Crowdsourcing isn’t new, but increasingly it is being used by organizations big and small as a process to solve challenges in a more effective way – faster, more creatively and with better engagement. In fact, US lawmakers, scientists, educators, online gaming enterprises and Netflix, to name a few, are crowdsourcing.
According to a BusinessWeek article, in February, Jenny Drinkard, an industrial designer and recent Georgia Institute of Technology graduate, proposed an idea to a website called Quirky.com to turn modified milk crates into a home storage system. Then 1,791 Quirky community members around the world refined the design, suggesting accessories and ranking them in order of preference on the site. The result: plastic cubes that can be stacked, connected, and customized with drawers, slide-in wooden shelves, cork bulletin boards, wooden feet, and rollers—fit for a college dorm room, which by the way were shipped to such retailers as Target and Staples by July to capture back-to-school shoppers.
This is a prime example of crowdsourcing and while the process occurs both offline and online, there are all the obvious reasons it is happening more and more online. Whether it is creating a website to crowdsource the next great fast food menu item, an award-winning graphic design, or top-quality e-learning content, the technology to make crowdsourcing possible becomes ever more important to keep contributors engaged. Because let’s face it, if contributors can’t do it easily, they just won’t do it.
- McDonald’s preps crowdsourced Olympic ads
- The Washington Post launches crowdsourcing platform
- The Colorado shooting and the crowdsourced future of news
- Joe Sumner: Synchronizing Crowdsourced Movies
- More search could be crowdsourced, say researchers at ACM CHI
Is your IT Infrastructure flexible and robust enough to take advantage of this vastly popular technique? You may want to check out our platform, performance and support videos for your future needs.
