This Week in Crowdsourcing: News Roundup April 10

The countdown starts today! Only 10 days to the Crowdsourcing Week Global 2015! We have updated our Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday themes and programmes plus the comprehensive list global speakers. Meanwhile, as part of our weekly digest, here is a list of noteworthy news and update from sharing economy, crowdfunding, social business, and smart cities and […]
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The countdown starts today! Only 10 days to the Crowdsourcing Week Global 2015! We have updated our Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday themes and programmes plus the comprehensive list global speakers. Meanwhile, as part of our weekly digest, here is a list of noteworthy news and update from sharing economy, crowdfunding, social business, and smart cities and among others.

Indian startups to share perspective at CSW Global 2015

The Economic Times, India featured the upcoming CSW Global 2015 and wrote about the crowdsourcing and crowdfunding in the Indian context. Rajat Gandhi of Faircent.com, Osama Manzar of Digital Empowerment Foundation, Satish Kataria of CATAPOOLT, and Arun Mehra of Talenthouse India were quoted in the feature article as they share their perspectives on the crowd economy. What’s more, these Indian entrepreneurs will be with us at the conference.

Sharing economy to disrupt corporate travel ecosystem

Dan Ruch, the founder and CEO of Rocketrip shares his insights on sharing economy and why it’s on the brink of disrupting business travel via TechCrunch. It’s quite a long read, but the ideas he cited provide us a better understanding of the opportunities and conflicts—with examples such as Airbnb and Uber—when sharing economy meets traditional policies and travel vendors.

Sharing economy propels growth of P2P economic model

Care to read more about sharing economy? Indian authors Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu’s book Frugal Innovation: How To Do Better With Less expands us the concept. Excerpts from the book are published in Business Standard, giving us an overview of how the big shift happened—from ownership-based customer model to collaborative consumption.

Is crowdfunding reaching its maturity?

Steven Kotler wrote a 3-page article in the Forbes sharing one of the core ideas in his latest book Bold, which delves crowdfunding. According to Kotler, crowdfunding is empowering entrepreneurs like never before. “50 percent of new businesses fail in the first five years because of lack of access to capital,” he said. Thanks to crowdfunding, there are other options for startups and SMEs to continue and acquire funding from over 700 crowdfunding platforms.

What are the secrets of smart cities?

Here are the four tactics use to manage cities better—Mark Pomerleau listed them in GCN.com and provided several examples on how these four key trends can be utilised in the US context: opening data, increasing public engagement, tracking performance, and enhancing services.

Uber faster than the Fast & the Furious movie with new taxi fleets in Singapore

Uber launches the “supercar” offering for riders with the chauffeured Lamborghinis and Maseratis in Singapore in partnership with the luxury car rental company, DreamDrive. Is it a dream come true for average riders to experience a luxury drive around the city? Well, the base fare for Gallardo Spyder or Maserati GranTurismo Coupe is $200SGD and $165SGD (plus the $7SGD a minute charge) respectively says CNBC—way beyond a monthly transport budget! But for the experience itself, why not?

Tech giants in China taking their shots in equity crowdfunding

With the big three monopolizing the Chinese Internet and e-commerce industries—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, an online retail giant JD.com steers the wheel in a different course by launching an equity crowdfunding site, a second attempt in crowdfunding according to Technode. In addition, Alibaba and Sunning, the biggest retailers of consumer electronics and home appliances are planning their own crowdfunding sites.

Crowdfunding solar panels for every school roof in Britain

Happy students, happy teachers and admins! Labour’s new policy will help schools reduce their bills through the crowdfunding project of solar panels for every school roof. According to the Guardian, this initiative could earn schools an average of around £8,000 a year. The government will help the teachers crowdsource the funds for the panels.

MIT Crowdsourcing project to solve climate crisis

From sharing economy to green projects, another environment-related project is MIT’s crowdsourcing campaign, which calls all advocates to participate in Climate CoLab to solve the climate issues. EcoWatch said MIT is crowdsourcing ideas through series of contests that seeks proposals in areas that touch-base climate change.

UK SBEEA receives “Royal Assent” to improve access to finance

The access to finance will be much easier while reducing the “red tape” in UK with the implementation of the “Royal Assent” in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act (SBEEA) in three stages, according to Crowdfund Insider. In the SBEEA initiative, banks are required to share information on rejected loans (with consent from the applicants) if SMEs approved, and they will be transferred to online platforms and peer-to-peer lending and other lending platforms to facilitate the process of acquiring capital.

Crowdfunding market grows by 167% in 2014

Research firm Massolution releases a report on crowdfunding market, which is forecasted to reach $34.4 billion this year. North America and Asia have the biggest markets, the latter outpacing Europe by a small margin last year. South America, Oceania and Africa grew 167%, 59% and 101%, respectively. Here’s the press release of the report.

Image credit via Flickr, Anthony V

What else caught your eye this week? Came across some breaking news or a good thought piece?

About Author

About Author

Maria Krisette Capati 玛丽亚

Maria is the Editorial Associate of Crowdsourcing Week in charge of media outreach. She's a major of Business Management and Entrepreneurship and an advocate of faith-based non-profit organizations, women's, and children's rights. When she's not writing and dabbling with the Crowdsourcing Week team, she satiates her wanderlust and travel around Asia.

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