Why Crowdsourcing is the future of EVERYTHING (including 12 key areas (with just 3 exceptions))

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The theme of Future of Crowdsourcing Summit, coming up soon in San Francisco and Sydney, is how crowdsourcing (applying the minds of many) is the future of everything.

It’s a big claim, though to be frank I can’t think of many things it’s not the future of. Anything of human creation, which is most of what we know, has in some ways a crowdsourced future. There are probably three categories of things that will NOT be fundamentally shaped by crowdsourcing:

* Things in our environment that humans don’t impact (possibly volcanic activity and asteroid impact, though even those might not be immune)

* Individual creativity (important but historically overrated to an extraordinary degree)

* Aspects of our humanity that are intrinsic and we do not shape (sex (perhaps) and actually not much else given our increasing powers over our genetic destiny)

Let’s look at some of the things that crowdsourcing most definitely will shape:

Work. Unquestionably work of all kinds is being rapidly distributed across organizational and national boundaries and increasingly broken down into components with structures suitable for crowds to address. The nature of work for many individuals is likely to change dramatically in coming decades.

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Why this year Crowdsourcing is the topic of our Future Summit Series in San Francisco and Sydney

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I’ve been remiss in not yet mentioning Future of Crowdsourcing Summit on my blog, so here is a bit of background to the event. Full details are on the Summit website with an overview in the flyer below.

Future of Crowdsourcing Summit 2010

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Six steps to success in a world driven by cloud computing

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I recently gave the keynote for an event series on cloud computing run by Telstra Business across five Australian cities. My keynote was followed by a presentation by Telstra’s Chief Technology Officer Hugh Bradlow.

In the current issue of Telstra’s customer magazine Business Insights the feature article is based on Hugh and myself. The article is here, with the full text of my quoted ‘Six Steps to Success’ is below.

Cloud computing: Interview with Ross Dawson and Hugh Bradlow

SIX STEPS TO SUCCESS

For businesses, the challenge is understanding the new technology and realising they’ll have to make significant shifts in the way they think and work to take full advantage of it all. Ross Dawson describes this process in his six steps to success, which covers everything from more flexible approaches to working, to new technology strategies.

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What can destroy the boundaries of your industry

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The hefty tome The Support Economy by Shoshana Zuboff and Jim Maxmin is a challenging but rewarding read, describing in detail the rise of distributed capitalism. Of all the big ideas of the last decade, the concept of business and society being driven by connected individuals and small groups is one of the most powerful, and Zuboff has arguably captured better than any.

From an even broader perspective, the biggest strategic issue in almost every industry today is the erosion of industry boundaries. Every industry is encountering new competitors: from adjacent industries, from start-ups with lower entry thresholds, and from substitutions.

At the same time, the strategic opportunities to stretch beyond your existing positioning have exploded, giving an extraordinary premium to the flexibility to take advantage of these openings.

Zuboff has a nice article in the current issue of McKinsey Quarterly, titled Creating value in the age of distributed capitalism (registration required), summarizing some of her key ideas, focusing on the idea of “mutations” in business and capitalism.

At the end of the article she provides a useful list of 7 circumstances in which mutations can destroy the boundaries of industries:

1. The products or services you offer are affordable to few but desired by many.

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Seeking exceptional senior researcher/ writer for high-profile report on crowdsourcing

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writer_large.jpgWe have just posted an ad over at CrowdsourcingResults for a senior researcher/ writer for a forthcoming report on crowdsourcing we are doing. I’ve posted the ad below as well – please pass on word if you can think of anyone who’s perfect for this.

Seeking exceptional senior researcher/ writer for report on crowdsourcing

Advanced Human Technologies is publishing a highly practical report to help people use crowdsourcing tools well. We are looking for a Senior Writer/ Researcher to work on this project, and can offer good payment and rewards.

We are also in the early stages of working on a number of other reports on topics including social media strategy, iPad media strategy, media channels for marketing etc., so do let us know if you have interest and world-class expertise in these topics.

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Thoughts on the future of workplace communication

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Earlier today I spoke on a live webcast on the Future of Workplace Communication as part of Viocorp’s Future Forum series.

I took notes during the panel session and posted these live on my blog right after the event. I took notes while the other panellists were speaking: Nicky Wakefield, head of human capital at Deloitte, Philip Cronin, general manager of Intel Australia, and Oscar Trimboli, head of the information workers group at Microsoft.

I wasn’t able to take notes while I was speaking myself, so having had a look at the panel discussion which is now archived and can be viewed at the Viocorp site (requires registration), I’ve written out some of what I said during the discussion.

10:50 – 14:00

Workplace is not a good term to refer to the future – people will be working from anywhere so workplaces will have less impact than they have today. In the bigger context we also have to question whether organizations as we know them today will exist. Transaction costs are going down, meaning that moving forward, organizations will have to justify why they exist. There will be many business models bringing together loosely coupled talent and processes.

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Looking for a great blog writer for Crowdsourcing Results site

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Of the many initiatives we have on, one of the most exciting is rolling out a series of websites/ forums – we have a few up now and many more coming. As we do so, we are looking for outside writers to complement our own content.

One of our most popular new sites is CrowdsourcingResults.com, which showcases our Crowdsourcing Landscape and provides insights and discussion on how to use crowdsourcing effectively.

Below is the ad we are posting. Please apply if it’s of interest, or if not please pass it on to people who might be interested – probably mainly for interest in the topic and the visibility.

Also note that we will soon be creating a detailed report on crowdsourcing, so great writers/ researchers who want to get stuck into a bigger project should also get in touch – we can discuss terms.

Job title

Great blog writers with a deep understanding of crowdsourcing

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Six platforms to get results from crowdsourcing

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MyCustomer.com has just published a nice article based on an interview with me, titled Ross Dawson: Six tools to kickstart your crowdsourcing strategy.

After beginning with some background on the topicality of crowdsourcing, the article goes on:

But suddenly crowdsourcing seems to be reaching some kind of critical mass. From reports that Microsoft crowdsourced the making of Office 2010, to David Cameron asking the UK’s civil servants for money-saving ideas via the Government’s Spending Challenge, it’s not just that interest in it is peaking, it’s that organisations are already bringing crowdsourcing plans to fruition.

This all comes as no surprise to Ross Dawson, a globally recognised futurist, strategy advisor and best-selling author – and at last month’s Creative Sydney event he delivered a keynote entitled ‘The Future is Crowdsourcing’.

“We are now at the opening phases of what is a global talent economy,” he explains. “Talent is now everywhere and far more available. We’re seeing professionals increasingly working independently rather than necessarily in large corporations; we are seeing retired people who are interesting in continuing to be engaged and entrusted to projects. And clearly we have access to people around the world. So we are moving from a world where the talent was all inside big organisations to a very fluid world where the talent is available globally. And there is now a whole host of tools and platforms to be able to access all of this talent in a wide variety of ways.”

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New perspectives on crowdsourcing at Creative Sydney

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On Saturday I spoke at Creative Sydney’s Crowds + Collaboration event. I had just been invited to on Thursday to fill in for a speaker who couldn’t make it, but it was pretty easy to do given last week we launched our Crowdsourcing Landscape and I gave two keynotes largely about crowdsourcing (to Cisco and at a regional futures conference in WA). As such I addressed the topic The Future is Crowdsourcing, largely supported by the Crowdsourcing Landscape, as you can see at the bottom of this post.

The other speakers were excellent. In particular the story of Detours and Destinations was extremely inspiring. Highly disadvanted youth were given the opportunity to spend time at the Sydney Opera House creating their own performance. One of their many creations is below.

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Keynote at Critical Horizons regional futures conference: the potential of a connected world

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Today I spoke at the Critical Horizons Regional Futures conference held in Bunbury, Western Australia,which “examines emerging global trends and how they might affect regional communities in the South West Region of Western Australia”. It is fantastic that a non-urban region runs a regular event to examine its future. It is clear that the attendees from across business and government had a keen appetite to explore the future and what they need to do to create a prosperous region in years to come.

The regional economy is still largely driven by mining and to a lesser extent agriculture (including the delightful Margaret River wines). It is experiencing many issues common to regional areas, including the loss of younger people to cities. However it has a particular context in its location. Australia is one of the most urbanized countries in the world, and Perth is the most isolated city in the world. Bunbury is over 2 hours drive away from Perth. It took me 10 hours door-to-door to get here from Sydney – by far the longest it has taken me to get to a speaking gig in Australia.

The region’s geographic isolation means the topic of my keynote here, Power to the People: Thriving in a Hyperconnected Society, is immensely relevant. I discussed the overwhelming trend of how a connected world is shifting power from institutions to individuals. However I also covered the implications for regions of the emerging global talent economy. Crowdsourcing tools on one level provide access to extraordinary talent that can be harnessed in ways limited only by imagination. Yet a connected world also provides opportunities to provide services, both in existing domains, and especially in managing projects.

To the extent that they are useful (usual disclaimer: my slides are created to accompany my speeches, not to be viewed on their own) here are my slides for my keynote (minus the Flash animations).

Power to the People! | Critical Horizons conference | Ross Dawson Keynote speaker slides

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