14. The Characteristics of Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing requires online participants to create something – not every instance of an online community is crowdsourcing It requires the internet so that calls can be made to a large number of highly distributed individuals The output must be either directed by a sponsor (e.g., Enterprise buyer) or they can be self organized (e.g., open source projects) Online communities are tapped for specific purposes requiring their wisdom, knowledge, their talent or their time (or a combination thereof). The output of crowdsourcing is expertise-based or process-based Outsourcing and crowdsourcing differ in philosophy and models of worker participation: With outsourcing there is restricted participation and a philosophy of end-to-end responsibility With crowdsourcing there is open participation and a philosophy of disaggregation
15. Crowdsourcing is an online, distributed problem solving and production model. [Brabham 2010: dbrabham.wordpress.com/crowdsourcing/]
16. 6,600 5,400 2,900 3,600 27,100 2,900 2,900 1,900 1,600 3,600 Number of local monthly Google searches for the keyword Crowdsourcing (average January-June 2011)
17. Crowdsourcing Models Managed Knowledge Discovery Distributed Human Intelligence Tasking Broadcast Search Peer Vetted Creative Production [Brabham 2010: dbrabham.wordpress.com/crowdsourcing/]
Hi, I’m Carl and I founded the Industry Website Crowdsourcing.org. I’m also the CEO of massolution atmassolution.com which is a firm that specializes in the design/implementation and delivery of crowdsourcing initiatives and business models. I started tracking crowdsourcing after reading Jeff’s book (actually I only made it to chapter three) before deciding two things: I needed a way to track was what going on here and I could see it was going to be difficult to keep on top of how fast this thing was going to grow if I tried to do it without help - so we built the site and the tools so everyone could join in – my background is in the large enterprise space so I knew enough to realize that as a model crowdsourcing was going to be disruptive and if applied correctly it could be very transformational in certain ways. I decided that it would be cool to work with Jeff so after waiting patiently for the right time in Jeff’s career to make this happen it’s exciting that we can announce today that Jeff is joining Crowdsourcing.org as a contributing editor. Jeff will also be an active community member so you will be able to ask Jeff questions and interact with him.
So today I’m going to talk a little bitabout crowdsourcing in terms of how it might be defined – the different types of models and different applications and the seven habits one needs to adopt for successful crowdsourcing – not a definitive list so you may have your own seven. I’m also going to take a step back and provide a little additional context to help us get situated.I hope those that know a little less than me learn a little more from this session and those that know more gain some new perspective.So the reason I was asked to give this presentation today in fact has nothing to do with Crowdsourcing.org. The real reason is because Crowdsourcing was in fact a British invention and therefore Herr Kitza thought it best that a Brit should break the news to you all.Crowdsourcing was indeed a British invention and one that most Germans didn’t notice until very recently and because of that, the British managed to keep hold of it for quite some time - you see the idea of individuals coming together to organize around a common cause, to solve problems collaboratively or to co-create isn’t new.
The Longitude PrizeThe Brits have always been an open minded group of people so in May 1974, a group of Merchants and Seamen decided that they had had enough of the terrible death tolls suffered each year sailing the treacherous seas so they presented a Petition toWestminster Palace in May 1714, the Longitude Act was passed in July 1714.This led to one of the earliest examples referenced was the British Government’s Open Innovation challenge in 1714 called "The Longitude Problem" where a call was made and a substantial award offered to anyone that could come up with a way to make sailing less perilous (killing 1,000s of seamen every year). The British Government offered £20,000 for people to invent a solution (£20,000 in 1714 is around $4.7 million dollars in 2010). The contest, considered almost unsolvable, was won by John Harrison, the son of a carpenter a testament to the fact that innovation and creativity can come from anywhere. Harrison invented the 'marine chronometer' (i.e. an accurate, vacuum sealed pocket watch). The aristocrats were hesitant to award Harrison the prize but eventually paid him the £20,000.
Niagara Suspension Bridge So 130 years after the British invention of crowdsourcing some folks in the US and Canada realized, long before Jeff, that this crowdsourcing thing had potential so they developed it further – just so they could claim it as their own. They realized in 1847 that you could get many people to spend a lot of time on your behalf for the prospect of one person winning a very small prize and a lot of glory – a model that a 150 years later has inspired many new start-ups enter the crowdsourcing space I hear you say!Niagara Suspension Bridge - Engineers on the project were out of ideas on how to get the first line strung between the US and Canada. The 800 foot gorge under Niagara Falls could not traversed by boat (the typical method), other ideas included: shooting arrows with lines attached, rockets, cannons, etc. A steel worker suggested a kite contest to deliver the line. The bridge company accepted the contest idea, and a fifteen year-old boy by the name of Homan Walsh won the contest by landing his kite on the opposite side. This crowdsourced project cost the bridge company a grand total of $10.
There are other historical examples of broad-scale collaboration between large groups with specific and common goals.An interesting book called “The Professor and the Madman” describesthe creation of the Oxford English Dictionary and the contributions thereto of Dr. William Minor. Minor was what would today be called a paranoid schizophrenic, confined to an asylum for a murder committed while delusional. He was also a major contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary project in the late 1800′s.What is striking was the way the original group of scholars organized the work of creating the dictionary.They realized it was far too large a project for their size and resources, so they published pamphlets seeking volunteers to assist them. These volunteers were to focus on particular historical eras and to provide quotations from books of those eras illustrating particular words.This approach was quite effective, with numerous people from all over the world assisting in the project as the core team worked its way through the alphabet guiding the larger group.
Then there was the 1936: Toyota Logo Contest where In 1936Toyota received 27,000 entries. The winning logo was the three Japanese katakana letters for “Toyoda” in a circle, which was later modified by Risaburo Toyoda to "Toyota".
The contest in 1955 which resulted in a building The Sydney Opera HouseThe Sydney Opera House In 1955 the Premier of NSW state of Australia, Joseph Cahill, ran a contest offering £5,000 to design a building for part of Sydney's Harbor. The contest received 233 entries from 32 countries around the world. The winning design is one of the most innovative landmarks. Architectural contests continues to be a popular model for getting buildings designed.
So while these fascinating cases share a number of comment tenets – requests made to large groups of random individuals to innovate and find solutions or to present ideas for resolving problems or performing difficult tasks….is this what today we call crowdsourcing?
Did crowdsourcing exist before the internet? Connectivity certainly changed the paradigm.First though, let’s put crowdsourcing into context. When the web was created the early applications helped us connect: the “communications layer” provided the connectivity – things that had previously got in the way of doing business weren’t a problem anymore. The Internet removed distance from the equation, borders vanished and time zones merged. Today’s 21-year-olds have spent more than 25,000 in front of TV’s and computer monitors.Played 10,000 hours of video games.Talked over 10,000 hours on the phone.And they’ve sent /received 250,000 emails. More than 50% of 21-year-olds have created content on the web.More than 70% of 4 year olds in the Western World have used a Computer.While it took 38 years before radio reached an audience of 50 million it took only 4 years before 50 million people owned a computer.
As the infrastructure improved so did our desire to interact with other people through the web. The social infrastructure that provided the means to interact in a consequential way: the “social layer” has turned us from passive consumers of information to active producers of content. What began however as entertainment soon became a way of life - now social networking infrastructure has become a utility. 1m new users every week – 1 out of 12 people in the world are on facebook50% use facebook everyday
Now, the “production layer” is being constructed – this is the infrastructure that enables interconnected communities to engage and produce. With this infrastructure came production – content – ideas – work artifacts – knowledge gathering and organization – and communities that were forming online around specific interests, for specific purposes and with specific goals.
When people use this infrastructure to problem solve or to generate something new and of value, we call it crowdsourcing.When in June 2006 Jeff informed us this was called crowdsourcing – it didn’t seem a huge leap from outsourcing which I understood - so like a bee to a honey pot I went in a new direction!Seth Priebatsch - CEO of SKAVNGER talks about the next layer being the game layer and wanting to build it on top of the world,
So what is and what isn’t crowdsourcing – are these a all synonyms or are they different?
Examples of models for:Wisdom – answer to a legal question / solving a complicated problem (e.g., Netflix) Knowledge – market data (i.e. price of gas) / Q&ATalent – design a logo / write an articleTime – find images / verify business listings /Expertise Based: data categorizing Process based: data entry
Where is crowdsourcing showing the greatest adoptionDutch and Brazil examples
Distributed Human Intelligence Tasking Approach – online communities are needed to perform tasks that require human intelligence in order to process large batches of data in systematic waysManaged Knowledge Discovery Approach – Suitable when knowledge exists (i.e., prior art / written records / other public sources) – provide framework to assemble, organize and manage knowledge in a coherent way into a single locationYou will need to decide whether YochaiBenkler’s process called “commons-based peer production” which he uses to describe Wikipedia’s model sits outside or inside this model. Broadcast Search Approach – which I refer to as the Where’s Waldo approach – an empirical answer exists and knowledge of a single (or handful) of experts needs to be found somewhere in the network.Peer Vetted Creative Production Approach – No empirically correct answer but the right answer is the one the market will support (based on consumer tastes or preferences) – generate and vet original ideas to find the best choice.
Crowdfunding is an approach to raising capital for new projects and businesses by soliciting contributions from a large number of stakeholders following three types of crowdfunding models: (1) Donations, Philanthropy and Sponsorship where there is no expected financial return, (2) Lending and (3) Investment in exchange for equity, profit or revenue sharing.CROWDFUNDINGDonations, Philanthropy and SponsorshipInvesting (Equity, Profit and Revenue Sharing)Lending
Crowdsourcing is used to tap into online communities of thousands of creatives to develop original products and concepts, including photography, advertising, film, video production, graphic design, apparel, consumer goods, and branding concepts.COLLECTIVE CREATIVITYAdvertisingApparelArtAudio/Video Branding Consumer GoodsDesignFilmMusic and Music VideosPhotographyWriting
Crowdsourcing is used to develop, aggregate, and share knowledge and information through open Q&A, user-generated knowledge systems, news, citizen journalism, and forecasting.COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGECitizen Journalism(Consider 'Citizen Media’)Citizen ScienceDirectoriesFilmForecasting and PredictionHealth and WellbeingHelp (inc. Customer Support) HistoryMapsMarket IntelligenceOpinionPollingQ&AReferenceReviewsSocial (or Peer) ProductionTranslationTravel
Crowdsourcing can be used to increase audience engagement and build loyalty through online dialogue with customers or a broader population. It can also be leveraged to provide a forum where views and opinions can be shared, ideas can be generated, and to receive feedback on products and services.COMMUNITY BUILDINGBrand EngagementCustomer EngagementEmployee EngagementFans and Followers
Crowdsourcing can be leveraged for social initiatives such as community programs, social production, group organizing, environmental issues, medicine, government and politics, and religion. These are non-commercial applications of Crowdsourcing where individuals or groups are invested in bettering the lives of others and in sharing information on beliefs, passions and causes.CIVIC ENGAGEMENTCharity and Non ProfitsEducationEmergency ResponseEnvironment (Green) Global Issues Government & PoliticsHumanitarian Local CommunityReligionVolunteer ComputingVolunteering
Crowdsourcing is used to connect labor demand and supply. Virtual workers perform activities that range from simple to specialized tasks.CLOUD LABORExpert-tasksFreelance PlatformsMicro-tasks
In a world of widely distributed knowledge, where the boundaries between a firm and its environment have become more permeable, companies cannot afford to rely entirely on their own research and ideas to maintain a competitive advantage.OPEN INNOVATIONDesignIdea GenerationOptimizationR&D
Applications, platforms and tools that support collaboration, communication and sharing among distributed groups of people.
Seven things you have to get right for successful Crowdsourcing: 1) Clear scope- be clear about: Task you want to submit to the market - Cloud Labor, Collective Creativity Problem you want to solve - Open Innovation Project you want to have funded – Crowdfunding - otherwise you could be selecting the wrong crowd Ideas generated may not be feasible 2) Measure a few metrics well Measure/Analyze Sentiment - (mining twitter to see what they are saying about you) Where are they saying what? (newsgroups/forums/wikis/FB/twitter) -- problem of self-selection: people liking you on FB less valuable than people giving feedback on your product on a focused newsgroup. 3) Know your crowd Identify the community leaders (COMMUNITY BUILDING) Who is giving feedback, answering questions, sharing knowledge? Identify the good workers/freelancers (CLOUD LABOR) Algorithms & feedback/ratings available through freelance platforms Pick the right investors; ones who have ties to the business; the ones that are doing it also for reasons other than money (CF). Profounder is seeing that the best synergies come from investors that are LOCAL to the business they are investing in 4) Motivation and Reward What reward is best for the community you want to tap into? [Competitions / challenges vs collaboration vs individual contributions] $ (Xprize --> MTurk) Ego (I'm not doing it for the money but because I'm going to be bumped up in some ranking, etc...) Other non-monetary incentives 5) Design around quality (check following re Scaleable) Leverage different methods of determining the correct answer by designing for accuracy in your HIT:Multiple ChoicePluralityKnown Answers (“Gold Standards”) - Technology - a combination of algorithms that filter for qualityFree-formMultiple HIT Workflow’s where a new Worker “edits” or “grades” previous Worker submissionsCreative TasksBonus Payments Front-end-test6) Nurture/Engage the community Once you have identified the best contributors / participants / workers / solvers how do you get them to come back/promote them? (Go back to rewards above + new) Bonuses for MTurk; the UTest model where the reward per bug increases as your reputation gets better. Pick the top leaders and 'nurture' them so they add value to the company (Community Building / Customer Engagement) 7) Disregard former leadership systems and constructs (organizational and geographic)
Ideation > Business Case > ProjectsChallenge Driven Innovation – definition / parameters /
Crowdsourcing can be used to increase audience engagement and build loyalty through online dialogue with customers or a broader population. It can also be leveraged to provide a forum where views and opinions can be shared, ideas can be generated, and to receive feedback on products and services.COMMUNITY BUILDINGBrand EngagementCustomer EngagementEmployee EngagementFans and Followers
Very interesting re whether it can scale and be transformational.
A typical Large Enterprise has a well defined structure of vertical and horizontal processes. Here you see example of a Banking and Financial Services company. Examples of vertical processes are loan management, check processing. Examples of horizontal processes are HR, Finance & Accounting. Multiple years of outsourcing and flirting with six-sigma, lean manufacturing, straight-through processing and other advanced process frameworks, created something very helpful to us – a process-driven culture and in-depth understanding of enterprise operations. My next two examples will show you how this knowledge can be a great help for Crowdsourcing Providers in targeting a Large Enterprise. Another important dimension of typical Enterprise operations is Process-based vs. Expertise-based work. Paying an invoice or entering new account is a typical Process-based work, which requires minimal skill, while researching equity market or conducting legal analysis are examples of Expertise-based work, which normally require advanced expertise of a worker.
Let me provide you with examples of the analyses of 2 different areas of opportunity in a typical large bank. We will pick one vertical and one horizontal process.
Lets look at the example of targeting a vertical process of a diversified bank with Cloud Labor value proposition. Lets say we quickly agree to focus on the retail banking division where operations tend to be very transaction-intensive, which is good for Cloud Labor. Our first challenge is about a dozen of processes in the value chain of a typical retail banking business. If we follow the money (i.e., process size), and stay with transaction-intensive (i.e., repetitive ones), we’d quickly prioritize Transaction Processing. That’s where we would see the next challenge in the form of sub-processes. It is interesting to point out that this is where traditional outsourcing stops! Check Processing or Loan Processing are typical targets of a Business Process Outsourcing supplier. As I mentioned before, in Crowdsourcing we need to go deeper to the task level. Lets pick Check Processing for this deep dive. That’s where we see a task called Exception Processing, that requires very simple judgment (basically it’s just a scanned image verification), can be easily separated from the rest of the process, and performed in very large numbers ... a great crowdsourcing candidate, isn’t it? Data ManagementData VerificationData Entry & CollectionData De-duplicationAlgorithm TrainingCategorizationClassificationTaggingSentiment AnalysisContent & MediaModerate Photos & ContentContent Creation & EditingTranscriptionBusiness ServicesSearch Relevancy Product Usability Testing Research
My previous example was about targeting process-based work. Interestingly, targeting expertise-based opportunities requires very similar disaggregation approach. This example shows how typical knowledge processes of a bank can be traced for opportunity. Lets say we start with end-to-end knowledge processes and pick Financial Research. In the next level of analysis we’d review multiple types of Financial Research and focus on Fixed Income. This is where we find domain-specific tasks that can be directly targeted with Cloud Labor. In this example, analysis of tasks suggests that Reference Data Verification (which is basically a glorified data comparison task) is a good target for Cloud Labor value proposition. Data ManagementData VerificationData Entry & CollectionData De-duplicationAlgorithm TrainingCategorizationClassificationTaggingSentiment AnalysisContent & MediaModerate Photos & ContentContent Creation & EditingTranscriptionBusiness ServicesSearch Relevancy Product Usability Testing Research