Crowdsourcing-Technique of Ideation & Mass Collaboration

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Crowdsourcing is one of the emerging and modern technique used for collecting ideas, opinions, suggestions, information, expertise on a particular subject, product, or problem from a large number of people. This large number of people could be a specialized group, internal employees from organization, or the general masses available to provide information or solutions via internet.

Different Methods of Crowdsourcing:

Crowdsourcing though understood as a mechanism involving events or platforms can be done through different ways. It holds its relevance through different formats including:

Online Reviews – Any reviews, feedbacks we give about any experience, about a product is bound to be simplest form of crowdsourcing. Being the biggest crowdsourcing contributor, Customer provides the feedback and that is further considered if raised or opiniated by maximum number of people.

Special Crowdsourcing Platforms – There are dedicated crowdsourcing sites or platforms through which companies raise requests on a particular idea or a challenge and they seek submissions. One of the popular examples is Google Crowdsource, Google has their own crowdsourcing platform and they provide various incentives and badges in return for the contribution from participants.  Sites like Fiver, 99designs are also common crowdsourcing platforms.

Social Media Sites – Most commonly used platform are through Facebook, twitter or Instagram post. The page or post will request ideas and solutions online as comments or may be submissions through any online or digital medium such as comments on social media pages, emails, personal messages, DMs etc.

Specific Offline Mechanisms – These are specialized events which invite specific group pf people or people with specific skill set to participate in an event cum competition which happens for specific period of time and submissions are requested on the spot. Most common example is Hackathon, a popular tech fest wherein the coders and engineers participate for like 24 hrs. or more and they have to submit a program or solution to the kind of topic or solution being requested.

When Should It Be Used:

-Should be used when you need ideas or solution from diverse range of skills and expertise. This the greatest advantage that the information received is through collective intelligence and wisdom spread across domain and talent.

-Requires less time as digital is much faster and quicker with reactions, comments & reviews.

-Biggest method to have creativity & innovation. Having such a large pool of intelligence brings out lot of creativity and out of box ideas which may not have received from a specialized or smaller group. –Receiving ideas and suggestions from any part of world will give an insight from a different perspective to the objective.

-Participating in such events helps to increase customer engagement and act as a powerful social media marketing tool for promotion and attraction.

-This may result cheaper activity for sourcing ideas and solutions as compared to hiring group of experts to do the job.

End Product:

End product is a list of filtered and finalized ideas, solutions, or requirements which have the potential to be implemented and are the ones which are analyzed on the basis of business performance and objective fulfillment.  

Process:

Process used for crowdsourcing hugely depends upon the purpose and the company seeking for ideas and solutions. We can still define a structured process for crowdsourcing successfully.

Identify & Define – First you need to identify what are you actually looking for. Are you simply looking for some new innovative ideas about a concept or product? Are looking for a solution or a strategy to curb a business or customer problem. Are you simply looking for open suggestions for improving your application? You need to identify and define the exact expectation you have from the crowdsourcing activity.

Analyze & Select – Once you know what you expect, you need to analyze whether the information needed is from a specialized group of people or can be gained through general masses. Accordingly, you need to decide the channel or the platform you would be using to request the submissions. You can use multiple channels as well for collecting submissions.

Request & Communicate – After selecting the channel, one needs to focus on explaining the topic, information requested, problem statement or the goal to be achieved through the platform effectively & clearly. One needs to explain the terms and conditions for participation, voting criteria, recognitions, awards & incentives if any. You have to see what would work for your situation, if only recognition is enough or you would need some winning prize or award for same.

Collect & Sort – Receiving and accepting submissions will result in collection of information which further needs to be analyzed and sorted for the few final ones. This would be crux of the full activity being completed as it filters out the non-productive ones and bring out the ones which will make place to be implemented.

Vote & Implement – Selecting and voting from the final few is crucial task. If your team feels all of them have the potential to be implemented, they can be prioritized and taken one by one. These are to be voted basis their ranking on a scale of technical feasibility, better business performance, achievement of goal or objective etc.

Reward – The submissions which are the finally voted are the ones which need recognition or rewards as promised. This act as one of the marketing strategies to encourage participants and promote your brand or product through such activity.