Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business

Crowdsource Review

The tone of Crowdsourcing is an informative tone, interspersed occasionally with a humorous tone. The informative tone helps to establish Jeff as an informed person, thus lending credence to his arguments and observations. The joking tone helps to make us feel as if Howe is also a friendly person that we would like to know. By making us like him he ensures that we listen to his points and take them to heart.
The organization of the book can be broken into two main parts, the overall organization and the organization of each section. The overall organization of the book is broken down into three sections, the past, present, and future of Crowdsourcing. The past of Crowdsourcing talks about talks about the factors, such as the internet, that contributed to the advent of Crowdsourcing. In the present of Crowdsourcing Howe talks about the different forms of Crowdsourcing and how they are used in our world today. Last, the future of Crowdsourcing talks about the forms of Crowdsourcing that Howe predicts will be prevalent in the world of tomorrow. Within each of these three section Howe organizes his dissertation into two main sections. First he explains a concept and then he illustrates that concept with an anecdote or an example.

A New Type of "Sourcing"

With all the controversy surrounding outsourcing the real concern should be with "Crowdsourcing" or the willingness of international amateurs to accomplish tasks for little or no money, sometimes with quality equaling that or exceeding professionals. One may ask why people would do this or even if this phenomenon is true. I will not provide the motivations, as this is a large part of the book, but suffice it to say it is true. Crowdsourcing is a great assessment of this trend and outlines in detail what exactly crowdsourcing is, provides real world examples of crowdsourcing done both well and poorly, and explains why you as an individual, company, or industry should care about this trend. Crowdsourcing may take some time to complete as at times it reads as a business school text, however by the conclusion my guess is that you will find it to be worthwhile and find yourself better off than when you started.

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