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Before even being named, crowdsourcing became a large sensation in 1849 when Joseph Henry created a meteorological project for the Smithsonian by networking hundreds of volunteers to observe the weather in different areas of the United States. Soon the program grew and led to the regular submission of weather reports which contributed to the first crowd sourced book of weather observations. A few years later, Spencer Fullerton Baird assisted the Smithsonian in collecting a variety of natural organisms by putting together a group of untrained men called the Megatherium Society. He taught these men how to collect specimens with the end goal of furthering the knowledge of natural history in the United States. In the 1950's, a satellite launched by the United States was tracked by volunteers around the world through the Operation Moonwatch Program. These examples show the outsourcing of work to complete a task to people without advanced training [Bruno, 2011].
Reference: Bruno, Elena. “Smithsonian Crowdsourcing Since 1849!” Smithsonian Institution Archives, 14 Apr. 2011, siarchives.si.edu/blog/smithsonian-crowdsourcing-1849.Image: Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95, Box 11, Folder: 15 https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_9168
As the world developed, the definition of crowd sourcing changed from these initial situations to that of a modern company going to a large group of people with the thought that they will aide in the performance of a particular job. Schenk and Guittard explored this. The “crowd” of people acts as an undefined employee of the company that has outsourced the work (the client firm). But, crowd sourcing is not confined to this specific definition. It still takes place even if a company does not specifically outsource the work. If a solution is found within the crowd or the public, crowd sourcing has occurred. The main idea of crowd sourcing is obtaining ideas from the public which can then be utilized to solve problems. These ideas are based on the individuals providing them, which is a change from the ideas of company employees. Any projects can be outsourced, whether they are simple, complex, or creative.
There are three participants in crowd sourcing: companies who benefit from the action of outsourcing work, the crowd, and a platform that allows the crowd sourcing to take place (a communication link such as the internet). In most situations, crowd sourcing is similar to auditioning people to solve a problem that a firm presents them with. This “audition” is open to all people. The solutions that people come up with are chosen after the “auditions” take place. They are not selected prior to the outsourcing of the problem which creates an atmosphere of equal opportunity. Other times, all solutions provided by the crowd may be combined to form the best application of ideas. For example, in creative crowd sourcing many ideas are integrated into forming the best product rather than being specifically selected to solve the task at hand. This means that firms will continually reference and look at the submitted ideas which is a reason why crowd sourcing is performed - to gain a multitude of ideas for the future.
Some advantages to crowd sourcing are that it is a low cost activity, it reduces the dependence that companies will have on particular firms for ideas and solutions, and due to the large amount of people that make up the crowd, a good answer to the presented problem will be easily obtained. On the other hand, there are downsides. Crowd sourcing complicated problems requires a large amount of skill and time from the crowd. This must be taken into account when outsourcing a problem to the public as it may change a low cost activity to one that needs a financial incentive. Crowd sourcing also may create new channels of dependence on a third party platform which is used to communicate with the crowd. Lastly, there is a risk that the solution that is used by a client firm can be reused by the person who created it to solve the problems of other client companies. There is a lack of exclusivity [Schenk, 2009].
Currently, crowd sourcing is a large part of society. Waze, an application focusing on navigation and traffic, utilizes feedback such as real-time information on road blocks, accidents, police surveillance, and more from current application users in order to aid in the relaying of information to other users. This is done in an effort to educate people on their commute [Waze, 2015]. Furthermore, iStockphoto is an image sharing platform which allows all people, whether they are professional photographers or amateur ones, to post pictures on the site which can then be bought for a few dollars. This crowd sourcing application was purchased by Getty Images, a similar service [Howe, 2018].
References:
References:
[Bruno, 2011] Bruno, Elena. “Smithsonian Crowdsourcing Since 1849!” Smithsonian Institution Archives, 14 Apr. 2011, siarchives.si.edu/blog/smithsonian-crowdsourcing-1849.
[Schenk, 2009] Schenk, Eric, and Claude Guittard. “Crowdsourcing: What Can Be Outsourced to the Crowd, and Why? .” University of Strasbourg, 7 Dec. 2009.
[Waze, 2015] “Waze – Crowdsourcing Maps and Traffic Information.” Digital Innovation and Transformation, 6 Dec. 2015, digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/submission/waze-crowdsourcing-maps-and-traffic-information/.
[Howe, 2018] Howe, Jeff. “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.” Wired, Conde Nast, 2 Oct. 2018, www.wired.com/2006/06/crowds/.
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