Kathy Harris

In almost every conference or meeting on innovation, people ask about or tell me about their plans for crowdsourcing. And idea management vendors are adding crowdsourcing structure and functions to their products. So, the desire to use this practice and the buzz about it are very high and there are enough success stories to get people excited.

In May, 2009 I blogged on the skills and expertise needed to design and develop a crowdsourcing event. See the original posting here and please read the comments too. Several readers offered good updates and ideas on building the capabilities for crowdsourcing. There is also much more attention in the business press — the discussion on crowdsourcing is deepening as is the insight on how to succeed. During June and July, two great articles appeared in the business press — one, a success story and the other, an analysis of new research on effective crowdsourcing. 

The success story examines the work of the Guardian newspaper and how it managed to crowdsource the review of thousands of documents to more than 20,000 readers. The response, participation and speed of this effort are simply astounding. In this article, the developer of the crowdsourcing environment offers his perspective on how the event was conducted and why it was so successful. If you haven’t seen this yet, it is definitely worth a read.  

Recent research and analysis findings are described in an article from the New York Times on Sunday, 19 July.  The research work was done at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. The case studies and research suggest that “open-innovation models succeed only when carefully designed for a particular task and when the incentives are tailored to attract the most effective collaborators.” 

So, crowdsourcing is hot. Success stories and lessons learned are increasing. And, as with other social processes, crowdsourcing appears simple but behind the façade, it needs good, intentional design and management. Watch for more on this topic and please share your lessons learned and experiences with me.