Crowdsourcing has become a familiar part of the digital landscape, touching everyday life in ways many people never notice. From the funding of creative projects to the tagging of images and the translation of text, crowdsourcing draws on the collective effort of large groups of people to solve problems, generate ideas and create value. This article explains what crowdsourcing is, where it came from, and the many ways it is used.
What crowdsourcing means
The term "crowdsourcing" is a combination of "crowd" and "outsourcing". Rather than handing a task to a single supplier or in-house team, an organisation opens it up to a large, often undefined group of people, who contribute their time, skills or ideas. The approach can be applied across many areas and in many ways, from accelerating innovation and sharing ideas to reinventing business and financial models, co-creating products, engaging consumers and citizens, increasing efficiency and reducing cost.
A longer history than many expect
Although crowdsourcing feels like a product of the internet age, the underlying idea is centuries old. A number of well-known milestones illustrate how long the principle has been in use:
- 1714 — The Longitude Prize offered a monetary reward for the best solution to the problem of measuring a ship's longitude at sea, opening the challenge to anyone who could solve it.
- 1884 — Volunteers helped to compile the first Oxford English Dictionary, contributing entries and references on a vast scale.
- 1936 — Toyota crowdsourced its first logo and brand name, receiving tens of thousands of entries.
- 1970 — A photo contest in Paris drew tens of thousands of submissions, producing a large public archive of images of the city.
- 2000 — iStock was founded as a free stock-imagery website that allowed members of the public to contribute their own work.
- 2001 — Wikipedia launched as a free-access, free-content online encyclopaedia built and maintained by its users.
- 2006 — The term "crowdsourcing" itself was coined by Jeff Howe in an article for Wired magazine.
The main forms crowdsourcing takes
Crowdsourcing is not a single activity but a family of related approaches. Some of the most common forms include:
- Open innovation — inviting inventors, designers and innovators to contribute solutions, turning collective ingenuity into practical results.
- Microtasks — breaking large jobs, such as scanning images, processing data or transcribing audio, into small pieces distributed across many people, producing results within minutes.
- Crowdfunding — raising finance from a large number of contributors to fund projects, from creative work and manufacturing to documentary production and research at the seed stage.
- Crowdsourced design — sourcing logo design, branding, advertisements, video and product design from a wide pool of designers, often on a competitive basis.
The benefits and the drawbacks
Used well, crowdsourcing can be a cost-effective way to access a high volume of skilled people who are ready to work at short notice, and it can help promote an organisation and the brand behind a project. It is not without risks, however. Quality can be inconsistent, contributors are not always under any contractual obligation, and results may need careful verification. Managing the depth and breadth of a sourced crowd takes effort, and organisations are advised to be specific about what they require and to build in a clear process for checking the work they receive.
Crowdsourcing in action
Some of the most striking examples show just how versatile the approach can be. The United States Navy once created a piracy-themed simulation game based on real scenarios so that it could study the most effective strategies used by players and put them into practice. The Australian flag was designed through a crowdsourced process. Even popular culture offers an illustration: on the television show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", asking the audience consistently proved to be one of the most reliable lifelines available, demonstrating the surprising accuracy of collective judgement. Online, the everyday CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA challenges that distinguish humans from machines have doubled as a vast crowdsourced effort to digitise printed text and improve translation.
How Professional Academy Supports Your Journey
Understanding crowdsourcing and the wider digital marketing landscape is part of building a modern, well-rounded marketing skill set. Professional Academy delivers CIM marketing qualifications that cover digital marketing alongside the strategic foundations every marketer needs. The CIM Level 4 Certificate in Professional Marketing is a strong starting point for those looking to develop these skills formally.
Find out more about the CIM Level 4 Certificate in Professional Marketing or speak with the qualification advice team about the right route for you.
