Competing with or Against Crowds

March 26, 2018

Read The Full Prompt

In this module we have examined how firms can leverage digital technologies to harness the power of collective intelligence from the crowds to create value and capture value. For this assignment you have three options:

1 – Pick one industry where no firms have leveraged crowds, and come up with a crowd-based business model that may potentially transform the industry. Describe how you plan to create and capture value. Explain why the crowd will participate, and why your crowd-based model is better than the current model employed by the incumbents.

2 – Describe a company that is using crowds (external or internal) in an innovative manner. Describe how they incentivize participation and manage the crowd. What are the challenges? Describe how value creation and value capture occur, and the growth potential of this business.

3 – Companies often struggle with crowds as well. Describe failed crowdsourcing efforts and explain how and why the company failed. Given what you have learned in the course, what would you do differently?

Create an approximately 500-750 word post at d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit to make your contribution by 6pm on March 26. Please create appropriate tags for your post. Please also respond to and comment on three other posts per module before class. Feel free to use graphics, data, videos and links to other sites to corroborate your points.

Submitted (84)

Mapillary: mapping the world with crowd sourced photographs
MMidd
Posted on March 24, 2018 at 2:08 pm
Mapillary is leveraging crowds to collect street level images and stitching them together into an enormous 3-D map to help make the world more accessible to everyone.
ReCaptchuring Value
L
Posted on March 26, 2018 at 6:00 pm
Very annoying; very useful.
Brainly – Leveraging the wisdom of the crowds to do your homework
Rachel
Last modified on November 22, 2019 at 2:27 pm
Imagine you’re struggling with your calculus homework. If you really needed help you might have called your friend from class. But students today have a new option. Today, more than 100 million students are logging into Brainly to use the [...]
Zooniverse: Anyone Can be a Researcher
JC
Posted on March 25, 2018 at 11:09 pm
Zooniverse if a platform that allows anyone to become a researcher by posting research projects for volunteers to partake in as well as allowing volunteers to post their own projects to gain help on.
TripAdvisor: From small B2B business above a pizza shop to the top travel site
Pumchanut
Last modified on March 26, 2018 at 5:23 pm
TripAdvisor was founded in February 2000 in Massachusetts by Stephen Kaufer, the current president and CEO and Langley Steinert. The company was originally meant to be an online compilation travel tips from magazines and guidebooks with a simple button for [...]
Building Solutions on TopCoder
Walter
Posted on March 26, 2018 at 4:40 pm
Leveraging the crowd, competition, and a marketplace platform to develop solutions through TopCoder.
Applause: Crowdsourced User Experience Testing
HC
Posted on March 26, 2018 at 4:58 pm
Applause crowdsources 300,000+ testers located in 200+ countries and territories who get paid for testing digital products and provide user experience feedback and report glitches
Map Kibera: Empowering Africa’s Biggest Slum with Collective Wisdom
Taka
Last modified on March 25, 2018 at 1:15 pm
Kibera is the biggest slum in Africa, largely ignored by the government and the public due to its "invisibility". How crowd-sourcing approach changed the lives of people in Kibera, and what were the impacts?
Netflix for Books
MHS
Last modified on March 26, 2018 at 1:48 pm
What started as a social network for bookworms has turned into the largest site for readers and book recommendations with 65 million members, 2 billion books added, 68 million reviews. Goodreads leveraged crowdsourced reviews, a sticky offering (more you use [...]
NET. TV: Empowering citizen journalism through NETCJ
Nandx
Posted on March 25, 2018 at 4:32 pm
Widen the scope of the report in a 17,000-islands country. Cheaply.
Making Millions Playing Video Games
HBS2018
Last modified on March 26, 2018 at 5:51 pm
Twitch is an online platform that gives video game steamers the ability to make money directly from the viewers they attract. Unlike many traditional content creators that must achieve a minimum size to attract ad buyers and corporate partners, or [...]
CrowdFlower: Powering the Human Side of Artificial Intelligence
ME
Last modified on March 26, 2018 at 4:54 pm
CrowdFlower is solving machine learning's dirty secret - that humans are still needed to train the models we all rely on every day.
Learning New Lessons at Duolingo
JY
Last modified on March 26, 2018 at 5:34 pm
Duolingo faces challenges with crowdsourced translations and is building new monetization plans.
Giffgaff: the ‘mobile network run by you’
Iryna
Posted on March 25, 2018 at 5:02 pm
Launched as an experiment in 2009, Giffgaff is now the third largest mobile virtual network operator in the UK (just behind Virgin Mobile and Tesco Mobile), but the only one run by its own customers. Some have believed it is [...]
Friendsurance: Friends with Benefits?
HU
Last modified on March 26, 2018 at 3:59 pm
Friendsurance has the ambitious goal of disrupting the multi-trillion dollar insurance industry.
Splitwise: Go Social and Use Data Fairly
Laura Barnes
Posted on March 26, 2018 at 5:58 pm
Splitwise should go social and use their data to enhance the experience.
reCAPTCHA: The Brilliant Business Model that Only One Man Could Create
Anton
Posted on March 26, 2018 at 4:45 pm
reCAPTCHA's founder used hidden crowdsourcing to solve two problems at once. But few have replicated his model.
Patreon: Creators, Come Get Paid
MM
Last modified on March 26, 2018 at 1:25 pm
A crowdfunding platform, Patreon supports the arts by modernizing the patronage system of yore.
“Activist mapping” at Ushahidi
Crystal
Last modified on March 26, 2018 at 5:42 pm
How a non-profit tech company is combining crowdsourcing, citizen journalism and geospatial information to drive social activism and public accountability
BeMyEye: Data Driven Field Marketing
JSG
Posted on March 25, 2018 at 5:18 pm
BeMyEye is allowing companies to crowdsource in-store data
Quantopian: Leveraging the Crowd to Generate Alpha
jessica
Posted on March 25, 2018 at 10:58 pm
Quantopian enables anyone to build their own trading algorithm and win prizes for performance. In addition to providing a platform for creating and testing trading algorithms, Quantopian puts capital allocation in their own fund behind successful user created algorithms, sharing [...]
Topcoder: An Original Platform for Crowdsourcing Solutions
EAP
Last modified on March 26, 2018 at 5:35 pm
Topcoder is a platform that host the world’s largest community of competitive designers, developers, and data scientists to offer on-demand crowdsourcing solutions to its clients.
Lufax: The World’s Largest P2P Lending is Pivoting from Core Business
DM
Posted on March 26, 2018 at 6:41 pm
Lufax: The World’s Largest P2P Lending is Pivoting from Core Business
PledgeMusic: A Way for Fans to Participate in Album Creation
SLA
Posted on March 26, 2018 at 11:57 am
PledgeMusic, a direct-to-fan funding platform for music artists, hopes to create a closer connection between musicians and fans by providing unique experiences in exchange for pledging to artist campaigns.
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