Both articles review the impact of crowdsourcing has had on businesses. It seems to me that for busnisses, crowdsourcings benefits outweigh any costs that can occur. Although people may argue that designers get shortchanged for their efforts. Crowdsourcing, however opens up ideas through an open source interactive systems which encourage more people to participation in the hopes for greater ideas.
Companies such as Threadless have heavily incorporated crowdsourcing into their business model. The t-shirt company has united designers, thus propelling Threadless to become the third largest T-shirt maker in the United States.
If Crowdsourcing encourages better and more creative ideas that promote better results than how can businesses not incorporate it into their models. Do you see any disadvantages to crowdsourcing for businesses?
One possible disadvantage I can think of is that a person can submit the same solution to multiple contests. If at a later point in time, a company wants to use that person’s solution, it is possible that by another company may have already been used it, and thus reducing its uniqueness.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest disadvantage that I see right off the bat is the impact that crowdsourcing may have on professionals who normally make a living off of contracts with large corporations. When Netflix used crowdsourcing to develop a more efficient "recommendations" algorithm, they effectively displaced developers that they would normally have had exclusive agreements with.
ReplyDeleteIt is a sticky thing though because the line between protecting professionals and discouraging creativity is a very fine one. If this evolved into a system where developers were more respected and fairly treated, I'm all for it! We'll see where it goes...
I agree with Stetson. For me, crowdsourcing is similar to outsourcing, and for that reason I think we need to consider protecting the professionals. Like I have a motto I live by..."Not because we can do something means we should". We need to consider all things before jumping on the bandwagon of crowdsourcing.
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