Leveraging the Collective Intelligence and Effort of Digital Crowds

October 31, 2015

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 tackle a range of problems such as innovation problems and funding startups. 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 to make your contribution. Please create appropriate tags for your post. Please also respond to and comment on three other posts per module. Feel free to use graphics, data, videos and links to other sites to corroborate your points.

Please prepare a two minute pitch about your blog entry before the class.

Submitted (136)

Think It Up: Reimagining School Funding to be Driven by the Students
Grace
Posted on October 29, 2015 at 5:52 pm
School project funding now driven by student's ideas at ThinkItUp.org and powered by DonorsChoose.org.
Minted: Using the Crowd to Define Good Design
SDS
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 11:10 am
Minted is re-imagining the online marketplace model by using crowdsourcing to curate its collection of designs
Goodbye Cable: One Snap at at Time
Chrisoula Kapelonis
Last modified on November 1, 2015 at 9:54 pm
How Snapchat is revolutionizing the way we consume media Within the crowds of any event, it has become the norm to see a barrage of cell phones, serving as the second eyes, aggressively capturing the spectacle that is at hand. [...]
Crowdsourcing for Large and Medium Sized Private Equity Firms
DD1
Posted on October 31, 2015 at 6:40 pm
private equity and retail investors: disrupting fund of funds
How Not to Crowdsource : The Demise of Quirky
Cal K
Posted on October 31, 2015 at 10:51 pm
How crowdsourcing company failed in brick and mortar retail
TapTape – When artists make money, fans make money
jeffzeller
Last modified on October 30, 2015 at 6:18 pm
TapTape aims to help fund projects for musicians, while also giving fans/investors upside in the artists’ success. These fans now have an incentive to help promote and grow the fanbase of the artists they are invested in. For artists, the [...]
Moleskine created a “Molescheme” through failed crowdsourcing effort
Elizabeth H
Posted on October 26, 2015 at 10:17 am
In 2011 Moleskine needed to redesign it’s logo for its online platform, Moleskinery. Naturally, the company looked to harness the loyalty of its artistic and design-focused customer base by crowdsourcing the new logo design. Unfortunately, their failed crowdsourcing attempt created [...]
PatientsLikeMe: Using the crowd to improve medical care
Belowthefold
Posted on October 30, 2015 at 9:04 am
PatientsLikeMe is improving medical care by crowd-sourcing information from those who matter most, the patients themselves.
The Medium to challenge all mediums
CX
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 11:01 pm
Medium has become the place to self-publish online, crowdsourcing content from you and I to Bono and Melinda Gates, disrupting the news and publishing industry.
Foldit – Solving Puzzles for Science
Tikola Nesla
Posted on October 27, 2015 at 9:31 pm
Foldit’s innovative approach solves the age old issue that science needs more people. Foldit has gamified protein folding so that anyone, not just scientists, can cure diseases.
Audiodraft: Crowdsourcing music skips a beat
uilc
Posted on October 31, 2015 at 6:05 pm
Audiodraft is a crowdsourcing platform where anyone can pay for custom music through contests or commission.  The target customer turned out to be advertising agencies who would run contests so that various unknown or known artists could bid on projects [...]
CrowdMed – using crowds for clinical diagnostics
HF
Last modified on November 3, 2015 at 3:00 pm
CrowdMed uses the knowledge of thousands of "experts" to solve difficult medical cases
Our community gives a Hoot
Becky D
Last modified on November 3, 2015 at 3:00 pm
Hootsuite leverages its loyal online community to crowdsource customer support, in turn reducing internal support costs.
Quora: Crowdsourced Answers
Anndrea Moore
Posted on December 8, 2015 at 8:03 am
“a place to get answers, to share what you know, to read, and to think” Quora is a website that allows users to anonymously post questions on a variety of topics and receive answers from anyone. The best answers are [...]
Crowdstorming the Hyperloop: JumpStartFund, HTT, and SpaceX
(Wo)Man in the Arena
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 8:32 pm
By reaching to the crowd- for crowdstorming in early stages, crowdsourcing in middle stages, and crowdfunding in all stages- HTT, SpaceX, and friends can bring a seemingly unreachable technology to the masses.
Everyone on the Internet is an Expert
brandon
Posted on November 2, 2015 at 12:11 am
As I pen this likely masterpiece, I contemplate two things: (a) why in Heaven’s name was a blog post due on a Saturday night*, and (b) how well is humankind doing in its quest to semantically structure the world’s information? [...]
DLife: Facilitated Network for Diabetes Patients
Mike Maley
Posted on October 30, 2015 at 3:56 pm
DLife is a social network of sorts connecting diabetes patients with one another to share knowledge and information about managing the disease - but does sharing medical advice go too far?
Crowdsource Employee Ideas with Kindling
Madrid
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 7:50 pm
Kindling is designed to engage the members of the organization in idea generation and increased collaboration.
Kraft’s Vegemite: the 2.0 time’s the charm?
Kathryn R
Last modified on October 26, 2015 at 11:54 am
It's easy to blame the crowd when crowdsourcing fails but most of the time the underlying reason for failure is in the design of the project. Kraft's Vegemite fiasco highlights the importance of thoughtful execution, especially when crowdsourcing the name [...]
Crowdsourcing sales forecasts: How Henkel leverages the collective wisdom of its employees
hawkeye
Last modified on October 28, 2015 at 5:30 pm
After traditional methods yielded unsatisfactory results, Henkel – which owns some of the most valuable European CPG brands – decided to leverage the collective wisdom of its employees to increase forecasting accuracy by using an internal prediction market.
ArcBazar: A marketplace for crowdsourcing architecture and design
Mati G
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 10:10 am
ArcBazar is an online crowdsourcing platform focused on design and architecture projects, enabling people to easily find designers for their projects and at the same time, doing so in a very affordable way. On the other side, compete and collaborate [...]
OurCrowd: Changing the way startups are funded
#mustshop
Last modified on November 1, 2015 at 9:02 pm
Investment crowdsourcing platform that lets a closed network of investors pick and choose which startups (sourced by an experienced VC team) to invest in, at a minimum of $10k.
goFlow: Crowdsourcing surf reports
JI
Posted on October 26, 2015 at 4:32 pm
Surfing is considered by some as the ultimate extreme sport. Over 35 million people around the globe struggle to predict the tricky weather conditions to score the ride of their lives. This process is full of uncertainty and frustration as [...]
ShopShareCrop: How to support a closed food loop economy
Bougainvillea
Last modified on October 30, 2015 at 7:45 pm
ShopShareCrop presents a crowdsourcing solutions for grabbing those last-minute grocery items - without the excess fees of Instacart.
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