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Crowdsourcing: For Love or for Money?
Bnet.com, the new business oriented offering from technology news giant Cnet.com, published a crash course in crowdsourcing. Jennifer Alsever has done a solid job of outlining some basic strategies to bring the traditional business crowd up to speed.
There is one major point raised in this article that diverges from Cambrian House’s approach to crowdsourcing. The wisdom of crowds is pitched as a free alternative to consultants or focus groups, rather than as a meeting of equals:
Use these techniques to harness the intelligence of customers that love your business, talk about your business, and better yet, will do free work for your business in today’s increasingly democratic, user-generated, social-networked, marketplace.
At Cambrian House, our crowdsourcing model is based on the belief that the reward should be equal to the value that you add. “Give them stuff” and “give them fame” isn’t enough. Every valuable contribution to a Cambrian House project is rewarded with royalty points, which translate into an ongoing percentage of the profits when the product goes to market.
Some of the things not mentioned in the article that we think are important to think about when considering crowdsourcing for your company are:
- Transparency - unless you are willing to open the kimono (my favorite cliche) you will not get valuable feedback/data/work from your community. How can they give you what you want if they don’t know where you’re coming from?
- Passion in your company - you are trying to engage your most passionate users. “If you build it, they will come” is not applicable without passion. A good indication of this is whether your employees/consultants spend every minute possible in your community. Check out our fave blog on this topic for more information!
- Time - you can’t ignore your community. Every person that contributes to your new crowdsourced model should be given the care and attention you give your employees. If you are not willing to commit the time to them, your community will not commit time to you.
Crowdsourcing is changing the way business is done, and Cambrian House is proud to be the leading edge of the transformation.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter. How do you think corporations should approach crowdsourcing?
February 6th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I think that crowds are willing to ’source’ corporations because crowds like to contribute to a goal that they think is worth contributing to. Two things have to be clear:
1: I like the goal
2: My contribution matters
I think the goal may well be altruistic, but the self-centered contributor must have the feeling that (S)HE contributed. Subsequently corporations have two challenges:
1: Find company goals that can be shared by a large audience
2: Give individuals the feeling that their contribution is important
What do you think: is this approach too individualistic?
February 6th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Not at all too individualistic. You raise a valid point, the individuals that compose the “crowd” need certain conditions met.
Crowdsourcing should definitely offer rewards to all parties involved, whether the reward be as simple as acknowledgement and that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you make a difference or a share of the final revenue is up to the individual.
The difference between Cambrian House and opensource projects isn’t the level of passion, we care deeply about connecting people with projects that they can get fired up about, it’s that our platform allows for additional rewards. Sort of a “have your cake and eat it too” approach.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:44 am
That would be hilarious if MJ woke up to find this and stormed into the office on a rampage. XD
February 7th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Oh, i’m sorry, i was on the pda and must have gotten mixed up, I mean to post the last comment on the other post, sorry!
February 7th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Carl, Definitely agree with you. Wikipedia is altruistic, but people add/edit for the glory of having their contribution matter.
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