English | EN Crowdsource innovation in your company!
Mar 24, 2014
Most of you, to not say everybody, are aware of the Malaysian flight missing. Probably like a lot of people you are wondering how come we can lose a flight when today NSA is tracking everything about everybody, and that you can follow real time anybody having a cell phone. I wish I could answer that question and solve the mystery, but no. And I am not going to discuss all the crazy theories populating the web.
Some companies have joined the rescue effort. One of them, TomNod, proposes to share satellite pictures of the area (90 000 square kilometers) and give a specific piece to each of the volunteers (2 000 square kilometers). Each user can tag potential traces on each picture and therefore help check this huge area. More than 200 000 people join this effort, an example of Crowdsourcing.
Many example of crowdsourcing exist around the world, but only few concern companies and innovation driving business for them. So, why do we see a successful example of crowdsourcing for volunteers without a business-driven initiative and not so much from companies with a business-driven one? I thought this world was driven by money!!!
For sure, the technology is available, if not fully mature, so that’s not the reason.
There are cultural, societal and organizational barriers in companies that don’t help leverage the crowdsourcing. Of course, you can find many authors and researcher giving advice on the way to overcome the barriers and make it happen. If it was simple, everybody would do it. One of the barriers that seems to be the most difficult is the business model of Crowdsourcing.
Let’s assume a big company decided to use external crowdsourcing to define its next product. Somebody, very smart or very lucky, comes up with an out of the box idea that the company believes in and starts producing. Once on the market the product is a big success, and the company is making billions. How much of the billions should go to the smart, lucky inventor? Was it originally really his idea? What will the company say to the internal researcher that contributed to this idea, who has been on the payroll for the past 3 years? What is the part of the marketing team in this success? What is the part of the supplier producing the product at an attractive price? How can the company be fair with everybody and give credit to everybody (assuming the company’s business mindset is fair !).
If anybody has a good and working example of crowdsourcing business models, please share.
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