Week
11: Co-Creation or Crowdsourcing: Moving Beyond Multiple Choice
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Required
and Recommended Readings
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This week we’ll talk about crowdsourcing and some models that work
best. We’ll end with a discussion of how crowdsourcing has improved so that
the final products are more viable.
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n Yannig Roth, (May 2012). “Crowdsourcing and Co-Creation are
Complementary,” Innovation Excellence. http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/05/31/crowdsourcing-and-co-creation-are-complementary/
n Marjanovic, S., Fry, C., & Chataway, J. (2012). Crowdsourcing based
business models: In search of evidence for innovation 2.0. Science
& Public Policy (SPP), 39(3), 318-332.
doi:10.1093/scipol/scs009
n Zwass, V. (2010). Co-Creation: Toward a Taxonomy and an Integrated
Research Perspective. International Journal Of Electronic Commerce, 15(1),
11-48. doi:10.2753/JEC1086-4415150101
n Tom Foremski, “Cultivating a Smarter Crowd: Norwest’s Startups Move
Byond Crowdsourcing (July 2013). http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/07/cultivating_a_smarter.php
n Megan Mayhew Bergman, “A Literary Experiment: Crowdsourcing the Fate of
a Girl,” (Sept. 2013). Beyond the Margins. http://beyondthemargins.com/2013/09/a-literary-experiment-crowdsourcing-the-fate-of-a-girl/
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Monday 17 March 2014
Week 11: Co-Creation & Crowdsourcing
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In COMM 506 we also looked at peer production or collective intelligence networks. I wrote a blog post on three different types of crowd sourcing here: http://nicolebasaraba.com/make-difference-sourcing-crowd/
ReplyDeleteWhat I've learned is that crowd sourcing is very powerful, that it does have a structure even if it's a loose one, and if given some boundaries to work within, it can "move mountains" which would not be possible if using more traditional forms of work collaboration. The Internet makes these massive crowd sourcing projects possible because it gives us the tools and the ability to connect in vast numbers.
What I find most interesting about crowdsourcing is it’s participatory nature. While looking at the examples provided on this week’s readings such as Kick Starter, InnoCentive, Modcloth, Motif, Quirky, etc., I kept thinking that despite the rewards or business focus of many of the sites, it seems to me that at the heart of it, is people’s genuine desire to participate, to join in.
ReplyDeleteIn his book “Here comes Everybody” (2008) Shirky talks about how the web has removed the roles of the publishing gatekeepers. Looking at these crowdsourcing sites and crowdfunding opportunities helped me understand that Shirky’s observation is applicable to many industries not only publishing. The web has clearly democratized many aspects of our society, from helping creative ideas take form to collectively helping people find each other under strenuous circumstances such as the aftermath of earthquakes.
Marjanovic, Fry & Chataway (2102) article explains the difference between open innovation, crowdsourcing and outsourcing and the different levels of non-hierarchical participation. Crowdsourcing is a type of open innovation that “refers to an effort to leverage the expertise of a global pool of individuals and organisations, often across disciplines and sectors, generally enabled by the web, to as quickly and cost-effectively as possible develop and implement creative solutions to innovation challenges” (p. 320). According to them the term was coined by Jeff Howe in a Wired magazine article in 2006, which doesn’t seem that long considering how much it has become part of the way we work now days.
I love the idea of crowdsourcing, whereby many people come together to work on a project. Kickstarter is a fantastic example of crowdsourcing (crowdfunding, more specifically) and it’s fantastic to think of the possibilities that Kickstarter creates. In the Kickstarter video embedded in this blog post, the power of small pledges ($25 on average) to make something big happen is a very powerful message. I found it very insightful when the co-founder of Kickstarter, Perry Chen, stated that users “create a mini-economy around what they want to do”. The project champion provides value to their backers through goods and services, so everyone wins.
ReplyDeleteI feel that crowdsourcing is ineffective in many graphic design scenarios. For example, when companies ask users to upload logo designs (almost like a design contest) and the selected logo will receive cash. This can be seen as exploiting designers and receiving a lot of free work for the promise of something small (or nothing at all) in exchange. The difference with this scenario from Kickstarter’s model is that not everyone wins. There is not inherent value for everyone involved in the crowdsourcing activity (except for a designer who needs to add items to their design portfolio anyway, for example). A good example of this type of site is: http://99designs.ca/ that’s on the borderline of ethical business behaviour. So, I think crowdsourcing can work well to develop fresh ideas and new insights from different people, but it must be executed ethically to provide value for everyone involved.
In this week’s readings the idea of crowdsourcing really resonated with me. Roth states in his blog post that “while you can access a large and diverse pool of people by crowdsourcing a problem (reach), you can’t really engage in interaction with each of these people (richness). Hence, if you’re looking for deep engagement, you might be better off using co-creation’ (Roth, 2012). And I guess my understanding is that crowdsourcing is a great way for organizations to receive quick (free) information or needed (free/cheap) participation from a large group of people. It’s amazing that people are willing to give freely of their time and knowledge to participate in crowdsourcing activities.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of how crowdsourcing has improved so that the final products are more viable, Foremski makes an interesting point in his article that crowdsourcing is now about sifting through the weeds and focusing on the ‘smart members’. The startups he writes about all use crowdsourcing on a regular basis by creating communities of smart members whose opinion on designs effect what these companies ultimately take to market – these smart communities have become an important resource for their businesses. Marjanovic also seems to think that crowdsourcing has become an important vehicle because “crowdsourcing is not only about finding a specific solution to a specific problem, but also potentially allows for 're-using', adapting and applying existing solutions to new problems” (Marjanovic, p.321, 2012)
I really find it interesting that crowdsourcing has also morphed into crowdfunding – with organizations like Kickstarter – where anyone’s creative project can be funded by the world at large over the Internet. Crowdfunding allows for the person who is donating to receiving value for participating (as the video stated, donors may be publically recognized as a patron of the project, or receive other ‘gifts’ from the project owner , plus sites like Kickstarter gives the artists/project owner a new venue to attract a new audience. My question is – are organizations like Kiva (http://www.kiva.org/) who bring small business owners around the world in contact with potential lenders (for microloans) considered a type of crowdsourcing/crowdfunding organization?
How has crowd sourcing improved so the final product is more viable?
ReplyDeleteThis is a huge topic and the readings are interesting. We can see that crowd sourcing is dynamic, diverse, and a rapidly evolving field where the crowd sourcing platform is selected or designed according to the project goals and requirements. Crowd sourcing can be enormously successful; and, exists largely because of Web 2.0 and the inter-connectivity of social media platforms that creates unique communities. .
From the Crowd sourcing landscape infographic in the lecture, clearly it’s important to get the crowd sourcing platform and process aligned to achieve the project goals. Crowd sourcing can be broadly differentiated into crowd sourcing for ideas, specific commercial project development or business services; crowd funding for financing of projects; and co-creation for longer term in-depth projects, to name a few.
Crowd funding through www.kickstarter.com is fascinating; it’s the old, proven concept of patronage/subscribers supporting an artist reaching out to his/her community only now via the internet and social media. It creates community of good will based on helping materialize a creative idea.
www.Kiva.org , created by 2 Stanford business students in 2005, is an immensely successful charity/3rd world development crowd funding platform for micro loans that banks will not fund. Now in over 70 countries around the world, it seeks to change people’s lives with a $25 loan, and promote international understanding. Amazing!
We use www.elance.com for crowd sourcing some business services. We can both post a project for suppliers to bid on, or search profiles of suppliers and ask them to quote on our project. Suppliers can be anywhere in the world.
My experience is that co-creation for small and medium business with consumers could be powerful. I relate to Yannig Roth (May 2012) comments regarding management team issues with co-creation. It can take some work to get the corporate management team on side; also, confidentiality sign-offs by participants are usually required. Another aspect is that the legal team might advise against this due to unknown potential exposure of company secrets. As the Zwass and Marjanovic, Fry & Chataway readings indicate, the co-creation business model is new and developing.
I think crowdsourcing in many ways can be considered a type of participatory community that revolves around open sharing, learning, and creativity. According to recent research, the unstructured framework utilized by crowdsourcing tools encourages an interaction among people that has the ability to elevate cooperation, the pace of coordination, idea generation, and the quality of knowledge produced. Using an anonymous crowd, information about information (metadata) can be gathered, generating a completely new form of knowledge that has the potential to reform our way of thinking and approach to solving complex problems. That being said, I don’t think traditional data and knowledge work structures should be dismissed. In my opinion, existing framework methodologies should continue to be used but further enhanced/enriched with input and feedback from the ‘unstructured crowd’…. Much like a narrative that weaves the old with the new. Maybe in the years to come, a blend between the old and new will result in a completely new framework offering even greater benefits.
ReplyDelete