Innovation Engine Blog

Crowdsourcing. It’s one controversial yet increasingly popular topic. From marketing agencies to scientific research, many industries are taking a hard look at how crowdsourcing may be a solution for problems too big for one person or even one company to solve.

But why is crowdsourcing catching on—and how will it affect the future?

The specific solution varies by industry, but for most, crowdsourcing is a low cost way to acquire a greater (in quantity—and hopefully in quality) solution set to a defined problem. In other words, crowdsourcing is fulfilling an unmet need for many industries—the need to attain more for less. But what about the flip side of crowdsourcing? What about the consumers?

Without willing participants, crowdsourcing simply doesn’t work. If people are unwilling to participate, then there’s no content. And that chance is a big gamble. So what makes people want to contribute their time and effort?

A cause. Beyond cash, (see Chicago based CrowdSpring for an example of how some people make a living from the flip side of crowdsourcing) most people find that either helping others or contributing to a cause is a worthwhile investment—a good reason to be part of the crowd.

Take a look at the Aha mobile app, for instance. Sure, Aha guides users via GPS, allows users to customize food alerts on the travel path and has even been designed with a 65MPH-safe interface. But it’s the community aspect that sets it apart. Aha is a driver to driver network that connects drivers to each other and to relevant information from the internet. For instance, if a user is motoring down a busy interstate and traffic suddenly slows due to an accident, that user can record a voice memo alerting fellow drivers traveling (or planning to travel) down the same roadway. After all, news does travel faster via networks as proved by events like the Hudson River plane crash in January of 2009—the public was notified via Twitter first, not by mainstream media—an example of self-initiated, crowdsourced news reporting.

And speaking of networks, Facebook has also integrated crowdsourcing to solve content and policy problems—The Facebook Community Council. This council is a crowdsourced tagging application open to only select members. And once invited, the user can tag content that has been pulled for review with one of 8 tags—Spam, Not English, Skip, Nudity, Drugs, Attacking, and Violence. In effect, Facebook users are now patrolling the network for free in an attempt to keep up with content created and shared by its 350 million users.

The most innovative companies of the near future will replace less efficient and commoditized processes with crowdsourcing to bring tangible value to stakeholders and consumers through increased operating efficiency and higher quality products, services, and business models.

What areas of your industry could benefit from crowdsourcing, and how will it affect you?

Have you seen the new Maddock Douglas homepage?

Let’s say you’re driving home from work when all of a sudden your front left tire drops into a massive pothole causing you to swerve right. Luckily, there are no cars in the right lane, but regardless you’ve narrowly avoided an accident, and with good reason, you’re upset.

So what?

Well, a few years ago, you might have complained to your friend in the passenger seat and just kept on driving. But now, people have the power to report local issues with the click of a few buttons and the power of GPS.

City residents can now use an app like SeeClickFix, a mobile application that allows its users to take a photo of a pothole, a burnt out street light, fresh graffiti—basically anything that needs to be fixed by the local government—and report it using a mobile GPS device. Along with a photo and GPS location, users can add notes and track progress, as well as receive and view alerts on nearby city issues. Then, users can see how many other people have reported the same issue and monitor the most reported, a.k.a “hot issues” in the selected city.

Just one app out of the many that have been dubbed “Gov 2.0” by the tech community, SeeClickFix is utilizing GPS location in an attempt to make local government more efficient and responsive—and the app supports a trend that we’ve watched develop over the last decade called “Track Me, Help Me.”

The “Track Me, Help Me” trend was sparked by recognition of not only the popularity and functionality of GPS navigational systems on-board mobile devices, but also by the recognition of consumer willingness to offer up a very valuable piece of the puzzle:

Location, location, location.

Many people with smart phones have come to depend on apps like Google Maps, but now, as demonstrated by apps like SeeClickFix, people are ready to take location to the next level. Whether it be the power to innovate local government operations or the pleasure of playing virtual put-put, consumers are receiving relevant benefits when they give this information away—more evidence of not only “Track Me, Help Me,” but also of the evolving consumer-driven market.

But the GPS centric apps currently available are just the tip of the ice burg. As app developers begin working in tighter conjunction with the government, corporations and organizations, GPS innovation will be streamlined and even more integrated into our daily lives. In fact, many industries have just now recognized this trend and are developing applications to catch up to this unmet consumer need, meaning that even more people will be saying “Track Me, Help Me” while being enabled to accomplish tasks—no matter how big—with efficiency.

Have you seen the new Maddock Douglas homepage?