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Why does Procter & Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStockphoto and Threadless employ just a handful of people, yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year?
"Crowdsourcing" is how the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the responsibility of a specialized few. Jeff Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise–it’s talented, creative, and stunningly productive. It’s also a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education, and job history no longer matter; the quality of the work is all that counts. If you can perform the service, design the product, or solve the problem, you’ve got the job.
But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent is employed, research is conducted, and products are made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable, and Howe delves into both the positive and negative consequences of this intriguing phenomenon. Through extensive reporting from the front lines of this workplace revolution, he employs a brilliant array of stories to look at the economic, cultural, business, and political implications of crowdsourcing.
Journalist Howe introduced the term crowdsourcing-the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats once the province of the specialized few-in a June 2006 Wired magazine article; here, he expands on that concept. He cites examples of the application of crowdsourcing by such companies as NetFlix and YouTube, also discussing the drawbacks of the phenomenon. However, he remains confident that, under the proper circumstances, crowdsourcing offers tremendous benefits to society. Reader Kirby Heyborne (Little Brother) does a stellar job presenting this thought-provoking work, sounding appropriately serious or funny as warranted. Recommended for all audio collections. [Audio clips available through
—Stephen L. Hupp
Introduction: The Dawn of the Human Network 1
Sect. I How We Got Here
1 The Rise of the Amateur: Fueling the Crowdsourcing Engine 23
2 From So Simple a Beginning: Drawing the Blueprint for Crowdsourcing 47
3 Faster, Cheaper, Smarter, Easier: Democratising the Means of Production 71
4 The Rise and Fall of the Firm: Turning Community into Commerce 98
Sect. II Where We Are
5 The Most Universal Quality: Why Diversity Trumps Ability 131
6 What the Crowd Knows: Collective Intelligence in Action 146
7 What the Crowd Creates: How the 1 Percent Is Changing the Way Work Gets Done 177
8 What the Crowd Thinks: How the 10 Percent Filters the Wheat from the Chaff 223
9 What the Crowd Funds: Reinventing Finance, Ten Bucks at a Time 247
Sect. III Where We're Going
10 Tomorrow's Crowd: The Age of the Digital Native 261
11 Conclusion: The Rules of Crowdsourcing 278
Notes 289
Index 304
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Overview
Why does Procter & Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStockphoto and Threadless employ just a handful of people, yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year?
"Crowdsourcing" is how the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the responsibility of a specialized few. Jeff Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise–it’s talented, creative, and stunningly productive. It’s also a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education, and job history no longer matter; the quality of the work is all that counts. If you can perform the service, design the ...