Does the Wisdom of Crowds Produce Good Ideas?
November 14th, 2011 | 
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If you’re aiming to address a problem or come up with great work, the more individuals involved the better. In any given group, the cream will rise to the top: the best ideas and the greatest answers will inevitably emerge.
That, at the least, is the concept of crowdsourcing. It’s the thought that instead of relying on one person to come up with the answer to a problem, you ought to put out an open call for help, then wait to find out what happens.
Crowdsourcing in practice
Crowdsourcing can be applied in many different circumstances. And there’s no doubt that in a lot of them, it truly does work.
One example is open source software. This has been crowdsourced for several years. Since the underlying source code which makes up an open source package is available to anyone who wants to change it, it’s surprisingly easy for an individual with a good idea and a bit of technical nous to make a difference.
Take the open source browser, Firefox. Unlike closed-source packages like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, advancements to Firefox have been completely conceived, applied and tested by the crowd.
The end result? In January this year, Firefox overtook Internet Explorer as Europe’s most widely used web browser. Proof of the power of crowdsourcing? Well, perhaps – although other factors – like Internet Explorer’s recurrent security problems - may also have played their part.
Crowdsourcing for market research
Crowdsourcing isn’t just about software development. It can be applied to any sort of situation in which you need work doing or a problem solving.
A frequent use for crowdsourcing is market research. Instead of assuming you know what your potential customers want, or asking a small group to tell you the things they think, crowdsourcing lets you cast the net much wider.
You don’t only have to ask your current customers. You could do what Dell did with its IdeaStorm project. Throw open a website which makes it easy for people to submit, discuss and vote on ideas, then see what goes on. You never know what will emerge.
Reportedly, ideas derived from IdeaStorm led the computing giant to introduce light-up keys to its laptops and prompted it to offer more colour choices to laptop buyers. Could crowdsourcing ideas result in improvements in your products too?
Clearly, IdeaStorm worked well for Dell, using its multi-million pound marketing budget, plus its ability to generate publicity for such a large-scale crowdsourcing effort. But not every single company is able to make the critical mass vital for such a project to bear fruit.
Design by crowdsourcing
Small enterprises thinking about crowdsourcing may need to find other ways to really make it work for them. A clear option is design. Why pay one logo designer to create a logo for your company, when you could crowdsource designs from 100s of designers on a website like99Designs?
Here’s the way it works: you post a brief for whatever you want designed. Then designers ‘compete’ to create the best design. For the business commissioning the project, the advantage is clear: they are able to pick from hundreds of possible options, but only have to pick and pay for one.
It sounds too good to be true. And when you dig a little deeper, maybe it is. Will a designer who knows they probably won’t even receive money at the end of it genuinely give their all? Will they bother to spend time and effort comprehending your business and its objectives, to generate a design that meets them? In fact, will the very best designers really bother creating designs for crowdsourced projects whatsoever?
Use crowdsourcing wisely
The real truth about crowdsourcing is that it’s unlikely to alter how you do things. But it can be quite a helpful tool when looking for information, feedback and inspiration.
You should be cautious. Crowdsourcing can motivate superficiality. For instance, without certain reward, you can’t expect individuals to put a whole lot of effort into helping your crowdsourcing project – particularly when you’re asking them to do something that is their livelihood.
For projects which require a high level of commitment – like redesigning your site, or developing a new product – crowdsourcing may not be the answer. However, if you’re seeking opinions, feedback or advice, it usually is an excellent starting point.
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