Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business

Right about now you may be asking yourself “Just what is Crowdsourcing” besides yet another book title that is going to keep Microsoft Word busy underlining its every instance with a squiggly red line? And just why does every author feel the need to create these catchy new compound words, anyway?

OK, I’m with you. But let’s keep focus and work on the first question, as it is entirely worthy of our time whereas the second may never be answered.

Crowdsourcing (Crown Publishing 2008) is a new marketing phenomenon that looks to harness the power, usually very inexpensively, of building community as a source of profit. Literally, of creating new sources of business by doing what had previously been unthinkable. Instead of having your product, and thus your marketing efforts, happen to your marketplace Crowdsourcing is the act of involving them – from product creation or improvement, to marketing, to sales channeling. What we are talking about is the truest form of customer engagement possible.

The book is dotted with interesting anecdotes and examples. Author Jeff Howe gives several eye-opening accounts of how it’s working, every day, for companies of all sizes.

Look around you. Facebook founder Mark Zuckenberg became a billionaire before he turned 24. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen took their idea for creating video communities, aptly named YouTube, and did nicely for themselves when Google opened their giant checkbook. How did these business neophytes become titans? Simple, they Crowdsourced. They involved their consumers into their product to a level we’ve never seen before and now they work-optional Gen Y’ers. It may not be the Jack Welch model of grindstone management, but we’re talking about a new generation of innovation – and the creative thought of getting your buyers to be your employees, salespeople, and evangelists by simply including them in every process you can.

Is Crowdsourcing for everyone? Maybe, Maybe not – this book doesn’t profess to have all of the answers, it merely brings you in to a conversation that aims to help you determine if your business should follow suit and raise to a new level of customer engagement.Come to think of it, both Zuckenberg and the tandem of Hurley and Chen also used compound words as titles to pretty good effect…maybe these authors are on to something after all.