Crowdsourcing

We are building solutions and systems for Crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing is a specific sourcing model in which individuals or organizations use contributions from Internet users to obtain needed services or ideas. Crowdsourcing was coined in 2005 as a portmanteau of crowd and outsourcing. This mode of sourcing, which is to divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result, was already successful prior to the digital age (i.e., „offline”). Crowdsourcing is distinguished from outsourcing in that the work can come from an undefined public (instead of being commissioned from a specific, named group) and in that crowdsourcing includes a mix of bottom-up and top-down processes. Advantages of using crowdsourcing may include improved costs, speed, quality, flexibility, scalability, or diversity. Crowdsourcing in the form of idea competitions or innovation contests provides a way for organizations to learn beyond what their „base of minds” of employees provides (e.g., LEGO Ideas). Crowdsourcing can also involve rather tedious „microtasks” that are performed in parallel by large, paid crowds (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk). Crowdsourcing has also been used for noncommercial work and to develop common goods (e.g., Wikipedia).