Crowdsourcing

In 1915, a man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, or better known worldwide as Mahatma Gandhi, organized protests by peasants, farmers, and urban labourers concerning excessive land-tax and discrimination. Gandhi led nationwide campaigns to ease poverty, expand women's rights, build religious and ethnic amity, end untouchability, and increase economic self-reliance. Above all, he aimed to achieve the independence of India from foreign domination. He was the pioneer of resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon total non-violence---which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.

Since then, many other countries had followed the example of Gandhi, and utilized the power of the people to resist tyranny and overthrow their rulers, whether they are foreign colonizers or their own corrupt government.

In recent times, the term “people power” is no longer confined to politics. It has generated interest in the business community as well. Companies that offer new products invite crowds of people to test the product before it finds its way through the market place. They then get the crowds’ reactions and feedback that eventually help to improve the quality of their new creation. It is a sleek new idea that makes inroads to product reviews across the business horizon, including movie reviews in the film industries There is no better way to get a proper judgment for a certain product other than from the very people that are going to buy and use them.

The technology sectors are not immune from this either. With so much money going into R&D projects, the IT people are always on the lookout for any potential money-spinner. Business model innovation is happening at a lightning speed. Some of these have already found their way in the service sector, software development, and in the web community. First there was outsourcing, then open-sourcing, and then crowdsourcing.

Companies have been outsourcing to India and China for years. Then, they took it to another level by using social networks such as MySpace, Second Life, Friendster, Facebook and Twitter, just to name a few, and a multitude of virtual communities to solve their most intricate business problems. Crowdsourcing is a new and nascent business tool for innovation. It had its genesis in the open source movement in software.

As defined by Wikipedia, crowdsourcing is neologism for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to a group (crowd of people) or community in the form of an open call. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design and distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm, or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data.

It is interesting to note how often and how much assistance people are willing to provide to an idea that really excites them.

The term has become popular with business authors and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals.

Crowdsourcing can also be looked at as an application of the wisdom of crowds concept, in which the knowledge and talents of a group of people is leveraged to create content and solve problems. Used properly, it can generate new ideas, shorten research and development time, cut development costs, and create a direct, emotional connection with customers. Used improperly, it can produce silly or wasteful results. Crowds can be wise, but they can also be stupid.

A recent article in the Irish Times mentioned two examples of how crowdsourcing works. The first example is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a web application that lets you allot work to anyone on the net that wants to do it for the money you have promised to pay. It is a service that lets you outsource work to workers around the world. It’s the faster way, cheaper alternative to staff a wide range of projects. You could ask workers to tag images in a product catalogue to improve search results on your retail site or ask workers to determine if content is consistent with your site guidelines. You can even ask workers to jump start your website content by writing a book, movie or product review. And you pay only when you’re satisfied with the results. Mechanical Turk is the new way to outsource information work by utilizing the power of crowdsourcing.

The other one is the recently launched project called TransparencyCorps. It is the brainchild of Sunlight Foundation, a group that focuses on increasing US government accountability through data transparency. It may be getting closer to an effective model – and the trick may be replacing financial incentives with good causes. Joining TransparencyCorps gives a glimpse into the inner workings of American power, along with something to do about it. Even if the glimpse is fleeting and the action small, the hope is that with a crowd, it will build a powerful accountability tool.

In his final analysis, Quinn Norton of Irish Times has this to say: “While Amazon’s Mechanical Turk also has something of a community, psychology studies would suggest an important difference: the Turk is ruined by money. Studies have consistently shown that tasks people do because they enjoy them lose their charm as soon as people doing the tasks get paid for them. Being paid once can take away the pleasure forever.”

Another interesting article about crowdsourcing appeared in Irish Independent. Jeff Howe gives his take on the subject, the highlights of which I have quoted below:

“Crowdsourcing uses technology to foster unprecedented levels of collaboration and meaningful exchanges between people from every imaginable background, in every imaginable geographical location. It is a flattering portrait of the human race. We are more intelligent, more creative and more talented than we tend to give ourselves credit for. I've seen cases in which electricians solve complex industrial chemistry problems, and forklift operators show a knack for investing in the stock market. We see something similar on You Tube, in which budding comedians and filmmakers have been able to secure first a cult audience, then industry contacts and finally paying gigs and mainstream recognition.”

“The amount of knowledge and talent dispersed among the numerous members of our species has always vastly outstripped our capacity to harness those invaluable quantities. Crowdsourcing is the mechanism by which such talent and knowledge is matched to those in need of it. It poses a tantalising question: what if the solutions to our greatest problems weren't waiting to be conceived, but already existed somewhere, just waiting to be found, in the warp and weave of this vibrant human network?”

It will take some time before the idea of crowdsourcing would reach its full potential. And to be able to do that, we would have to address the following to make it work the way that will benefit everybody.

• Crowdsourcing is a very powerful political tool to expose and weed out corrupt public officials. We should be able to distinguish between the legitimate sites that promote public accountability, to those that are being used as a lynch mob to exact personal/political vendetta by groups with vested interest.
• As more and more people are willing to ride the wave of change, the era of opportunistic business enterprise taking advantage of the people who are willing to play their part in improving product innovations are not far fetch. There should be a reward system wherein people’s ideas are recognized and his contributions to the development of the product are well documented as well.
• Another challenge for anyone entering the co-creation/crowdsourcing arena is how to compensate people fairly for their ideas.
• While crowdsourcing will take the slack out of the system, it could seriously depress wages for anyone pursuing a career in advertising, graphic design, and industrial design.

The opportunities presented by crowdsourcing far outweigh any concern about its effectiveness to insulate itself from unscrupulous business and political practices. As exemplified by Gandhi, the world can be a better place if we can utilize the power of the people to decide what is best for them. Jeff Howe described it aptly, the solutions to our greatest problems are out there just waiting to be discovered. The possibilities are far and wide, the answers within sight. It’s just a matter of time.
 

I personally wish that crowdsourcing would be as successful as cloud computing and outsourcing in the near future. If not in monetary terms, at least in cleansing the world's political system of scalawags.

The best minds don't always have the best ideas. Otherwise, most of the world's problems have already been solved by now. Ordinary people are just that, until they are discovered to have the extraordinary talent.

Vision is all about the ability of seeing the future based upon on-going developments that  are happening around us, and how it would shape-up to be in the future.
 
We need people with visions to make this world a better place. People who are able to see beyond what a normal person can see. These kind of people are not found in any government agencies. They are out there waiting to be tapped. If we can reach out to them, then the work ahead is halfway done.