Discover the impactful ways crowdsourcing – the practice of engaging a ‘crowd’ or group for a common goal, often for innovation, problem solving, or efficiency – is being applied on many different levels and across various industries.
Crowdsourcing Week and 99designs has launched an online t-shirt design contest designed to engage the creativity of the crowd and encourage participation in helping the homeless in San Francisco. For those interested in entering, you will need to create t-shirt...
1947 the British politician Winston Churchill famously said “…democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” 70-plus years later, industrialised democracies are witnessing the decline of citizen...
Story as Communication, From Caveman to Walkman When humans listen to a story something amazing happens. Each individual in a crowd reaches into their own personal memories to create and complete the scenes in which the action takes place. In other words, they source...
Mathesia is a crowdsourcing-based innovation platform headquartered in Italy, though available globally, that brings together a highly specialized crowd of about 3,000 vetted mathematicians and data scientists from around the world. Since launching in 2014, Mathesia’s...
We are now quite used to seeing the disruption that’s taking place in many marketplaces due to the combination of new technology and mass connectivity in the hands of visionary startups, unencumbered by the ‘rules’ of established business models. Though how about when...
The originally anonymous creator of a Facebook spoof has gone public to explain he meant the storming of Area 51 on September 20 – “to see them aliens” – as a joke. What got him to break cover was 1.9 million people (so far) clicking to say they’re going, with a...
If selfishness is a trigger of many issues in today's modern democracies, as suggested in my previous article, populism could be regarded as a facilitator in this game. That's the topic of this article, with an invitation to you to contribute with your thoughts and...
PARTICIPATION = SATISFACTION In 1996 Jerry Maguire, an aspiring sports agent, repeated a four word request to his first and only client: "Help me help you!" And you know where that got him. The feedback gave him the direction he needed to become the one of the...
As the population grows at an ever faster and faster rate, transforming how the world feeds itself is going to be a necessity. Even though up to a third of the food currently produced goes to waste, incremental improvements to current practices aren’t going to be...
Surcle.io is a global crowd-engineering platform enabling corporations, SMEs, and start-ups to scale resources and tackle engineering and hardware challenges within their organizations and product life cycle. It was launched by the online electrical hardware...
Advanced modern civilizations that were thriving are now challenged by populism, nationalism and new leaders acting with little respect for social values or long term benefits for society as a whole. Some of the democratic foundations we have relied on for so long...
Hi! We are Michael and Bonnie, the founders of the world’s largest wine brand. Did you know that we used crowdsourcing to build Barefoot Wine? Sure, it wasn’t called “Crowdsourcing” back then, but it was the secret to our success! If Necessity is the Mother of...
Finding the right talent to solve your problem can be difficult. Crowdsourcing helps you access a global pool of on-demand talent, helping to make innovation efforts less expensive, easier to manage and of better quality through leveraging the ever-expanding 'Power of...
55% of the world’s 7.7 billion people already live in urban environments, and this figure is rising fast. With the simple act of a footstep, Pavegen’s smart flooring sustainable energy system enables people to physically participate in the sustainable development of...
With young people finding it increasingly hard to find quality and meaningful work, more and more are turning to the gig-economy. Although this form of work can be unpredictable, stressful and at times downright precarious, and offers no traditional employee benefits...
We live in changing times in which high levels of human migration to developed countries has generated a resurgence of nationalist, populist politics. A more confrontational political landscape is fuelled by deliberately misleading news, and social media anonymity has...
This is the third part in our three-part blog series on prize competitions. In Part 1 we shared the power of prize competitions. Part 2 helped you understand what makes a successful prize competition. Now, we will give you some insight on how to choose the appropriate...
This is the second part in our three-part blog series on prize competitions, or prize challenges as some people prefer to call them. In Part 1 we shared the power of prize competitions as a means to generate open innovation solutions, and thus accelerate R&D. In...
This is the first part in a three-part blog series on using prize competitions, also called prize challenges. In this Part 1 we share the power and benefits of prize competitions. In Part 2 we will help you understand what makes a successful prize competition. And in...
Crowdsourcing is a great way for an organization to generate external input, particularly when it faces a new challenge. Benfits include tapping in to specific areas of interest or expertise that don't exist within your own organization; getting input from people who...
Crowdsourcing and open innovation are staring to be recognised within primary industry as effective ways to validate concepts at low risk, solve complex challenges, find new innovative suppliers and automate work. As a consequence, new industrial leaders are emerging...
It’s easy to forget that the Internet was once all open. Rather, the Internet has been in a continuous cycle of highly-structured portals and free-flowing information. The initial platforms, like BBS boards, gave way to walled gardens like America OnLine. AOL’s drop...
I wish I had come up with that line, but I must give credit to Joe Polish. It neatly sums up the times we’re living in, where the pace and scale of change are disrupting many established business models and social norms, and admittedly causing some damage to what...
Open innovation is a term coined by Henry Chesbrough in his 2003 book, “Open Innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology”. Open innovation assumes that valuable ideas can come from inside or out of the company and can go to the market...