Standing Out From The Crowd

After reading the The Myth of Crowdsourcing and Is Crowdsourcing Evil? I realized that crowdsourcing is a topic of great contention among a lot of people. Crowdsourcing is a mixture of the words crowd and outsourcing, which basically means that a job that requires a specifically skilled person like a web designer is outsourced to a group of people or a community asking for answers from them.

I believe that crowdsourcing will be a great resource to companies as it becomes a wider known concept. It has the capability to really drive innovation like never before. Crowdsourcing is giving opportunities to creative people who might not get that chance otherwise. It levels the playing field for a lot of junior web developers who might have the talent but not have gotten noticed. It increases competition which is always a good thing. This helps both the companies and the designers because the most talented people will stand out while the companies will get a lot more options then they are used to. Another positive is that since a product is being created by a "crowd" the company will have a better vision of what the people want because it will be reflected in the "crowds" work.

Although there are a few problems I foresee with this concept. The wages these developers will be paid will be far lesser than what they would be paid working for a firm that does the same type of work. Which in turn could largely diminish the quality of work performed by the crowd. Also it will be quite difficult for the firm to build a relationship and have too much input into the project after the crowd starts working on the project, any changes will be hard to communicate. The third problem I foresee is that the company might lose a lot more time and money in going through all the options provided by the crowd only because there won't be a limited choice, although this is not always a negative aspect. If crowdsourcing can get over these hurdles it can be extremely successful in pushing the boundaries of innovation around the world. Which brings me to question can crowdsourcing be controlled to a degree of overcoming these obstacles without stifling the innovation?