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Crowdsourcing: Harnessing the Strength of the Masses
The idea behind crowdsourcing is that collectively a group can produce information and ideas that rival what could be created by an expert, and can often do it more quickly and significantly more cheaply than what could be done by an expert. While businesses can bring group employees together to brainstorm in an ‘internal crowd’ to come to mutually agreed solutions to problems, the power of an ‘external crowd’ is far greater, and grows along with the size of the participants.
Kevin Boudreau, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at London Business School, wrote in Harvard Business Review, that “although internal, crowdlike approaches to creativity and idea generation, such as ‘jams,’ ‘idea marketplaces,’ and ‘personal entrepreneurial projects,’ may increase the scope for exploration and flexibility inside companies, they are qualitatively different from and fall short of the full capability of external crowds.”
While using crowds can generate a high volume of innovative ideas, ultimately a decision needs to be made about which of the ideas that were created are the ‘best’ or the ‘winner’. Without employing open mindedness it’s often easy to overlook some ideas that may be truly innovative because they seem unfamiliar or unlike what has been done in the past.
Linus Dahlander, associate professor at the European School of Management and Technology, said “don’t be lured or lulled by the crowds. Innovation is not about how many suggestions you receive, but which of the ideas you give attention to. Companies need to either change how they filter such material or perhaps be more selective in the pool of external sources they draw from.”
