Crowdsourcing

The term was first coined by writer Jeff Howe and Wired magazine editor Mark Robinson in June 2006 . While in outsourcing work is sent out of the competence of the company to professional performers for a certain amount of money, crowdsourcing does not pay for work or is small. All the necessary work is done by unpaid or low-paid amateur professionals who spend their free time creating content, solving problems, or even researching and developing. To explain the concept of attracting labor resources coordinated via the Internet, a comparison is made with voluntary computing , in which the computing resources of a wide range of users are attracted via the Internet on a voluntary basis ^[1] (and sometimes voluntary computing projects themselves are referred to as one of the forms of crowdsourcing ^{[2 ]} ).

One of the hallmarks of crowdsourcing is the breakdown of work into small parts (modules) ^[3] .

Crowdsourcing is part of what Eric von Hippel calls “user- centered innovation,” in which manufacturing companies rely on users not only to formulate needs, but also to identify products and enhancements to meet those needs. But, unlike highly specialized communities developing open source software or, for example, modernized accessories for outdoor activities, such work is managed and belongs to only one organization. To paraphrase von Hippel, we can say that this direction was created based on the perceived desire of consumers to share their ideas for free or at a small price solely out of interest to see these ideas embodied.

In September 2011, published an article on crowdsourcing of marketing professor at Kobe University in Tokyo, Susumu Ogawa, and Frank Piller, professor at the Munich Business School, which examined how companies “reduce the risk of product management ”, Using ubiquitous low-cost information technology to attract outsiders to the design process. The work describes several years of research in two companies, the example of which shows how to most effectively attract customers to management ^[4] .

Benefits

• Access to talented personnel around the world ^[5] .
• Meritocracy : only a specific product matters. Nationality and professional qualifications are not important. As a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed, the more successful of the registered InnoCentive participants were those who had less practical experience in the industry ^[6] .
• The assignment of one person to a large group of people.
• Obtaining the necessary materials, ideas and other information as a result of the work of an attracted audience ^[7] .

Among the many varieties ^{[8] [9] of} crowdsourcing, there are projects for voting and collecting ideas, processing scientific materials, competitive platforms, microtasks, crowdsourcing aggregators, reference resources, data sharing projects, various forms of collaboration with content and support for collective innovation .

Examples of crowdsourcing projects provided by Howe:

• Wikipedia is an electronic encyclopedia created primarily by volunteer forces.
• InnoCentive - a company inviting scientists for a competitive reward from $ 10 thousand to $ 100 thousand to solve the problems posed by companies such as Procter & Gamble , DuPont and BASF ^[10] ;
• Threadless - a company for the production of T-shirts from Chicago, the design development process consists solely of an online competition, the winners of the weekly competition receive $ 2 thousand and their work is launched into production;
• Muji - a Japanese manufacturer of household goods and furniture through its corporate website collects ideas for its products and decides to launch production according to the results of the competition;
• Peer-to-Patent - An American project based on the principle of collaboration: the state patent office constantly works with the open Internet community, a network of volunteers is involved in the examination of patent applications (scientists, technicians, people whose qualifications allow them to participate in the patenting process) ^{[11 ]} .
• eBird - a project that uses the resources of amateurs to observe birds ^[12] ;
• NASA Clickworkers - NASA project, created to analyze an array of images of the Martian surface by amateur astronomers ^[13] .

Voluntary computing - various distributed computing systems in which volunteer computers are used mainly for calculating various research and development models and data analysis - are also considered in some works as the implementation of crowdsourcing model ^{[2] [8] [14]} .

• Jeff Howe Crowdsourcing. Collective Intelligence as a Tool for Business Development = Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business. - M .: “Alpina Publisher” , 2012. - 288 p. - ISBN 978-5-9614-1889-7 .
• Egerev S.V., Zakharova S.A. Crowdsourcing in science // Almanac “Science. Innovation Education ” / Russian Research Institute of Economics, Politics and Law in the Scientific and Technical Field (RIEPP). - Languages ​​of Slavic culture, 2013. - No. 14 . - S. 175-186 . - ISSN 1996-9953 .
• Beth Novek. Wiki Government. How technology can make power better, democracy stronger, and citizens more powerful = Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful. - M .: Alpina Publisher, 2012 .-- 292 p. - ISBN 978-5-9614-1927-6 .
• Belenky A. Diverse crowdsourcing // ComputerPress. - 2011. - No. 10 .