About
Crowd Forum is a social network and wiki where people who share an interest in crowdsourcing and open innovation can share ideas and learn about this emerging phenomenon. Crowd Forum was created by the founders of Microengagement, a consulting practice that helps companies leverage the power of their business/brand constituents "the crowd" to develop products, accurately predict environmental, product, and sales outcomes and create new levels of customer intimacy by involving customers in the business processes. What is Crowdsourcing?Our view of crowdsourcing is: "A growing phenomenon that describes the process of gathering groups of people together and using their untapped knowledge to create something of value."Crowd Forum Serves Three Primary Audiences:Business leaders who are looking to improve their results through crowdsourcing and share what they have learned with others.Researchers, the media and general public who can use Crowd Forum as an educational tool.Crowdsourcing practitioners and consultants who share tools & techniques and network with each other.
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What's News
Case StudiesThe Crowd Strikes It Rich Goldcorp - a Canadian mining company – increased its market value from $100 million to $9 billion for $575,000 invested in the “Goldcorp Challenge” to anyone who could use its own publicly offered mining data to find new sources of the precious metal. Goldcorp Challenge
Win a Million Dollars Reccomending Videos Learn how Netflix improved its recommendation service 8.5% by offering a $1 million prize. You will be surprised who is in the lead. Netflix Prize |
How to CrowdsourceSignificant Advantages with Crowdsourcing EconomicsTake a deeper look into how crowdsourced organizations outperform traditional business models in terms of product development & return on investment. The Economics of Crowdsourcing |
| In the NewsLong Awaited Crowdsourcing Book Due Out this Summer Jeff Howe, creator of the term is just completing his book on crowdsourcing. Many of the capters are published on his site and he promises the most "trenchant" visitor comments will make it into the book's appendix. crowdsourcing.com
Could Wikia do to Google and Yahoo! what Wikipedia did to Britanica? An open source search engine is poised to threaten the dominance of Google and Yahoo! in the multi billion dollar search engine market. Wikia has indexed 30 million Websites, and is rolling out a set of editing features that lets searchers reorder, add, remove, rate, annotate, and comment on results.Wikia Search
Smithsonian Turns to the Crowd to Identify Photos How the Internet - and you - will make history deeper, richer, and more accurate. Boston Globe. Everyone's a Historian Now
Crowdsourcing and New Product Development How do leading companies use their customers, employees and vendors to develop products that truly reflect customer wants and needs? This new white paper from Microengagement dives into how crowdsourcing companies generate and screen ideas,
perform concept development and testing, market, and distribute. New Product Development |
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Cornerstones of Crowdsourcing
- Self Selection - People will do a better job placing themselves than an HR Dept.
- Democratic Decision Making - The crowd is unfettered by politics and will (on balance) make objective decisions.
- Fresh Perspectives - Experts outside the designated discipline can solve problems in unique ways (triangulation)
- Equal Voices - By not meeting physically a greater number of participants will participate
- Meritocracy - Those who have consistently contributed the highest quality work will be the best managers
| - Natural Selection - What works well is absorbed into the whole, what does not work is rejected without malice
- Self Healing - Since the producers are themselves consumers, great care is taken to fix problems
- Self Organization - Members will seek the help of others and form teams to achieve a goal
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