January 28, 2009 at 10:19 am · Filed under community
The greatest threath of Crowdsourcing is that every company is creating it’s own community. The fact they launch their own communities is kind of obvious given the promise of crowdsourcing: improved association with- and support from the members of your community.
But the problem is that this is stimulating highly differentiated communities, where people have to be member of too many different communities to find satisfaction. It also complicates the traceability of interesting cases members would like to solve.
It seems that using open crowdsourcing platforms will prevent this. With only a few platforms where innovators and organizations concentrate, it’s better for both parties! It’s easier for members to work on different subjects. At the same time it’s far cheaper for organizations (which makes it also within reach of small companies) while they don’t have to stimulate community growth by themselves AND the advantages of cross-pollination are much bigger!
So what do you think about this?? Should companies start their own or concentrate? And why?
January 24, 2009 at 6:20 pm · Filed under open innovation
With a tough recession ahead we all save money while there’s a greater need for competitive advantage! These contradicting preconditions represent the ultimate stage for open innovation.
Using open innovation (Henry Chesbrough, 2003), organizations combine internal & external sources of knowledge in their innovation process. They seek inspiration from outside an organization’s frame of reference: suppliers, users, specialists, hobbyists, etc. to notice out-of-the-box chances and solve problems from another point of view.
Leveraged by web2.0 open innovation has grown to an effective innovation method. In particular ‘crowdsourcing’ (Jeff Howe, 2006) uses the full potential of new ways to share knowledge. By the use of crowdsourcing a whole crowd is challenged with a particular assignment at once. The collaborative knowledge & creativity of this crowd is able to find innovative solutions and bring the assignment by itself to a higher level.
Involving crowds has many advantages, like thinking across sectors. Often a specific problem has already been solved in another sector. Crowdsourcing channelizes and widens the use of knowledge & creativity. Another great advantage is low costs. Knowledge holders are rewarded for the knowledge & creativity they share. But these costs are not even close to in-house knowledge –which you should recruit, maintain and provide with a profound infrastructure. As a result crowdsourcing means cheap labor, even for expertise which organizations can’t permit to possess their selves!
Crowdsourcing enables organizations to look further than regular solutions. Crowds take organizations down The Long Tail (Chris Anderson, 2006). The crowd offers countless creative solutions, mainly by the use of less obvious knowledge. Knowledge from –like it seemed to be– less relevant opinions (niches) which can force a breakthrough (hit) from new point of view.
Please share some thoughts about why you think organizations should (or not) use crowdsourcing during these tough times of recession!
