Crowdsourcing

The crowdsourcing is a collaborative working model in which an organisation, company or individual outsources tasks, projects or problems to a large group of people, usually via the Internet.  

This term, coined by Jeff Howe in 2006, comes from the combination of the words «..." and "...".«crowd»(crowd) and «outsourcing»(outsourcing). The essence of crowdsourcing lies in harnessing collective intelligence and diversity of skills for innovative, fast and cost-effective solutions. 

Crowdsourcing is used in various fields such as technology, science, design, market research and software development. It can take various forms, including competitions, open collaborations, micro-tasks and crowdfunding.  

Participation may be voluntary or incentivised through financial rewards, prestige or access to opportunities. 

Examples of Crowdsourcing 

Crowdsourcing has enabled significant advances in different sectors. Some examples are: 

1. WikipediaThe world's largest online encyclopaedia, created and edited by volunteers from all over the world. 

2. reCAPTCHACaptcha Resolution: a system that uses captcha resolution to digitise old books and improve text recognition databases. 

3. WazeNavigation application that collects real-time traffic data based on information provided by users. 

4. Lego Ideasplatform where LEGO fans can submit designs for new products and, if they receive sufficient support, the company manufactures and markets them. 

5. DuolingoIn the beginning, he used text translation in his exercises to improve machine translation algorithms. 

6. Zooniversecitizen science platform where volunteers help classify galaxies, identify species and transcribe historical documents. 

7. FolditOnline game where users contribute to discovering new ways of protein folding, helping in medical research. 

8. Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)platform where companies outsource small tasks such as image tagging, transcription and content review. 

15 Innovative crowdsourcing platforms 

Some of the crowdsourcing platforms The most relevant at present are the following: 

1. Kickstarter (crowdfunding for creative projects) 

2. Indiegogo (crowdfunding for startups and entrepreneurs) 

3. Upwork (freelancing platform) 

4. 99designs (collaborative graphic design for competitions) 

5. Topcoder (programming and software development challenges) 

6. InnoCentive (scientific and technological problem solving) 

7. HeroX (innovation challenges with economic incentives) 

8. TaskRabbit (housework and local services) 

9. Gigwalk (inspection of shops and collection of field data) 

10. Crowdspring (collaborative design platform) 

11. Testbirds (software and usability testing by real users) 

12. Streetbees (market research with real-time user data) 

13. Clickworker (digital tasks for companies) 

14. Crowdtap (product testing and brand surveys) 

15. DataSift (data analysis from social media and public sources) 

Crowdsourcing has become a powerful tool for innovation, allowing companies to access global talent, reduce costs and improve their products or services through mass collaboration.