Books:

Benkler, Yochai. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale Press. Available for download.

A deep dive on the legal & economic drivers behind crowdsourcing. Benkler spent 10 years researching this book.

Downs, Larry, Mui, Chunka. (1999). Unleashing the Killer App. Harvard Business School Press. Available for download.

“Cannibalize Value Chains” is the clarion call of this book. Many companies waste time perfecting parts of their business that don’t add customer value.

Janis, Irving L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink. Houghton Mifflin

Provides supporting evidence on why classical, hierarchical management structures are dangerous.

Locke, Christopher, Levine, Rick, Searls, Doc, and, Weinberger, David (1999). The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. Perseus Books. Available for download.

Looks at business as a conversation between customers and merchants. Business win by starting conversations with their customers.

Raymond, Eric. S. (2000). The Cathedral and the Bazaar. O’Reilly. Available for download.

Discusses the foundations of why open source software works. Many parallels can be drawn to the crowdsourcing movement.

Surowiecki, James. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds. Anchor Books

Before there was crowdsourcing, Surowiecki’s book examined how crowds put their heads together and solved big problems.

Tapscott, Don & Williams, Anthony. (2006). Wikinomics. Portfolio

Comprehensive look into how modern companies are using crowdsourcing

Von Hippel, Eric. (2005). Democratizing Innovation. Available for download.

Newspaper / Magazines:

Boutin, Paul. (July 13, 2005). Crowdsourcing: Consumers as Creators. Business Week.

Goldhaber, Michael H. (December 1997). Attention Shoppers! Wired Magazine, issue 5.12.

Howe, Jeff. (June 2006). The Rise of Crowdsourcing. Wired Magazine, issue 14.06.

The article that coined the term “crowdsourcing”. This is a great read for those getting started.

Miller, Kerry. (September 10, 2007). Crowdsourcing Customer Service. Business Week

Rubenstein, Sarah. (January 2005). Companies Tackle Worker Maladies; Faced With Weak Output, More Firms Aim to Treat On-the-Job Aches, Pains. Wall Street Journal.

Simon, Herbert. (1997). The Attention Economy and the Net. First Monday.

The attention economy is a primary driver of the open source movement. Simon postulates that an oversupply of information creates scarcity of attention.

Totty, Michael. (June 19, 2006). How to Decide? Create a Market. The Wall Street Journal.

Unknown. (November 27, 2006). Electrolux Redesigns Itself. Business Week.

West, Lena. (December 10, 2007). Mob wisdom means business. InfoWorld

Blogs:

Caton, Josh. Crowdsourcing: A Million Heads is Better than One.

Howe, Jeff. http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/

Lowe, Suzanne. Social Networking and Professional Services: an oxymoron?

Web Sites:

Alsever, Jennifer. The New Human Resource. Bnet.

Alsever, Jennifer. What Is Crowdsourcing? Bnet

Crowdsourcingdirectory.com

Crowdpreneur.com

Dye, Renée. (April 2008). The promise of prediction markets: A roundtable. McKinsey Quarterly. Registration required

An in depth look into how leading companies use decision markets. Roundtable members include: Bo Cowgill, from Google, Todd Henderson, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Jeff Severts, vice president and general manager of Geek Squad, and James Surowiecki, a staff writer at the New Yorker, and author of The Wisdom of Crowds

Dunay, Paul, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

iCommons. The Open Business Guide

Google’s page rank technology explained