Crowdsourcing Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Crowdsourcing - Term Paper Example Basically, the crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving, online and production environment that has appeared in recent years. Some of the well-known instances of this model comprise iStockphoto, Threadless, InnoCentive, the Goldcorp Challenge, and user-generated advertising contests. The term â€Å"crowdsourcing† was first time used in the June 2006 by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson in an issue of Wired Magazine. Basically, they used this term to outline a modern and innovative online business environment that can be used for the presentation of the innovative solutions of a distributed network of isolated users through what amounts to an open call for proposals. Howe further clarifies this term by providing some details associated with this environment. According to their viewpoint, crowdsourcing refers to the process of an institution or organization getting a task that was previously carried out by its internal team workers or staff members and outsourcing it to an open- ended (and usually huge) group of individuals or teams through an open call. Though, this process can appear in the form of peer-production (where a task is carried out by a team of professionals collaboratively), however it can also be carried out by individuals separately. In this scenario, the key idea is the use of the open call format in order to attract a huge network of possible individuals (Brabham, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, 2008). Technically, this term can be defined as â€Å"an organization takes the design, constructs it in bulk quantity and trades it.† This process works in a smooth and sequential manner in which, an organization first distributes an issue or problem online or via other channels, after that a large number of people provide solutions and ideas to deal with that specific problem, most effective solutions or ideas are granted some kind of a reward, and the organization that distributed those problems ma kes use of that idea for its own benefit. In their paper (Brabham, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, 2008) discuss a number of examples to clarify the concept of crowdsourcing. Some of the important cases are outlined below: Threadless The first example that (Brabham, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, 2008) discussed in their paper is of Threadless.com, which is an internet based t-shirt firm. This firm has successfully utilized the concept of crowdsourcing. This firm basically crowdsources the design method for their shirts by means of a partial online competition. In this competition Jacob DeHart and Jake Nickell took part and Nickell won the competition. The company successfully implemented the designs proposed by contestants. In this scenario, the crowdsourcing model helped the firm in earning considerable revenue. Up till 2006, Threadless was ‘selling more than 60,000 T-shirts per month, and had a profit margin of approximately 35% and was on the right track to gross $18 million, all with only 20 staff members. There are no hard and fast rules for joining the