Social Innovation

"Great ideas and great innovation come from the minds of people, and socially networked innovation programs are a vital means for empowering people to effectively collaborate in an ever-more complex world." The Social Factor, p. 162 (Kindle ebook) (Sample Chapter-1) (errata)

Related topics are community-based design, distributed participatory design, and citizen science. Some call this crowdsourcing. A related topic would be citizens helping astronomers find planets.

A student essay reproduced without changes. The concept of a web page has been difficult for them so you'll notice the reference list at the bottom.

POWER OF THE CROWD:

SYNERGY VERSUS BRAIN DRAIN

Alexandra Aboulhosn

Synopsis: I will address the issue of crowdsourcing in general, and the possible implications it may have on certain businesses. For example, given the current economic situation, crowdsourcing may be the perfect solution for companies facing pressures to cut costs. On the other hand, there are professionals who are very unenthusiastic and pessimistic when it comes to the rising popularity and reliance on crowdsourcing for social media content as well as organizational marketing information resources.

As mentioned in the synopsis, crowdsourcing has made exceptional changes for all types of industries when it comes to significant cost reduction (Vukovic 2010). How this is achieved is through the “outsourcing to the crowd” which results in crowdsourcing. Made possible thanks to the features of today’s Web 2.0, crowdsourcing is a practice taken on by organizations in which they look to the public, and/or any external party for contribution pertaining to the information or content which the organization requires. This can include examples from graphic design contests to a more comprehensive view of marketing intelligence. The way that crowdsourcing reduces costs is by outsourcing to a huge external population, this means that far more people are contributing far more information, for far less money than the organization would have originally been paying an internal department or external consulting agency.

A more specific case of how widely popular and widespread crowdsourcing initiatives have become for organizations is the example of txteagle. Unlike other more generic computer-based forms of crowdsourcing, txteagle is a program which does not rely on Web 2.0, but rather, the contribution provided through mobile phone technology. Txteagle© is an organization which basically prompts individuals to provide their regional mobile service providers, as well as other huge organizations with a vast array of information in exchange for monetary airtime compensation or “mobile money” (MPESA) (Eagle 2009). This type of information gathering has twofold benefits: on the one hand, the major corporations are saving millions of dollars; on the other hand, they are also gaining a wider variety of information since they are receiving contributions from a larger population as opposed to if they had not opted for crowdsourcing.

Another beneficial way in which crowdsourcing, enabled by Web 2.0, can be considered beneficial is in how it improves the streamlining of an industry or individual organization’s value chain. Take PeopleCloud© for example. By collectively gaining individual more minute portions of information and intelligence from within an organizations workforce itself, or even from the environment which is external to the organization, PeopleCloud©, a collective and knowledgeable source of information databases was formed (Lopez, Vukovic and Laredo 2010). Thanks to PeopleCloud’s implementation of crowdsourcing technology, they are able to gain valuable information from across an entire value chain, which leads to a more streamlined business process, as well as a cost-effective and convenient virtual marketplace from which individuals are able to contact specialist online.

An alternative way in which crowdsourcing as a business solution is a beneficial option, oddly enough, has nothing to do with businesses. General education is another field which has subsequently benefited from the implementation of collaboration and crowdsourcing technology. Take, for example, Wikipedia, or any “knowledge media” site available today (Corneli 2009). These types of educational and informational resources would not be available, or rather, would not be as widely viewed or collectively blended, had it not been for the crowdsourcing which embedded them together into a single platform. Thus, not only organizations aiming at cost reduction, but also students and the general public can profit from the positive effect crowdsourcing and collaboration have had on the variety and availability of educational resources online.

All things considered, crowdsourcing is responsible for the vast subsequent attributes it provides both to and from the public as well as whole organizations. Today, everything on the internet is somehow affected by, or improved through crowdsourcing. It has been proven that programs, resources, and even applications created through collaboration operate better, and improve the more often they are implemented (Ritoro 2010). Thus, in terms of reducing costs, improving educational and informational resources, as well overall advances in technological and/or organizational resources, crowdsourcing has proved to be enormously valuable.

However, it would be foolish to ignore the other side of the coin, since for every innovation, there is a backlash of public disapproval, and the widely popular adoption of crowdsourcing is no exception.

Specifics aside, the most widespread “commercial” disapproval for crowdsourcing, or rather, any form of user generated content via Web 2.0, is that it has made the once clear distinction between professional work and substandard creation, far less discernible (Zimmer 2008). According to Michael Zimmer’s article, there are two major drawbacks to crowdsourcing and collaboration. The first negative aspect is that by using Web 2.0 and thus providing user generated content online, there is the unintended result of decreased security, since millions of people are providing mass amounts of personal information on relatively insecure online platforms. The second way in which crowdsourcing is misleading is through the way in which corporations are supposedly exploiting the individuals who provide the crowd-sourced information. This includes, undercompensating, privacy violation, and the capital gain of greedy corporations. The most common way in which corporations benefit from user generated content is by surveying thousands of Web 2.0 sites and compiling marketing data.

On the other hand, assuming that the information which is collaborated and willingly provided by the individual user is merited, and intentional, another major issue can arise for the organization which solicited the crowdsourcing to begin with. For example, while the idea that ‘two heads are better than one’ is the main premise behind crowdsourcing, and for the most part accurate, such widespread contribution can provide an organization with a vast amount of confusing, contradictory, or simply irrelevant data (Whilta 2009). This presents a negative aspect of crowdsourcing from the perspective of the organization.

Another negative view of Web 2.0 and crowdsourcing is derived from the complaint that this technological collaborative innovation has contributed to a massive wave of “laziness.” From the organizational perspective, the “laziness” factor is seen in two ways. Firstly, crowdsourcing to external parties reduces the amount of control which the organization normally maintains over its Intel, thus leading to what Guittard calls “unlearning” (Guittard 2009). The second way in which crowdsourcing and Web 2.0 activity can potentially harm the organization through promotion of laziness is through wasted time. Anable tries to illustrate how the time which employees spend using Web 2.0/crowdsourcing, has ironically led to a far less productive workforce (Anable 2008).

A final criticism of Web 2.0 and crowdsourcing activities relates back to the point mentioned earlier. In the end, while user generated content can have some creative benefits as well as advantageous collaborative aspects, there will always be a criticism of the validity, integrity, and authority behind these Web 2.0 online amateur produced works. As Simons points out during the last federal election in the United States, we can no longer distinguish between mere public opinion and actual factual events from which professional opinions are derived (Simons 2008).

In the end, crowdsourcing has its benefits as well as its limitations. In terms of organizational crowdsourcing initiatives as a means of cost reduction as well as collaborative platforms like Wikipedia, I believe that crowdsourcing and collaboration have done more harm than good. On the other hand, there is merit behind the school of thought which believes that a distinct line should always remain between professional creation and amateur opinion. The answer is to implement crowdsourcing and all Web 2.0 features in the appropriate context and for a suitable purpose.

WORKS CITED

Anable, Audrey. Bad Techno-Subjects: Griefing is Serious. november 17, 2008. http://jordanjennings.com/Mediascape/Summer09/Fall08_Anable.pdf (accessed January 3, 2011).

Corneli, Joseph. "Crowdsourcing a Personalized Learning." j.a.corneli@open.ac.uk. 2009. http://metameso.org/~joe/docs/corneli-ectel-draft.pdf (accessed January 3, 2011).

Eagle, Nathan. Mobile Crowdsourcing . 2009. http://www.springerlink.com/content/x8hrq1h140756nq0/ (accessed January 3, 2011).

Guittard, Claude. "Crowdsourcing: What Can Be Outsourced To The Crowd, and Why?" cournot.u-strasburg.fr. December 7, 2009. http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/43/92/56/PDF/Crowdsourcing_eng.pdf (accessed January 3, 2011).

Lopez, Marina, Maja Vukovic, and Jim Laredo. PeopleCloud Service for Enterprise Crowdsourcing. July 5, 2010. http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/SCC.2010.74 (accessed January 3, 2011).

Ritoro, Mark. Smart Business Blog. June 23, 2010. http://www.harborresearch.com/_blog/Smart_Business_Blog/calendar/2010/6/ (accessed January 3, 2011).

Simons, Margaret. The limitations of the crowd. 2008. http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/swin:8094 (accessed January 3, 2011).

Vukovic, Maya. Laredo, Jim. Rajagopal, Sriram. Challenges and Experiences in Deploying Enterprise Crowdsourcing Service. 2010. http://www.springerlink.com/content/43875u3011ju54n8/ (accessed January 3, 2011).

Whilta, Paul. "Crowdsourcing and Its Application in Marketing Activities." Contemporary Management Research, 2009: 15-28.

Zimmer, Michael. Critical Perspecitives on Web 2.0. March 3, 2008. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2137/1943 (accessed January 3, 2011).