over 200 countries in a competition format.

Once a client approaches TopCoder a formal software methodology is used. TopCoder together with the client gathers the requirements. The project is then broken up into modules. TopCoder then evaluates if these modules exist in their module catalogue from previous competitions. If so, there is no need to develop the software again. The community of software developers are then requested to design and develop each module in a competition format. Each module has a set time period that it has to be completed within and the best solution wins a financial prize. The community then assembles the modules into the final project. There are also bug races during the testing phase that is crowdsourced to the community.

The software components developed by the community (in the component catalogue) are licensed with members who developed them earning royalties from the sales. Developers are given feedback from a review board for every submission. TopCoder provides this in the form of detailed ratings and performance metrics are kept to track a developers standing within the community and includes skill ratings and history of submissions. TopCoder also acts as a recruitment centre where companies can find the best software developers from around the world. This week Facebook announced that they were becoming a TopCoder sponsor. The metrics provided by TopCoder acts as a performance measure as to where strengths and weaknesses of the developers are.

It is key for these companies who provide crowdsourcing platforms to continually grow its community base. The challenge is keeping those who try and do not succeed satisfied so that they come back. The benefits to people who partake in TopCoder projects can be classified in two categories; Direct and Indirect.

Direct benefits include:

• Financial compensation for winners
• Financial compensation for members who do not win but do place highly

Indirect benefits include:

• Members get to see how winners solved a problem and therefore pick up new techniques
• Components allow community members to work on parts of a project where they want to and where their areas of expertise can be utilised
• Feedback is given whereby developers are told where they need to improve
• Peer recognition is provided via developer ratings which are publicly available

Indirect benefits provide members with a view that their time spent on these projects is an investment that could yield future rewards. The TopCoder platform provides members with a chance to show their capabilities and provides a platform to self-market one. This provides an opportunity for companies to see whom they can employ. TopCoder provides feedback on the quality of their work and shows members that people are using their contribution, which spurs participants to pursue perfection.

In the case of TopCoder the company provides more than just benefits to those that win. They have managed to cater for the entire community. In order for these crowdsourcing platforms to succeed their community members will have to have a reason to continually comeback to partake in crowdsourcing initiatives. Financial compensation to a minority will not be enough and indirect benefits have to be provided.

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• Crowdsourcing – Jeff Howe – Jeff Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” and published a book about the topic. The blog covers his insights about crowdsourcing
• Crowdsourcing Examples Wiki – A wiki started by Anjali Ramachandran with over 135 companies listed making use of crowdsourcing
• Business Exchange – A website that acts as a aggregator for a wide array of topics including crowdsourcing
• Crowdsourcing Directory - The CrowdsourcingDirectory keeps readers aware of news from the world of crowdsourcing
• Open Innovation -The aim of Open Innovators is to bring new insights about a variety of topics including open innovation, crowdsourcing, and co-creation

For a list of crowdsourcing platforms click here for further information.

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