Types of Crowdsourcing
Today’s Wednesday Work Wisdom…
Yesterday I spoke at an event called Crowdopolis. The topic was crowdsourcing. This has become one of the hot buzzwords in business. Companies of all sizes are dipping their toes into crowdsourcing.
But what is it really? Well, crowdsourcing is a lot of different things and can’t easily by lumped into one small bucket.
Here are a few of the crowdsourcing variations (and this is not a complete list):
- Solution Finding: This is where you use a crowd to solve a complex problem. Are you looking to develop a glass for the next iPhone that won’t smudge? Ask a crowd to see if they have a solution. InnoCentive and BrightIdea are two platforms that help` companies solve these types of problems (the latter is the engine behind GE’s ecoimagination initiative).
- Opinion Seeking - Crowds can be used, of course, to provide input and suggestions on how to improve your product. SurveyMonkey is a low-end version of this in action. MyStarbucksIdea.com is a more sophisticated version that runs on SalesForce.com’s “ideas” platform.
- Content Creation – Want to create an advertisement for your company but don’t want to hire a single design agency? Why not hire the world? Companies like Doritos have done this for their Super Bowl commercials with great success. Platforms like Tongal help companies crowdsource the creation of videos. News broadcasters are also doing this to help collect videos from individuals who shoot newsworthy footage on their iPhone.
- Design Competitions – Need a new logo? You don’t need to hire just one person from an agency or eLance.com (which is also a form of crowdsourcing, even though you only get one person doing the work, you get multiple people to bid on the work), you can use 99designs.com or logotournament.com to get hundreds of designs for the price of one. You select the one logo you like and pay only that one designer.
- Data Collection - This is a growing area of crowdsourcing. Instead of sending your employees out to inspect buildings, shelves in super markets, or potentially even read meters, get anyone to do it. For example, when someone is in a supermarket, have them snap a picture of your product on the shelves. This gives you insights into stocking levels and product placement, and the GPS tracking will give you the location without the need for tagging. Think of this as more data for your big data.
- Manual Tasks - This is outsourcing on steroids. Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk is an example of this. Break up your work into bite-sized chunks and get people to do these activities for pennies. There are many platforms for doing this in all shapes and sizes. Although it is not technically a crowdsourcing platform, one of my favorites websites is fiverr.com; a site where people will do almost anything for $5.
- Testing – Do you have something you want to test? uTest is a great platform for this. They can beat the heck out of your website looking for bugs, usability issues, or anything else. You can get hundreds of people banging on your system to stress it and test it.
- Customer service – What if you could get your fans to be customer service employees? Platforms like CrowdEngineering.com allow your most knowledgable customers to provide help to your entire customer base. If your customers have a technical problem, instead of speaking to an employee, they can be routed to one of these knowledgable fans. Think of this is a virtual “geek squad” or “genius bar.”
- Programming – One of my favorite crowdsourcing platforms is TopCoder. This is truly amazing. They have nearly a half million programmers, designers, testers and program managers who compete to create wireframes, designs, code, and algorithms, and then test everything for customers. This is one of the best end-to-end solutions out there.
- Crowd funding – Need money for an initiative or cause? Crowdfunding may be the way. Platforms like kickstarter.com enable people to raise money for their projects. There are platforms for raising money for non-profits. And now there is the emerging version which can allow for micro-angel investing.
As you can tell, crowdsourcing can be leveraged in many ways.
It is important to note that crowdsourcing is not THE answer. It is only a tool. You need to make sure you understand what you want to achieve and then determine if this approach is appropriate. Too many organizations have tried crowdsourcing, thinking it was a silver bullet, only to be wildly disappointed. Having said that, when used properly, it can reduce costs, timeframes, and risk, while providing high quality solutions.
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The Power of Positive Constraints (transcription)
Here’s the transcription of my Monday Morning Movie…
This morning I want to talk about the power of positive constraints. In the world of innovation, there seems to be this belief that we’re supposed to let everybody be free thinkers and let them do whatever they want. But, this actually destroys innovation. We need structure. We need constraints.
I’ll give you a really simple example. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll notice that about a month ago, I made a bit of a change.
Now, instead of just writing whenever I feel inspired to write or writing about whatever I want to write about, I’ve created structure. Mondays, there’s always a Monday Morning Movie. Tuesday, there’ll always be the transcription of the movie, along with on some weeks, a Tuesday Travel Tip. Wednesday is my Wednesday Work Wisdom. Friday is my Friday Fun Fact. As a result, over the past month without fail, there has been a minimum of four blog entries and, in some weeks, I’ve had five or six.
If you turn back the clock, you’ll notice that when I didn’t have structure, when I didn’t have those positive constraints, there would be some weeks where I might have only one. And there would be even a period of time where I wouldn’t write at all. So, constraints are actually a very good thing. First of all, because they give us a little bit of structure and it forces us to think a little more clearly around something. It gives us something to work around. But also, it sort of sets a tone for what we need to get done. If I’m committing to doing certain things every day, and I can do those constraints consistently, that’s very valuable.
And it’s not just about publicly declaring that on Monday, you can expect one of these videos. There’s another value that comes from having positive constraints…
It also reduces the level of thinking I need to do. This actually allows me to be more creative. If I gave you a blank sheet of paper and said, “Hey, come up with a great idea on how to improve your business,” you might come up with a lot of ideas. Probably, most of them would be pretty bad and I also suspect that you would struggle to come up with some great ideas.
On the other hand, if we worked on defining a really good problem statement – identifying what is the one area of your business where there is the greatest opportunity; identifying where you differentiate yourself from your competitors – that might actually give you even better results, more creativity, and even more value.
Constraints are not bad. We seem to think that we want people to “think outside the box,” but anybody who’s been following my work knows that I think instead, what we need is a better box (aka constraints).
Being organized; procedures; having a better box.
These are not bad things. These are things that will actually increase and enhance your level of creativity. So, look at an area in your life where you’re struggling to get things done.
Maybe part of the issue is confusion and a lack of clarity. Lack of clarity actually comes out of a lack of constraints. Constraints will give you clarity. Anytime that you feel stuck or confused, think about what structures you could put in place that would keep you accountable, that would keep you on track and keep you on target, and also improve your level of creativity.
When you start to think about positive constraints as a positive thing, I promise you, you will enhance your creativity massively.
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Tuesday Travel Tip
I travel a lot. And I travel with a lot of technology. In front of me now is my MacBook Pro, my iPad and my iPhone.
But when I am in hotels, they often charge for each internet connection. So I have to choose. Do I want to connect my computer, my tablet or my phone?
Well fortunately, there is an easy way to share a connection with all of your devices.
If you are using a MacBook, go to System Preferences > Sharing
You will see something like this…
To share your internet connection, just click the internet sharing box. Then you must select something in the “To computers using” area. Since I typically connect via wifi, sharing my computer’s wifi is not an option. So I share via bluetooth. Then all I do is turn on the bluetooth on my iPad and voila, I have internet everywhere.
If your Mac is connected to the internet via an ethernet cable, you have the option of sharing your connection via wifi. This is extremely useful on international travel when wifi is sometimes more difficult to get or is more expensive. In fact, in some overseas hotels, the only option is to connect via ethernet cable. If I only brought my iPad, I would be without data. But if I have my Mac, I can have a connection on both devices, as well as my iPhone to save on data roaming charge.
Let me know if you have any questions.
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The Power of Positive Constraints
Today’s Monday Morning Movie…
We often think of constraints as being something bad. But actually they can be quite beneficial. They can help us get more done work more efficiently. And surprisingly, they can help us be more creative.
You can read the transcription here….
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Four Heads Are Better Than One
Today’s Friday Fun Fact…
A machinist, clockmaker, glass blower and mathematician were all walking in Menlo Park….
Despite how this reads, it isn’t the beginning of a joke. It was actually the start of a new era.
I am talking of Charles Batcheldor (machinist), John Kruesi (clockmaker), Ludwig Boehm (Glass blower) and Francis Upton (Mathematician); who were all associates to Thomas Edison during the time the incandescent light bulb was invented. Collectively, this group was a dominant influence on some of history’s most radical inventions in the areas of telegraphy, telephony, the phonograph, and electric lighting.
Or did you hear the one about the inventor, botanist, essayist, and tire maker? The alliance of these seemingly mismatched men, Thomas Edison John Burroughs, Luther Burbank and Harvey Firestone, reportedly enabled Henry Ford to become one of the wealthiest men of his time, raising him up from “the handicap of poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance.”
In my Monday Morning Movie, I discussed the benefits of developing a mastermind group. This is not a new concept and was formulated back in 1937 by Napoleon Hill, advisor to two presidents and the author of Think and Grow Rich. Hill defined a Mastermind “as a mind that is developed through the harmonious cooperation of two or more people who ally themselves for the purpose of accomplishing any given task.”
It is the simple logic behind the theory two heads are better than one. And on Monday, I shared my own personal experience that you want those heads to contain divergent views, beliefs and backgrounds; not unlike a machinist, clockmaker, glass blower and mathematician. By tapping into the collective brilliance of individuals with opposing viewpoints, perhaps you too will begin to see the light.
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