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Representatives of the state and business are increasingly delegating tasks to the public. This makes their work cheaper and more transparent. Trends understood the intricacies of using the collective mind
Crowdsourcing (from the English crowd – “crowd” and sourcing – “use of resources”) is the transfer of certain production functions to a circle of people without concluding an employment contract by the type of subcontract work in order to use their knowledge, experience and creativity. That is, we are talking about shifting various tasks onto the shoulders of enthusiasts.
For the first time this concept, like the concept of crowdfunding, was used in his article The Rise of Crowdsourcing for Wired magazine by journalist Jeff Howe in 2006. A couple of years earlier, journalist James Schurowiesky, in his book The Wisdom of the Crowd, wrote that finding a solution to a problem under the right conditions based on a group of people is more effective than using the knowledge of individuals.
However, this method of using intellectual resources originated much earlier. As early as 1567, King Philip II of Spain offered a reward to anyone who could come up with a simple and practical method for accurately determining longitude when calculating the position of a ship at sea. A century and a half later, in 1714, the British Parliament established a serious award for this kind of research. It was owned by self-taught watchmaker John Harrison, who invented the marine chronometer.
How crowdsourcing works and how it happens
Delegation of tasks is usually used by small and medium businesses in order not to spend money on working with advertising agencies or order expensive audience research. However, they are not neglected by large corporations. For example, a significant number of Microsoft software users fill out surveys every month about their work, and then their opinions are analyzed by product improvement specialists. And Google has a Crowdsourcing app that allows the user community to offer solutions and fixes to problems with products and services.
Crowdsourcing comes in many forms:
- Collective cooperation. This type is good for tasks that require the “wisdom of the crowd”, for example, for generating ideas. Not suitable for promoting individual capabilities and experience, as well as obtaining predetermined results. It is used, among others, by the 99designs graphic design platform, the X Prize innovation fund and the Quirky inventor marketplace.
- crowd competition. Suitable for creating actionable solutions, developing prototypes, building a sense of community among the team, generating external ideas and gamifying processes. Doesn’t work if it’s a predefined result. This method is used by the TopCoder sports programming platform, the Kaggle data science competition system, the InnoCentive company problem solving platform, and the Applause digital experience exchange platform.
- Crowd work (mesotasks). Good for well-defined tasks that require specialized skills or time-consuming activities such as data entry. Suitable for those who do not want to hire permanent employees or a contractor for these roles. However, it will not work for the implementation of ideas without a clear formulation or for non-standard activities. This method is practiced by localization company Lionbridge and machine learning company CrowdFlower.
- Crowd work (microtasks). This type is suitable for well-defined everyday tasks with the help of individuals who require only general skills. This can be manual work, such as organizing the layout of goods in a store or cleaning. Allows you to attract a large number of participants at once. Cons are the same as the previous type. Such crowdsourcing is being used by TaskRabbit, a daily task help platform, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk marketplace for getting people to help PCs, Streetbees market research platform, Gigwalk, a business problem solving platform, and SETI’s extraterrestrial life search projects.
- Crowd work (macrotasks). This type is suitable for those who need, for example, the development of a strategy, research or consultation without involving permanent employees. Not suitable for routine tasks. This method is used by the 10EQS multidisciplinary search platform, the Wikistrat geostatistical analysis platform, the OnFrontiers and Applause distributed task network platform for enterprises.
- User-generated content (UGC). Resources and repositories with user content work according to this principle. The problem is that this content is not always of high quality and requires moderation. So there is the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, the travel service TripAdvisor, the YouTube video hosting service, the iStockphoto photography service, the Foursquare place description site, and the Quora Q&A service.
- Kraudfanding. Suitable for fundraising, ensuring greater transparency of processes. Does not work when funding for current operations is needed and there are high short-term expectations. This is how crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and CrowdCube operate.
Pros of crowdsourcing
This tool is most popular in enterprises, IT, marketing, education, science and health, and finance.
For businesses, the benefits of crowdsourcing can include:
- Faster Design. In 2012, DARPA, the US Advanced Research Projects Agency, decided to crowdsource the development of a prototype unmanned vehicle after abandoning traditional government procurement. The winning design was announced in April 2013, just six months after the competition started.
$1 million design: amphibious tank wins DARPA competition (Photo: DARPA) - Faster Prototyping. TechShop, a U.S. workshop network or “inventor’s playground”, allows participants of all skill levels to use a range of industrial tools and machines, including 3D printers and robots, to create projects.
- Improving efficiency. Allstate, the second largest insurer in the US, sponsored a contest in which participants created a liability prediction model that was 271% more accurate than the one used.
- Great elasticity. The CrowdSource platform is reaching out to enthusiasts to provide retailers with new product names, descriptions and marketing materials, enabling them to go to market faster and brighter.
- Resilience to tedious tasks. TaskRabbit allows anyone to earn money by completing simple tasks for clients who don’t have much time or skills, such as assembling furniture or decorating a house.
- Access to new talent. SpringRole, a blockchain-based HR technical advisor, allows ordinary people to earn from referrals by posting their resumes with skills descriptions for a specific type of work.
- Better Talent Engagement and Retention. Media company Thomson Reuters is using crowdsourcing to find talent among its 17 technologists, offering them unusual tasks and rallying departments.
- lower costs. Colgate used crowdsourcing to create a Speed Stick deodorant commercial for the 2013 American Super Bowl for just $17. As the company representatives noted, the budget for creating the video turned out to be about 100 times less than that of competitors.
Such tools are useful not only in business, but also in public administration. Crowdsourcing for decision-making is already used by 26% of American cities. In Syracuse, New York, a community survey helped shape a development strategy, and the winners of a graffiti removal idea contest in San Jose, California developed a drone that removes graffiti from high-rise buildings and overpasses.
Cons of crowdsourcing
The “wisdom of the crowd” has its weaknesses. Businesses should consider these points before giving the task to crowdsourcing.
Here are some cons:
- Lack of privacy. Soliciting proposals from a large group of people can create the threat of ideas being stolen by other organizations.
- Recurring decisions. Often, contestants submit plagiarized ideas, which leads to a loss of time for their consideration and verification. Many follow the current fashion. The New York Mets baseball club organized an online vote for a song that will become the anthem of the game season. However, the voting took place in 2008, at the height of the online “rickrolling” fashion. The idea was to send people a hyperlink to Rick Astley’s 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. When this composition reached the top and was played at the stadium, the fans booed the annoying hit.
- There is a possibility of spam. Really good and even brilliant proposals can get lost in the crowd.
- Work for speed, not quality. This is commonly seen when performers translate books or films into another language.
- Safety problems. There is no guarantee that there will be no hackers among the developers and that the applications they create will be safe and do not contain malicious code. Sometimes it is possible for an influential player or figure to intervene in the process, which will affect its outcome. This was the case with NASA, which in 2009 offered to choose a name for the new ISS module. Popular TV presenter Stephen Colbert intervened in the voting process by urging fans to vote for his name. After gaining more than 230 thousand votes and actually winning the competition, Colbert, as a consolation prize, received from NASA only the right to give his name to … a treadmill.
- Discrepancy in understanding of tasks. The “wisdom of the crowd” may be inferior to the level of the direct participants in the project, and the latter may have a low opinion of the results obtained. M&Ms decided to ask the focus groups which three new flavors they would prefer. Most of the respondents chose milk chocolate with hot spices and honey nuts. The same thing happened to Rittersport, when the chocolate brand was asked to produce bars with bacon, onions, chips and beer.Chocolate bar idea with cheese and fried onions (Photo: www.ritter-sport.de)
- Dissatisfaction of end consumers with the results of crowdsourcing. German grocery store chain Spar launched a Spar Bag design competition but rejected the most popular submissions, sparking a backlash from the community.
Secrets of success
In order for a crowdsourcing project to be effective, it is necessary to:
- Clearly define tasks and their scope. Participants should know what is required from the proposed idea or solution.
- Provide comprehensive background information. For example, access to technical data.
- Designate the format of participation and the idea itself, as well as remuneration (if necessary).
- Set specific deadlines project stages.
- Prepare your own employees to this format of work, to create involvement.
Before launching a campaign, you need to decide whether it will target a large group of people (for example, through social media) or a specific group with the right skills and experience (for example, through the 99designs design platform).
Crowdsourcing in the world: examples
Absolute Markets Insights reports that the global crowdsourcing market will reach nearly $155 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 36,5%.
Here are some examples of successful use of the crowdsourcing model in the world:
- “Wikipedia”. The online encyclopedia with UGC content (i.e., user-generated content) has become a successful example of not only crowdsourcing, but also crowdfunding, as it and a number of similar projects are managed by the non-profit organization Wikimedia. The encyclopedia turned 2021 in January 20, with over 56 million entries in 319 languages.The most popular Wikipedia languages and the number of articles in them
- DHL. The courier company’s innovation centers invite customers to share ideas for improving systems and technologies, such as drone delivery technology and remote navigation tools.
- General Electric. The Quirky online platform allows users to submit an idea for a new GE product. Once a week, employees vote for the best proposal. If the idea becomes a product, then its author receives a monetary reward. More than 400 new products have already been released this way, such as the egg holder in the refrigerator with a freshness detector.
- Unilever. Launched in 2010, Unilever’s Open Innovation platform creates a blueprint for the public that is trying to solve the problems of smart packaging and refrigeration systems.
Crowdsourcing in our country: examples
Successful crowdsourcing projects:
- GoDesigner. The employer creates a competition and pays a financial reward, which will be transferred to the winner chosen by him. If the employer is not satisfied with any work, then the money is returned to him.Examples of assignments on GoDesigner
- “Habr”. The largest IT resource in our country, which is supported by the specialized community. Participants post their articles in specialized hubs after pre-moderation. For the most successful materials you can get a reward.
- “Yandex.Toloka”. On this platform, you can collect and mark up data for computer vision, natural language processing, speech technologies, and other machine learning and business tasks. To do this, it is enough to place a task that anyone can complete.
Industry experts believe that crowdsourcing alone cannot solve the problems of business and government, but people’s opinions are a key factor that must be considered along with the experience of other stakeholders.