Study note on crowdsourcing

Study note on crowdsourcing

References with extracted contents

Ford, R.C., B. Richard and M.P. Ciuchta. 2015. "Crowdsourcing:  A new  way of employing non-employees?" Business Horizons 58, Elsevier: 377-388.

"The term crowdsourcing, generally attributed to Jeff Howe (2006), is defined as taking a function that is traditionally performed inside an organization by employees and outsourcing it to a crowd of non-employees. For example, by presenting their problem to a talented worldwide community of potential contributors, organizations can seek innovative solutions that are not available from any single outsourced provider or existing internal employee group. This exponential increase in access to both expertise and a labor pool is enabled by the rise of the networked information economy (Benkler & Nissenbaum, 2006) and the interactive participation-based facets of Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005)";

"Crowdsourcing offers an important new way to overcome organizational limitations in either human resources or employee capabilities. Crowdsourcing allows access to large numbers of people to benefit from the wisdom of crowds (Surowiecki, 2005); that is, the collective knowledge of a number of people is greater than that of any one contributor or consultant. Thus, an organization needing help in accessing new knowledge to solve novel problems can find it in a crowd of knowledgeable people. This requires only a platform for knowledgeable people to discover an organization’s problem and a motivating process to engage them in solving it";

"Crowdsourcing applications can range from open-sourced collections of knowledge (e.g., Wikipedia, iStockphoto) to websites that access people for routine work (e.g., Elance, eVirtualServices) to locations where marketers can engage their customers in co-creating marketable ideas or products (e.g., Threadless, Netflix’s million dollar challenge) to sites that invite people to solve complex problems or offer innovative approaches to novel challenges (e.g., Brightidea.com, Academy of Ideas, InnoCentive). Currently, there are over 2,000 sites indexed on crowdsourcing.org";

Zhao, Y. and Q. Zhu. 2014. "Evaluation on crowdsourcing research: Current status and future direction" Inf Syst Front 16: 417-434.

"In essence, crowdsourcing is based on a simple, but powerful, concept: virtually everyone has a potential to plug in valuable information (Greengard 2011). Crowdsourcing seeks to mobilize competence and expertise, which are distributed among the crowd, and has different forms. While some crowdsourcing platforms have a much more competitive nature, such as “Idea Competition” and “Design Contest”, crowdsourcing is not limited to the style of contest. For example,Wikipedia as a classic form of crowdsourcing, according to Howe (Howe 2006), has a strong collaborative nature";

"A typical process of crowdsourcing works in the following way. An organization identifies tasks and releases them online to a crowd of outsiders who are interested in performing these tasks on the organization’s behalf, for a stipulated fee or any other incentives. Avast number of individuals then offer to undertake the tasks individually or in a collaborative way. Upon completion, the individuals involved submit their work to the crowdsourcing platform, and the organization then assesses the quality of the work ..... It is worth mentioning that some crowdsourcing projects provide a clear format for compensating valuable contributors; while in other cases, such as Wikipedia or Dell’s Ideastorm, contributors are not compensated";

".... crowdsourcing is not exclusive for business purposes though. Many non-profit organizations have adopted crowdsourcing as an effective model for problem-solving (Brabham 2008a, 2010; Brito 2008). In addition to having gained great attention and interest from the industry, crowdsourcing has also gained attention from the academic community. Scholars from different disciplines have examined various issues in this emerging research area and produced publications that focus on different topics and with different units of analysis";

Majchrzak, A. and A. Malhotra. 2013. "Towards an information systems perspective and research  agenda on crowdsourcing for innovation" Journal of Strategic Information Systems 22, Elseiver: 257-268.

"In order to continually innovate, firms are opening their boundaries to engage external expertise .... Instead of simply collaborating with a select few known external parties, firms are increasingly innovating using ‘‘crowdsourcing’’. Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a challenge faced by a firm and, instead of asking internal research and development departments to solve the challenge, the firm broadcasts an open call to individuals with relevant expertise outside the firm to become involved in solving the challenge (Howe, 2006). Sometimes participants in crowdsourcing are limited to specifically selected communities (e.g., Genius Crowds, and Innocentive); other times, the general public is invited";

"... Information systems play a huge role in making crowdsourcing possible by providing the network and software for sharing ideas (Andriole, 2010; Awazu et al., 2009; Bingham and Spradlin, 2012; Doan et al., 2011; Dodgson et al., 2006; Lindic et al., 2011, Trott and Hartmann, 2009; Williams, 2012). However, information systems (IS) scholarship has only minimally engaged with crowdsourcing or the broader phenomenon of open innovation (Diener and Piller, 2009; Ebner et al., 2009). Systematic research by IS scholars on the design of the software, user interface, and practices to facilitate the crowdsourcing process is scarce";

"We define innovation in a crowdsourcing context as the public generation of innovative solutions to a complex problem posed by the company sponsoring the challenge call. Innovative solutions are those that are novel and implementable for the sponsoring organization (Amabile, 1988). Innovative solutions may include new sources of revenue such as new product lines or new services, or changes to existing processes and practices (Dahlander and Gann, 2010). For example, Heineken’s 2012 crowdsourcing challenge yielded a new design for a beer bottle to create a new image for the customer experience of consuming beer. Similarly, General Electric’s Sustainability Challenge led to the acquisition of a company with a new business model for sustainability";

Djelassi, S. and I. Decoopman. 2013. "Customers' participation in product development through crowdsourcing: Issues and implications" Industrial Marketing Management 42, Elsevier: 683-692.

"Despite the growing implementation of crowdsourcing practices in many companies in different sectors (Lego, Nike, Ideastorm, etc.), it remains little understood. With the overall shift to more open innovation, crowdsourcing is growing in importance. Although it is a powerful resource for companies, it is nonetheless very complex and gives rise to many questions (Hopkins, 2011). Moreover, academic research on strategic management and media technologies has only recently begun to examine business models based on crowdsourcing. The studies in these disciplines recognize that crowdsourcing raises a number of strategic issues";

"To cope successfully with technological progress, competitive change and the evolution of consumer behavior, companies must continuously develop, adapt or reinvent their business models. In this context, opening up a business model to external ideas can capture greater value using key assets or resources, not only in the company's own business but also in relation to other partners such as customers. The recent literature onmanagement highlights the effect of open innovation on business models (Lettl, 2007). Outsourcing to crowds is in line with the body of work on open innovation and the open business model (Chesbrough, 2006b). As a form of user-driven innovation and co-creation, crowdsourcing is a way to access the intelligence distributed among a crowd";

"Compared with other forms of collaboration such as that with communities, strategic intent is essential in crowdsourcing (Burger-Helmchen & Pénin, 2011). Initiated by the company, crowdsourcing is basically situated within an entrepreneurial logic. This approach, specifically framed by the company, improves the clarity of the customer's perceived role. Each crowdsourcing operation formally specifies the scale and nature of customer participation in the company's process. This formal process helps to recruit customers who are motivated and have the necessary skills to participate";