Source: Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving : Daren Brabham. Convergence Vol 14
By John Mokwetsi
You could be one of those techno-geeks sitting in an office hoping to do a Mark Zuckerberg and start you own Facebook equivalent.
IT seems the model of an individual creative mind has been overtaken by crowdsourcing and year in year out wise business decisions in the digital field have come from forward thinking companies and individuals outsourcing from users. The importance of collaborative intelligence can never be underrated in these times where a thin line between professional and amateur has become blurred from the naked eye.
"The old-fashioned notion of an individual with a dream of perfection is being replaced by distributed problem solving and team-based multi-disciplinary practice. The reality for advanced design today is dominated by three ideas: distributed, plural, collaborative. It is no longer about one designer, one client, one solution, one place. Problems are taken up everywhere, solutions are developed and tested and contributed to the global commons, and those ideas are tested against other solutions. The effect of this is to imagine a future for design that is both more modest and more ambitious." (Brian Mau, 2004: 17)
Coined by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson in the June 2006 issue of Wired magazine the term crowdsourcing describes a new web-based business model that harnesses the creative solutions of a distributed network of individuals through what amounts to an open call for proposals.
Howe offers the following definition: Simply defined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential laborers.
A good example is Wikipedia that does not rely on professional researchers for its information but from all over the world.
In journalism, citizen journalists photos and articles contributed to newspapers is another form of crowdsourcing. A good example is Now public and allvoices. Where as the print reporter or broadcast reporter is still relying on that politician friend for the scoop, all good stories and tips are now coming from that cleaner and coffee making lady with an annoying voice but crucially is with access to the Internet. The cleaner who can easily anonymously sms that crowdsourcing platform a forward-thinking web based newspaper provides as a way of admitting that their eyes are limited and cannot be the see-all as the word Watchdog might insinuate.
Crowdsourcing is not merely a web 2.0 buzzword, but is instead a strategic model to attract an interested, motivated crowd of individuals capable of providing solutions superior in quality and quantity to those that even traditional forms of business can.
Brabham cites in his highly acclaimed article that companies like Threadless have benefited from crowdsourcing designs for their T-shirts from the general public.
Goldcorp, a Canadian gold mining company, developed the ‘Goldcorp Challenge’ in March 2000. ‘Participants from around the world were encouraged to examine the geologic data [from Goldcorp’s Red Lake Mine] and submit proposals identifying potential targets where the next 6 million ounces of gold will be found’ on the Ontario, Canada, property (Goldcorp Challenge Winners!, 2001: 6).
By offering more than US $500,000 in prize money to 25 top finalists who identified the most gold deposits, Goldcorp attracted ‘more than 475,000 hits’ to the Challenge’s website and ‘more than 1400 online prospectors from 51 countries registered as Challenge participants’ (Goldcorp
Challenge Winners!, 2001: 6).
The numerous solutions from the crowd confirmed many of Goldcorp’s suspected deposits and identified several new ones, 110 deposits in all. Goldcorp’s subsequent ‘Global Search Challenge’, with US$2 million in cash and capital investments available for winning, launched in 2001.
Maybe it is high time Africa and online newsrooms (if we can call them that) stop pretending one man can run a digital platform. There is need to harness the power of the layman in shaping ideas. Despite not being able to pay workers great minds out there are ready to contribute ideas to that old CEO who might be afraid to listen to the "genius" in his company.
Crowdsourcing is also a good example of how the employers in the Web 2.0 bubble (newspapers online, digital marketing, social media etc) have to realise maybe the man who appears good enough in the office has not much to offer than the layman they pass on their way to those resort out of town love nest.
In short, crowdsourcing works because of the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ principle: the idea that a crowd – a collection of individuals – is much more likely to get the right answer than a single individual.
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