What is crowdsourcing and how it works?

What is crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining work, information, or feedback from a large group of people presenting their data through the Internet, social media, and smartphone apps. Individuals engaged in crowdsourcing sometimes work as paid freelancers, while others volunteer for small tasks. For example, traffic apps like Waze encourage drivers to report accidents and other road incidents in order to provide real-time, up-to-date information to app users.

Just go through this amazing video below for a detailed understanding of “crowdsourcing“

Crowdsourcing Key highlights

• Crowdsourcing is the collection of information, opinions, or actions from a group of people, usually via the Internet.
• Crowdsourcing work allows companies to save time and money by tapping people with different skills or ideas around the world.
• While crowdsourcing looks for information or work products, crowdfunding looks for funding to support individuals, charities, or startup companies.
• The advantages of crowdsourcing are cost savings, speed, and the ability to work with people who have skills that are not on the internal team.

How crowdsourcing works?

Crowdsourcing allows companies to hire individuals anywhere in the country or around the world; As a result, crowdsourcing allows businesses to acquire a wide range of skills and expertise without the usual overhead costs of in-house employees.

Crowdsourcing is becoming a popular way to raise capital for specific projects. As an alternative to traditional financing options, crowdsourcing affects the common interest of the group, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers and intermediaries required to raise capital.

So, crowdsourcing simply works by hiring individuals from around the globe as per the skills they have. 

Although the concept of crowdsourcing is very simple, finding great ideas and solutions is not as easy as asking customers and fans for their best ideas.

After all, no one wants to give away their valuable knowledge and skills for free. There must be a clear incentive, such as a financial incentive (cash prize or part of the final sale) or professional recognition.

To be effective, the crowdsourcing project must also:

A. Well-defined scope – Defendants need to know what is needed in terms of suggested ideas, best practices, or solutions.

B. Extensive background information – Access to technical data may be required before respondents submit

Clear priority format for submissions

You also need to decide whether you want to target a large group of people (e.g. via a large public social network such as Facebook or Twitter) or a specific group with well-developed skills and experience (e.g. target designers through a specific platform.99 designs).

A dedicated crowdsourcing platform will help shape this process and guide the interaction between the company or business seeking input and the people who provide it.

What are the benefits of crowdsourcing?

Everyone knows that two minds are better than one when it comes to problem-solving.

Better than two minds? 11,000 brains.

By turning a question into a broader pool of talent, companies can find excellent suggestions for a new product or service or a new solution to a challenging problem.

Not only does this help with problem-solving, but it also allows groups to connect with companies and organizations. Building this community of contributors can bring huge benefits in terms of marketing, brand visibility, and customer loyalty. Learn about brand engagement.

Crowdsourcing also offers several other benefits:

1. Low cost: Winning ideas should definitely be rewarded, but offering these rewards is usually much cheaper than formally hiring people to solve problems.

2. High speed: Using a large group of people can speed up the problem-solving process, especially when a large number of small tasks are completed in real-time.

3. Greater Diversity: Some companies (especially smaller companies) may not have much internal diversity. Through crowdsourcing ideas, they can benefit from others with different backgrounds, values, and life experiences.

Marketing and Media Coverage: Crowdsourcing is an excellent and cost-effective source for marketing and media coverage, as seen in its examples.

Despite all these benefits, you need to decide if crowdsourcing is right for your project.

Limitations of crowdsourcing

As crowdsourcing provides a number of benefits but it has its limitations too:

1. Results can be easily distorted based on the source of congestion

2. Lack of privacy or ownership of an idea

3. The ability to remember the best ideas, talents, or direction and is lost without a goal or purpose

Where Can Crowdsourcing Be Implemented?

Crowdsourcing touches on all social and business interactions. It is changing the way we work, hire, research, create and market. Governments are implementing crowdsourcing to empower citizens and give people a bigger voice.

In science and healthcare, crowdsourcing democratizes problem-solving and accelerates innovation. In addition to education, it has the potential to revolutionize systems such as crowdfunding that are currently challenging traditional banking and investment processes. It is a 21st-century ideology and can be applied in many fields and in many ways:

• Accelerate innovation
• Share ideas
• Rediscover the business model
• Made together
• Add customers or citizens
• Redesign the work pattern
• Save money
• Skill enhancement
• Rebuild the economic model

Crowdsourcing Example: How companies can solve this

As always, the best way to learn how to do anything is to look at what market leaders are doing. Crowdsourcing is no exception.

Fortunately, here are some great examples of companies that use crowdsourcing to get cutting-edge ideas from customers and fans:

Unilever: Launched in 2010, Unilever’s open innovation platform seeks to input people with technical issues, such as smart packaging and cooling systems. Now, the company receives thousands of helpful responses each year.

Powered by Sodexo: Brainet, the InnovHub community provides a way for employees and customers to share ideas, best practices, and more to collaborate on the digital platform we have built. As an output, we can access the latest innovative solutions.

DHL: DHL’s Innovation Centers provide a way for courier company customers to provide ideas for better systems and technology such as drone delivery technology and remote navigation tools.

These crowdsourcing examples show the different ways in which companies can find solutions to complex and challenging problems and the ingenuity of the communities working on these solutions.

Is Crowdsourcing the Right Step for You?

Not every project is suitable for crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing can be a long way off if you are dealing with a sensitive issue or a project that involves a lot of valuable intellectual property. Although these issues still benefit from collective intelligence, they may not be appropriate for the group to resort to.

While crowdsourcing is a powerful way to unlock innovation, it involves a lack of control – especially when engaging online communities.

Also, keep in mind that once you have crowded a question or problem, you may be stuck with a solution that is less than ideal. Consider the colorful examples of a concert that impressed the audience that sent Botti McBeatface or Justin Bieber to North Korea.

Final thoughts

Especially as the nature of the work shifts towards the online, virtual environment, crowdsourcing offers a number of benefits to companies that seek innovative ideas from a large number of individuals in the hope of improving their products or services. Is doing. In addition, crowdsourcing trials from real estate to philanthropy have begun to bring communities closer and closer to achieving a common goal.

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