Think It - Crowdsourcing

The Internet has opened up many avenues which were unthinkable in the past. Crowdsourcing is one of them. It is getting your resources from anywhere or everywhere. Start-ups need this source more than any other. They need it to get unique ideas, knowledge, expertise and start-up financing among other things.

So what is exactly crowdsourcing? How can it help start-ups? Crowdsourcing is a sourcing model through which individuals or organizations obtain goods or services—including ideas, voting, micro-tasks, and finances—from a large, relatively open, and often rapidly evolving group of participants. Crowdsourcing typically involves using the internet to attract and divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result, however, it may not always be an online activity. The word "crowdsourcing" itself—a portmanteau of "crowd" and "outsourcing"—was allegedly coined in 2005. In contrast to outsourcing, however, crowdsourcing usually involves a less-specific, more public group.

In the early stage, start-ups cannot afford to spend sums of money on different specialized expertise. Crowdsourcing can help get them specialized expertise at a fraction of cost. Back in 2006 Jeff Howe in his article The Rise of Crowdsourcing cited the example of Claudia Menashe needing pictures of sick people - project director at the National Health Museum in Washington, DC. She came across a stock photo collection by Mark Harmel who offered the museum a generous discount: $100 to $150 per photograph. "That's about half of what a corporate client would pay," he says. Menashe was interested in about four shots, so for Harmel, this could be a sale worth $600. After several weeks of back-and-forth, Menashe emailed Harmel to say that, regretfully, the deal was off. "I discovered a stock photo site called iStockphoto," she wrote, "which has images at very affordable prices." That was an understatement. The same day, Menashe licensed 56 pictures through iStockphoto—for about $1 each. iStockphoto, which grew out of a free image-sharing exchange used by a group of graphic designers, had undercut Harmel by more than 99 percent. How? By creating a marketplace for the work of amateur photographers—homemakers, students, engineers, dancers. 

Crowdsourcing is not a new phenomenon. During the era of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) we find one such example. Hazrat Salman Al Farsi (RA) narrated that on the advice of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) he drew up a contract of manumission (release from slavery) with my master in return for three hundred palm trees which I would plant for him, and forty uqiyahs. Then the Prophet (PBUH) said to his companions: “Help your brother.” So they helped me with the palm trees, one man gave thirty small trees and another gave twenty, and another gave fifteen, and another gave ten, i.e., each man gave according to what he had, until they had collected three hundred small trees for me. He and other companions of the Prophet (PBUH) helped me in digging the holes and the Prophet (PBUH) planted the trees. So I had paid off the trees but there still remained the money. The Prophet summoned me and he gave me a piece of gold the size of an egg and said: “Take this and pay off what you owe, O Salman.” I said: How could this pay off everything I owe, O Messenger of Allah? He said: “Take it, and Allah will help you to pay off what you owe.” So I took it and weighed it for them, and by the One in Whose hand is the soul of Salman, it was forty ukiahs, so I paid them their dues and I was set free.

How does crowdsourcing work? One way of doing this is to pitch your request for new ideas, solutions, expert knowledge or finance through public platforms like facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or pitching to your closed knit groups on Whatsapp. There are also many dedicated websites that offer help in crowdsourcing such as crowdsourcingweek, 99designs, Fiverr and kickstarter. There needs to be some thinking before going for crowdsourcing. While the concept of crowdsourcing may be simple, finding great ideas and solutions isn’t as easy as just asking customers and fans for their best ideas. After all, nobody wants to give away their valuable knowledge and expertise for free. There has to be a clear incentive in place, such as a financial incentive (either a cash prize or a share of eventual sales) or professional recognition. 

To be effective, a crowdsourcing project also needs:

• A well-defined scope
• Comprehensive background information
• A clear preferred format for submission

Crowdsourcing touches across all social and business interactions. It is changing the way we work, hire, research, make, and market. Just give it a thought.