written by DamianSkinner

I get this question ALL THE TIME…

“Damian, how do you pick which companies you work with especially in the Web 2.0 world?”

I usually get that question when speaking or on a panel somewhere and inevitably it is from someone wanting to hire me to develop their Web 2.0 concept into a viable business.

One of the answers I always give is that I look for an idea that would be second, third or even fourth to the market. Not first!

I believe this is crucial because you are mitigating risk by looking at existing models and perfecting that model. I know it’s not as exciting as being a trail blazer but I can tell you raising venture capital is much easier!

The second element I look for is what’s commonly called “CrowdSourcing“.

by Sami Viitamäk

The working definition found in Wikipedia (which is a site based on crowdsourcing by the way) for crowdsourcing is the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to a group (crowd) of people or community in the form of an open call. The term crowdsourcing has become shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals.

We are seeing this every where. New York Times now makes all their content available for free, Flickr allows you to upload and tag your photos so others can use them in most cases. And don’t forget about amazing companies such as Threadless,  Goldcorp Inc. not to mention our very own goverment and the new methods emerging everyday for crowdsourcing security measures. I’ll get to them in later posts.

There are many terms already associated with this trend such as:

• Wisdom of Crowds
• Open Innovation
• Social Collaboration
• Human Computation
• Citizen Science
• Collective Intelligence to name a few.

This is a massive area of study but for our purposes today lets just say this.

If 2 heads are better than 2 then 50 heads are AWESOME! LOL

Image of New York Times lead articles mapped on the NYT API from blprnt_van

Here’s the point.

We are in the information age NOT the industrial age

UUUH no shoes in the office Jim? Really?

Is your business still working like a factory?

Let’s walk through an example.

OLD MODEL: Crowd Surfing

not to mention the awkward gropping...

In the previous model (industrial age) of problem solving was approached by going to someone or a small group of someones that have a specific related skill to solve your problem. So let’s say you are the proud owner of Jarvison & Minx CPA firm, (totally made that up) if you had a problem with say high employee turn over in your company you would talk to your friends and associates at the office and then finally when it cost you enough pain you would try several ideas and if that didn’t work you would look for an expert in HR.

And that expert would bring their experience into the mix and undoubtedly over time help you solve your problem. And the solutions would fall in typical areas such as improved working conditions, better atmosphere or even greater incentives.

Now in order to solve this problem you need to sit back and asses the costs to the company. The lose of revenue by loosing trained employees and always hiring and training new employees, the cost of the meetings to figure out the problem which basically results many times in lose of productivity and of course the cost to the HR expert.

I call this Crowdsurfing because of the image it conjures up. We have all seen someone crowdsurfing at a concert right?

Whether your the average board and disapointed youth at a modern day concert (major soap box of mine)

or just another psyched out Obama fan we have all seen the results:

I know it was never you but still you know what I’m talking about.

Here’s what has always amazed me about that idea of transportation… I have NEVER EVER seen someone crowdsurf and get what they want!

They always want to travel closer to the front by the stage and yet if they manage to get there all that happens is some massive security guard grabs and throws them all the way to the back so that they are actually worse off than when they started! Sound familar?

But this is my favorite part of crowdsurfing… plane and simple. 90% of the time they are dropped!

Haha I know I shouldn’t laugh and all that and of course I would never want them to actually get hurt.

But why is it so common to see a crowdsurfer get dropped?

Well I believe its because NO ONE LIKE TO BE STEPPED ON!

Well usually no one likes getting stepped on...

Oh sure you might be game for a while but after enough butt and boots hit you in the face you tend to no longer have the strength to hold them up! LOL

Here’s my point. The old method for solving so many of our problems are a lot like this. We rely on people to get us where we are trying to go but they get tired of it because of one main reason…

They are doing ALL the work and you are having ALL the fun!

NEW MODEL: CrowdSourcing

In today’s methods (information age) information is king! We have all heard that content is king but all content is really is presorted and organized information that we want. So now a savy owner of Jarvison and Minx CPA firm has options.

What we now have the ability to do is to poll everyone’s mind equally to see where we find consitent areas of frustration. Not just the manager’s or the sales team.

Think about it for a second. What we have basically learned to do in business is apply a cast system that none of us would ever agree to or submit ourselves to. As if it’s impossible that George in your accounting department has NO clue what makes a compelling sales pitch.

That’s insane.

Do you have any idea how many sales pitches he sees on an average day? Any idea how many of them work on him or don’t. We as humans carry impressions from birth!

These are accesible to anyone at any time if you are willing to look past a degree on a wall.

At it’s most basic principal it is the same concept as a suggestion box. You don’t create a suggestion box for every department!

So in todays arena a frustrated business owner can access the problem and solve the problem all the while reinforcing that his/her employees matter.

Why do they feel that they matter?

Because you are turning to them for a solution and now they are engaged at a personal level!

So back to our business owners delima. What can he do to crowdsource this issue.

Well for starters they can create a survey in any number of ways with tools like: SurveyMonkey.com, SurveyGizmo.com or even Constant Contact.com.

If you want to really get in depth responses then you can simply create a basic form using Google Forms! Literally in seconds you can ask any question and send it out. The best part is that when the employees in this case respond Google Forms arranges and exports the information into a spread sheet!

Oh and don’t forget that at the base operating level of all social media is crowdsourcing. Asking opinions, giving opinions and of course there are apps in Facebook as well as LinkedIn for polls and surveys.

So now our business owner is getting information that he is probably unaware of in the first place to better asses the problem.

Think about it. What is one of the first steps a operations or HR consultant takes when they are hired?

Start interviewing the staff!

Why? Because they need the same info you do… you must remember that what has traditionally made someone an expert is their focus in a field. Well isn’t it possible that the very focus you are paying for is blind to other solutions because they do not even consider it or even know it exists?

Now I want to leave this example because we can get into a lot of minutia here but I want to draw your attention to this basic concept.

Imagine what you can do with your existing clients, prospect clients or even disgruntled clients with crowdsourcing.

It doesn’t have to just be a survey either. There are many great tools available for your own crowdsourcing project.

Over the next few weeks I will take one of these methods and break it down so we can all begin to work smarter and not harder and brand ourselves as those savvy business’ that consumers love to discover!

In the mean time write and an let me know what you have done with crowdsourcing or peer production models or even what you would like to do and I will address it in the upcoming blog posts.

If you want more in depth study on this subject here are just a few excellent blogs:

Wikinomics by Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams

http://bit.ly/4nCj0I

Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe

http://bit.ly/1m1hW

Flirting with Crowds by Sami Viitamäki

http://bit.ly/3CrBKY

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