Crowdsourcing: Allowing people to help people around the world

Crowdsourcing is being used to help companies develop their products of tomorrow and make more money, but is there also something more than making money that it can help with?  Of course the answer is yes!

One of the biggest projects of crowd sourcing is being used right now on satellite images over the Indian Ocean to help authorities search for the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.  Crowdsourcing website Tomnod, is using map imagery from US-based satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe, and allowing its users to comb over thousands of square miles of ocean in search of any clues as to where MH370 went down.  More than 2,000,000 people have already tagged features in the imagery provided in search of the wreckage.

When tragedy strikes, many people want to help but are unable to go and have boots on the ground in the location, but with crowdsourcing sites like Tomnod, it allows people from all over the world to join together to help. The search is still on going but it surely is going faster with the help of crowdsourcing and with the people out there that are willing to lend a helping hand.



While tragedy is a good cause to bring people together to help out, so is history. Another interesting story of crowdsourcing for non-profit comes from an article I found from Fox News.

UK mobilizes crowdsourcing army to analyze massive archive of World War I info

Historians in England are releasing war journals from WWI to the public to get help sorting through them and taking out the pertinent information about the daily lives of soldiers and how different decisions that were made affected things during the war.  Crowdsourced volunteers are also asked to research weather patterns during the period of their specified journal entries to see how that may have affected soldiers as well.

Crowdsourcing is proving to be a very useful tool to help in innovation and now in ways to volunteer. It is allowing people that normally wouldn't have the chance to help with social projects for the betterment of the world.

Crowdfunding: Clearly a trend, Clearly a challenge

As for the term financial crowd funding, we understand the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet. The following video explains the process:

The initiative could be a nonprofit campaign, a political campaign or a financing campaign for a start-up company. There are numerous crowdfunding platforms where consumers ask for or donate money, such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, RocketHub and RockThePost to name just a few. The primary idea of “its not about what you do, but why you do it,” is critical in the concept of crowdfunding. By focusing on a bigger purpose, project creators will be able to create a unique community of likeminded individuals. Proponents of the crowdfunding approach argue that it allows for good ideas, which do not typically fit the pattern required by conventional financiers to break through and attract cash through the wisdom of the crowd.

Each campaign is set for a goal amount of money and a fixed number of days. Once the project is launched, each day will be counted down and the money raised will be tallied up for visitors to follow its success. If the project doesn’t reach the target, the money has to be given back to its sponsors, which can be a difficult and costly process. That's the conflict at the heart of many crowdfunding platforms: while the company policy says creators have to give refunds on failed projects, the website doesn't have a mechanism to do it.

Furthermore, there is a misconception that creating a successful crowdfunding campaign is as simple as hitting submit and waiting for it to go viral. While this has happened to projects, the vast majority of projects will require a decent amount of effort on the part of the project creator. Utilizing social media, creating email distribution lists before the project launches, contacting local media, are all necessary steps to take if you are serious about your goal. Another common misconception is that crowdfunding is just useful for small businesses and startups. While it creates a funding opportunity that certain smaller businesses may not have received in the traditional way, it also is a great outlet for established companies.

The primary reasons can be identified on why people - unconnected to a project or business - are willing to support it:

•         They connect to the greater purpose of the campaign
•         They connect to a physical aspect of the campaign like the rewards
•         They connect to the creative display of the campaign’s presentation

Crowdfunding also comes with a number of potential risks or barriers. An impact on the reputation can come up by failure to meet campaign goals. Or reaching financial goals and successfully gathering substantial public support but being unable to deliver on a project for some reason can negatively impact the reputation. IP protection: many Interactive Digital Media developers and content producers are reluctant to publicly announce the details of a project before production due to concerns about idea theft and protecting their IP from plagiarism. And also the concern among supporters, that without a regulatory framework, the likelihood of a scam of abuse of funds is high. The concern may become a barrier to public engagement.

Recently, as witnessed by one of the biggest successes and at the same time failures in the history of financial crowdfunding -  The British software company Canonical attempted to raise a record $32m (£20.5m) through crowdfunding to build top-end smartphones that run with the Canonical Ubuntu system and Google’s Android system. At the closing day it has raised an unprecedented $12m, but because it failed to hit its target it had to return all the money. 

Ubuntu Edge smartphone fails to reach $32m crowdfunding target

In sum, crowdfunding is a great opportunity for businesses and entrepreneurs. But anyone who considers using this innovation has to be aware of the upcoming challenges and know in detail about risks and misconceptions of this concept. If the evaluation is done properly and the project is convincing, crowdsourcing is one of the most promising funding sources of the future.

Lonely, I’m so lonely, I have nobody… The loneliness of Lead Users: manage and exploit their presence “inside the Company”

Lead users are part of a big community but, deeply lonely.

Recent studies, linked with sociology, media, marketing, are now focus to the role of lead users. Of course the roles of individuals within a community of consumers is quite varied and changes depending on the specific situation. We stumbled upon consumer groups where there are some very simple Lead Users that drive the thought of a homogeneous base of "followers" rather than complex systems, where the hierarchical levels are capillaries and the different users belong to each other. Why this dependency? It is because of the degree of influence within all the layers of the community.

The key word in their activity is strongly subjected to social recognition, their main personal and work need. The common factor within different situations is the existence and predominance of opinion leader and influencers recognized by others as the top of the hierarchy, of the pyramid.

Video: Lead Users Definition in a target market curve

What is changing in the eyes of companies is the attention to these individuals, the recognition of the role, the importance of the positive (or unluckily negative) shadow effect on customers. Due to these changes in fundamental characteristics of companies and the increasing in the attention for these individuals, new strategies for open innovation are starting to be developed and results are growing. Incentives and rewards for their added value need to be implemented (higher salaries or roles, also if they are part of a  “crowd” environment) in order, for the firm, to select best, or almost perfect ideas.

The average consumer, alone, without the lead guide, without this trend setting roles, in fact, rarely is able to be useful to the company and its improvements of innovation. Why? Even if he/she will know exactly what are your needs, the “common user” will hardly be able to communicate clearly to the departments of R & D, first for poor connections, then because of the difficult to put in practice, physically, prototypes, companies first will need some representative people.

Who are these opinion leaders? Opinion leaders are pioneering consumers of specific products and perceive before the consumption needs as well as having a greater technical knowledge than the average user. They incorporate the necessary skills and motivation on the purpose of a process of innovation, and they are alone, in the middle of the community, studying and scouting.

Video 2: Innovation, Ideas and Communication

It is interesting to understand the relationship with companies. Examples of innovation results, for them, bring to light the main purpose of 2.0 or community recognition, more than economic reward. They are always fighting against their “solitude” and find the leadership position in the community! For the lead users , in fact, is not so much the remuneration of its innovations, which are willing to share, but is definitely more the mechanisms related to personal reputation within the community. This will result in “more” social power, great feedback, new collaborations, and oppositely, as an inverse proportion to more social “solitude”

This superior knowledge and this anti-opportunistic behavior puts them at the top of the hierarchy of a hypothetical community. This position also is assigned by the community itself in a total recognized by all members. They can influence the behavior of the subjects in their entirety.

Understand these lonely lead user and their behavior is one of the best insight in a company. 

In the last 3 years MIT made some studies about how to understand lead users and exploit their knowledge to learn how to anticipate the “big” community.

We can summarize it in 5 Golden Rules:

i.                Understand that "lead users" ( main users ) are important ; seems obvious, but for some company all customers are jerks , without exception

ii.              Identify who these lonely "lead users" are

iii.             Don’t be to critic and attack lead users"; you are using them to receive insights and honest feedback. It could happen that they will use or analyze products in a different way from what the company designed; maybe they can suggest a way to open up new markets!

iv.             Use Lead User as a support and encourage them to communicate often

v.              These users are not virtual entity; it is fundamental to create interaction; let them talk to each other or different department (finally fight against their loneliness!)

And now....Music!