What is "Crowdsourcing"?

Now you must be familiar with "outsourcing" and enlisted as one of your top ten answers to cost-saving. But have you ever heard of "crowdsourcing"? Not yet? Out. Read on.

Crowdsourcing was first coined by Wired Magazine earlier this year. It's a process where businesses faced with tough challenges don't try to come up with all of the answers themselves. They tap into the collective wisdom of millions of amateurs around the world to come up with a solution. Naturally, this is enabled through digital technology. For example, Procter and Gamble researchers post about their particular research challenges on InnoCentive.com, offering rewards to hobbyists and amateur scientists who come up with the best solution. And they do.

In the creative disciplines of advertising, marketing and public relations, however, we're just beginning to see the fruits of such collaboration. Crowdsourcing is one reason YouTube was such an attractive acquisition for Google. Marketers by the boatload are rushing to launch campaigns where consumers, not the advertising agency alone, determine what goes into a television ad. The TV nets have been at it even longer. Reality television and text-message voting for American Idol are at their heart, crowdsourcing.

Source: Micro Persuasion