By Ashi Gupta
Increasing efficiency with the power of the crowd
The term “crowdsourcing” is a combination of the words “outsourcing” and “crowd”. Basically, tasks are delegated to a sizable number of people who share similar interests, skills, and abilities rather than to an individual or specific company. Crowdsource business Model facilitates companies with access to operational solutions like ideas and technologies, upgraded consumer interaction, opportunities for co-collaboration, operation optimization, and reduced costs. Companies like Wikipedia, Waze, YouTube, Kickstarter, LEGO ideas, Coca Cola, etc, are the ones involved in crowdsourcing.
There is a lot of subcategory of crowdsourcing including crowd-voting, crowd-solving, crowd-searching, and of course, the famous one is crowdfunding which is asking a crowd to donate/fund a defined amount of money for a specific cause, project or other use.
Increased connectivity between people across the globe has been the biggest contributor to the growing interest in crowdsourcing practice that’s why the practice rose to popularity around the same time as the emergence of commerce, social media, and the smartphone culture. Though it can take a lot of moderation and feedback, there’s a ton of benefits that far outweigh the negatives when it comes to Crowdsourcing. It reduces cost, increases your options and scope for creativity and there’s often much less work involved. These benefits are unavoidable and attract a large amount of interest. Scaling is a difficult problem for any business to solve, however, crowdsourcing provides an easy solution for scaling out any workforce by farming out small portions of a project that can be completed by remote workers at any given time or place. Crowdsourcing also offers a cheaper way to complete projects because when a group of people unites digitally to complete a task, businesses can bypass most of the costs typically associated with operations.
Some successful examples of Crowdsourcing:
Lego
Lego, a toy company, is responsible for probably one of the best examples of Crowdsourcing. The company allows users to design new products, and at the same time, test the demand. Lego has been successful in increasing the number of product ideas while also improving customer engagement. Creators take it upon themselves to promote their idea, and in doing so promote Lego as a company, too.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a crowdsourced encyclopedia written collaboratively by the people who use it. You might be among those who wonder how does this giant actually operates and makes money. The giant operates on a donation-based revenue model where the organization gets most of its funds in the form of donations. It only focuses on handling the website, servers, and administration, and the main content is contributed by the volunteers for free by crowdsourcing
Amazon
Amazon Studios incentivizes voters and content creators to participate on its platform through the value it creates for both parties. For the voters, it’s a chance for them to participate and influence their potential entertainment experience, and put on the screen something they may have always wanted.
AS has made a large place for itself in the world of TV and film production. Amazon Preview is another stop along the way, which is an invite-only community that provides feedback on test footage, storyboards, and concepts.
The article is written for 180 Degrees Consulting, Delhi Technological University, under the campaign #DemystifyingBizModels. To read more content shared by our other consultants, please check out our LinkedIn page-https://www.linkedin.com/company/180dc-dtu
