Announcement of Crowdsourcing Week: Singapore April 2013

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Crowdsourcing is moving to the center not just of discussion, but of business and society. That is becoming increasingly evident through the events being run as well as in what companies are doing.

Moving beyond the increasing proliferation of conferences and workshops on crowdsourcing (for which I am partly responsible), we are now seeing a full week devoted to the topic, in Singapore in April 2013. It is a great choice of location given the pace of growth on both supply and demand for crowds in the region.

Details are at the Crowdsourcing Week website and part of the press release is below. Full disclosure: I am on the advisory board for Crowdsourcing Week and will be a keynote speaker. It promises to be an exciting event.

Crowdsourcing Week: Embracing The Power of The Crowd – Singapore, June 3-7, 2013
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Debate: The Ethics of Crowdsourcing

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For many who come across the idea of crowdsourcing in its many forms, their first thoughts are about the ethical issues. As such, in writing Getting Results From Crowds, it was important to address the ethical domain rather than ignoring or glossing it.

We address the ethical issues of crowdsourcing in Chapter 5 on Relationship Value, offering Points and Counterpoints on a number of the major ethical issues in the field.

To bring the debate to life we have created a video providing some of the arguments on each side.


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Case study: Using project management for effective crowdsourcing

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[This post first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website]

One of the most important implications of organizations shifting to crowdsourcing and crowd work is the need for effective project management structures. We cover Project Management in Chapter 14 of Getting Results From Crowds.

The chapter opens with an excellent case study of how Nick McMenemy uses crowd platforms to drive his startup Virdium. I gained plenty of insights and new ideas in my interview of him, which I condensed into the case study, reproduced below. I’m sure you’ll find useful ideas in there.
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OPEN: Using crowdsourced legislation to beat SOPA

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SOPA, The Stop Online Piracy Act, is big news in many ways, not least in marking what is likely to be a historical landmark in the battle between traditional media and a now-powerful new media, played out in political influence and the shaping of critical legislation.

One of the most important ways to beat SOPA is to provide a good alternative. The majority of politicians seem to think that online intellectual property rights need better protection, so to kill SOPA requires providing something that can supplant it.

Into this field comes Rep. Darrell Issa, whose involvement in legislation to allow equity crowdfunding I wrote about a few months ago. Issa is essentially seeking to ‘crowdsource’ a bill. Good.is reports:
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5 important ways in which crowdsourcing creates business value

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The intelligent use of crowdsourcing can have many benefits for companies – as well as government and non-profit organizations – in achieving their objectives.

Here is a brief excerpt from Chapter 3 on Crowds and Business Value of Getting Results From Crowds

The business value of using crowds
Through history, companies have been limited in what they can achieve through the scope of their internal resources and how well they can draw on external resources. Crowdsourcing has the potential to create enormous value for businesses by giving easy access to an essentially unlimited pool of talent and capabilities. Those organizations that have the skills and competences to draw on external crowds, as well as in tapping the best ideas from their ‘internal crowds’, have an immense advantage over those companies that rely solely on their internal resources and traditional service firms.
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Crowdsourcing management reviews: doing it before staff do it for themselves

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[This post first appeared on Getting Results From Crowds book website]

Harvard Business Review has once again kicked off the year with a List of Audacious Ideas. One of them is Crowdsourcing Management Reviews for Better Management. Authors Linda Hill and Kent Lineback say:
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In the global talent economy over 50% will be mobile workers

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[This post first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website]

Research firm IDC has forecast that there will be 1.3 billion ‘mobile workers’ in the world by 2015, representing 37.2% of the global workforce. This points to the massive explosion of what I call the ‘global talent economy’, in which talent can be and will be anywhere.

The forecasts suggest that the bulk of the growth will be in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), which will see 838 million mobile workers in 2015, up 237 million from 2010, representing well over half the global mobile workforce.
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Harley-Davidson goes direct to the crowd after initial success with creative crowdsourcing

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[This article first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website]

Harley-Davidson has been in the vanguard of using crowdsourcing to fuel its creative marketing initiatives. That initial success has fueled its appetite, with its latest initiative a Facebook app that takes idea generation to a far broader crowd.

Last year I wrote about how Harley-Davidson had launched a major advertising campaign using Victors & Spoils, an agency built on crowdsourcing principles.

Harley-Davidson was initially cautious, saying:
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New frameworks of 2011: Connected Success, Transformation of Business and Government, Crowdsourcing

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I believe strongly in visual frameworks as a way of communicating and engaging with complex ideas. I share these on the web, sometimes use them as central frames for my keynotes, apply them in strategy workshops, use them to shape my own thinking on the topics they cover, and sometimes create private custom visual frameworks for clients to define and articulate their strategy.

I will be shortly launching a more complete review of all the public visual frameworks I’ve created. For now, here is a review of the public frameworks I’ve created this year.

Success in a Connected World

I have used this in many keynotes and workshops this year to help individuals and small to mid-sized businesses to work out what they need to do succeed in a connected world, usually going into detail on the specific tools they can use in each area.

Success in a Connected World
Click on the image for full size
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How to make money from crowdsourcing: A framework for Crowd Business Models

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I think one of the most valuable aspects of our newly-launched book Getting Results From Crowds is the analysis of Crowd Business Models. While crowdsourcing is clearly a fantastic way for organizations large and small to get access to unparalleled resources and scale their operations, it is also increasingly central to many companies’ business models.

We have created a framework that identifies 7 fundamental crowd business models (plus non-profits), and done an analysis of the monetization mechanisms and success factors behind each one. These provide a broader framework for the 22 categories in version 2 of our Crowdsourcing Landscape.

The Crowd Business Models framework below aggregates these categories. Further details are provided in Chapter 22 of the book on Crowd Business Models. We have chosen to make all of these resources freely available, as we hope they will be useful for those building businesses that are relevant today. Go to the Getting Results From Crowds website for more free chapters and other resources.


Click on the image to download the complete framework as pdf
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