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Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry. In June of 2006 he published an article for Wired titled “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.” That article has name grown to become the book - Crowdsourcing.
Jeff is a guest on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast where he shares this concept and discusses how the small business can take advantage of it.
Jeff has two definitions of the term crowdsourcing:
1) The Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.
2) The White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.
One of my favorite ideas that came out of our discussion is the fact that branding is essentially a form of crowdsourcing.
Below is a video that Jeff created to promote the concept of crowdsourcing.
This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by att.com/onwardsmallbiz. Resources for the small business owner.
Thanks for getting these thoughts from Jeff together.
Crowdsourcing is a complete paradigm change for those of us who have grown up in a command and control type of environment.
I guess it’s good for us to be challenged into trying new and better ways to get a business to work together across completely new supply chains and structures
Crowdsourcing is certainly a powerful concept.
The one thing I wonder is at what point do you bring an end to the feedback and then start developing.
“Feature Creep” can prevent so many people from actually getting their ideas out there and it’s difficult to determine where to draw the line and release it as “version 1″.
Thoughts?
I hope to catch this because this is still a new term to me and I don’t hear it being used much by the people I do work with - the video gives a small bit of insight into what crowdsourcing is but I’m still eager to see its applications. Certainly, @Andee, this is a day of new paradigms. If we’re not aware of them, then we are sunk! Looking forward to learning . . . .
Love the wisdom you share on crowd sourcing, John. Wondering what your thoughts are on a more granular term - community sourcing: community sourcing, or as Seth Godin would say in his latest book, Tribes, tribe sourcing.
This was a good podcast, John, and I appreciate your coverage of this important trend. I know that I’ve personally used some version of crowdsourcing in many aspects of my latest startup - from the name all the way down to graphic design. I’ve found it very powerful to tap into the collective wisdom of the crowd.