thebuzz
The In Crowd
CROWDSOURCING is
starting to look a lot like the new
outsourcing.
Instead of shipping off projects
to vendors, companies are tapping
into a loose group of self-selected
authorities—who typically offer
their services at a substantially cut
rate. Consider it a more socialist
approach to outsourcing.
Crowdsourcing originated as a
broad way to collect and rate ideas
from mass clusters of end-users.
Probably the best-known example
is Wikipedia. But it has morphed
into a focused business tool for
specific project applications, says
Chris Townsend, vice president of
marketing at I-Nova Software,
Lyon, France.
“It’s not just for innovation.
Depending on the crowd, companies
can use crowdsourcing to generate feedback,
deliver customer service and source work,” he
says. As a prime example, he points to Amazon’s
Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing site
where companies post project tasks and members
complete them in exchange for payments or
other rewards.
“It’s nuts-and-bolts stuff that you may not have
the time or willingness to do in-house,” he says.
IT projects in particular can benefit from
crowdsourcing because it helps teams meet
compressed deadlines by completing critical
tasks concurrently, says Clinton Bonner,
former director of business development at
Glastonbury, Connecticut, USA-based
TopCoder, a software company that taps into
crowdsourcing techniques.
“IT projects get bloated with extra tasks that
need to be done in a certain timeline to move the
project forward,” Mr. Bonner says. “Project
managers can crowdsource those tasks that don’t
need to be under their direct control to get them
moving on parallel tracks.”
In TopCoder’s crowdsourcing model, coding
tasks are posted as contests. The developer of the
best solution wins the top prize, which can be
>>Crowdsourcing doesn’t work for
everything. Crowds won’t self-
organize into complex structures,
but they will respond efficiently
with simple tasks and motivation.
Chris Townsend, I-Nova Software, Lyon, France
thousands of dollars, while other participants can
walk away with smaller rewards and garner skill
ratings that can be included on their résumés.
The Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI), a U.S.
facility treating pediatric brain and spinal cord
disorders, hired TopCoder to create a replacement
for its medical records system. The project was
posted to TopCoder, with KKI staff monitoring
the results of each phase in the process. Within
nine weeks, TopCoder members had developed a
personalized framework that the healthcare facility
integrated into its enterprise environment within
four days. Today, KKI is using TopCoder to
amplify production bandwidth and simultaneously
develop four additional applications.
Using crowdsourcing “allows us to multiply
the productivity of our architects and subject
matter experts, without introducing bottlenecks
