Rapidly changing realities and the demand for new solutions contribute to the creation of new platforms that are designed to produce creative, innovative solutions. Crowdsourcing platforms are an example of this type of activity.
Crowdsourcing is a combination of two words: crowd and outsourcing, an activity that became popular a few years ago in the form of competitions for the best solutions, particularly popular in Western Europe, partly because of the diversity of the projects submitted.
The creator of the term crowdsourcing is Jeff Howe, who used the term in Wired magazine in 2006, defining crowdsourcing as a business activity directed at an unspecified broad group of Internet users in the form of an open invitation, as well as a way of setting a new goal of using external human capital, different from outsourcing. This definition has been updated and clarified by Daren C. Brabham – as a digital and distributed model of production or problem solving by Internet users that pursues specific goals of the organiser (company, government or individual).
However, crowdsourcing has much earlier roots, a prime example being the use of crowdsourcing by Napoleon Bonaparte, who was struggling to provide fresh food for his army. He announced an open competition for new ways of storing food at the front. The winning idea at the time was canned food, for which the creator received a prize of 12,000 francs.
The activities that can be undertaken within the framework of modern owdsourcing can be divided into different groups starting with simple tasks called microtasks – micro-tasks, used for recognizing objects, checking words, organizing databases, marking objects on a map, taking pictures, translating, reporting problems or digitizing data. The second group is composite tasks – macrotasks – macro-tasks used for solving empirical and scientific problems, innovating, data analytics, forecasting. The third group is creative tasks – creative crowdsourcing helpful in creating new products, services, brands, ideation and brainstorming.
Nowadays, with information readily available and technology constantly evolving, crowdsourcing is becoming a popular tool in research and development. Companies and organizations are increasingly reaching out to the community for help, on the one hand to get new ideas and on the other to source solutions to problems and implement innovative projects.
One example is the Zooniverse platform, which engages the community in scientific data analysis. The tool allows researchers to focus on more complex tasks while the community performs the first stage of analysis.
Read more about crowdsoursing in research and development in future posts.