Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business

Labor can often be organized more efficiently in the context of community than it can in the context of a corporation.

Attracting a crowd is much easier than keeping them. The most important component to a successful crowdsourcing effort is a vibrant, committed community and understanding what motivates people to contribute in the first place. People ned to feel rewarded for their efforts.

What makes the online community a more efficient workforce than one managed by a firm? The short answer is that communities are better at both identifying talented people and evaluating their output.

The rise of the network allows us to exploit the fact of human labor that long predates the Internet. The ability to divvy up an overwhelming task - such as the writing of an exhaustive encyclopedia - into small enough chunks that completing it becomes not only feasible, but fun.

- Extrinsic - The Carrot (Financial Reward) and The Stick (A scolding from your boss)

Crowdsourcing has the capacity to form a sort of perfect meritocracy. The quality of work takes precedence over pedigree, race, gender, age and qualification.

The 1:10:89 Rule - For every given 100 people, 1 will actually create something, 10 will vote on what he created and the remaining 89% will merely consume.

People will work late into the night on one creative endeavor or another in the hope that their community - be it fellow designers, scientists, or computer hackers - acknowledge their contribution in the form of kudos and, just maybe, some measure of fame.

Linda Parker ("Online communities editor", for the Cincinati Post) - "It used to read, 'Be a Citizen Journalist' and no one ever clicked on it, then we said, "Tell us your story" and still nothing. For some reason, 'Get Published' were the magic words."