Aimee / Published on February 20, 2013
Crowdsourcing can help your business grow and thrive, but what exactly is it? And how can this relatively new way of working help your business?
Crowdsourcing is when businesses use the internet to reach out and gather information and ideas from people. It typically involves breaking a project into small components and assigning them to the general public by posting requests on a website.
It has grown in popularity in recent years due to the fact that more heads are better than one in the idea’s process and getting the work done.
There are many different ways crowdsourcing can help businesses thrive, with micro-tasking being one of the biggest benefits. This allows tasks that would take one person a great deal of time to complete, to be completed a lot quicker by a lot more people which seems a pretty simple solution!
This method of working also allows businesses to achieve better quality results. This is due to the opportunity to gather several people’s best ideas and skills, rather than using just one person who cannot be a specialist in every aspect of a particular project that the business requires.
However, you must ensure that clear, precise instructions are given when crowdsourcing! Whether you are just gathering ideas, research or having work completed, without clear instructions it could mean a lot of time is wasted both on your businesses behalf and of the people working on your behalf.
One of the best examples of crowdsourcing out there and one that helps explain it the best is Wikipedia. They wanted to set up an encyclopaedia, but instead of providing all of the information themselves the founders allow people, the ‘crowds’, to add the information they have themselves. And so the world’s largest encyclopaedia was born!
Kickstarter is also a great example of crowdsourcing, where independent projects are created and people give their input when shared with the community. Every project has a funding goal and deadline, so if the project is popular they can earn money to make it happen.
Have you ever considered using crowdsourcing to help your business?
