Crowd sourcing is everywhere...... (?)

As you are reading this blog, you might have started to think about whether or not this blog is relevant for you. We are trying to reach out to all kinds of people - people who just are interested in crowd sourcing, people who wants to know how to use crowd sourcing, small companies, big companies and people who wants to know about its effectiveness. The list goes on. But if you are like me, Alex, Camille and Coco - Just college students trying to learn more about it.
Then I have a question for you.

Have you ever used crowd sourcing?
As your brain starts to speed up, you should might consider this: Crowd sourcing is everywhere! In different types, they are all over. You ask your friends what they think about the new pair of jeans your just bought. You are seeking their opinion..

Second, have you ever colored your hair and wondering if it was the right color for you, or wondered where to go on vacation and asked your friends on Facebook; "Should I stay brunette, or should I go back to blonde?" "Does anyone have a recommendation on where I should go for vacation this summer?" All of this is crowd sourcing, and we are using them almost everyday!

Crowd Sourcing Challeges

While this blog has shown a variety of industries who apply this Crowd Sourcing to their business model, people should also seek out ways to get involved. While businesses are looking for insights to grow their own work, one can still seek these out, not just for personal gain but to offer value to something you care about. This could even be the foot in the door to employment in some cases. Below you will find some Crowd Sourcing Challenges proposed to find new and innovative ideas. It would also be greatly appreciated to get your input on these opportunities. Feel free to either comment with your thoughts or any Crowd Sourcing Challenges you have found.

The listed Crowd Sourcing Challenges are found at Challenge.gov focused on Government Agencies.

"The Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards recognize innovative technologies that incorporate green chemistry into chemical design, manufacture and use, and help advance protection of human health and the environment.

Green chemistry is the design of chemical products or processes that reduce both the generation and use of chemicals that are hazardous to the environment or people’s health. Nominations for innovative technologies feature the design of greener chemicals, synthesis, or reactions.

Nominations may cover any technology, but EPA is particularly interested in receiving nominations on approaches or technologies that reduce or eliminate the need for brominated flame retardant chemicals. EPA anticipates recognizing five award winning green chemistry technologies this fall.

Award nominations are due to EPA by April 30, 2013."

Source: Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards 2013

"To stimulate innovations in energy storage technologies of value in extreme space environments and in renewable energy systems on Earth—

• demonstrate a high energy density storage systems that meet the demands imposed by the daylight/darkness cycle on the Moon to enable a rover to operate throughout the lunar darkness cycle
• Energy system innovations to benefit terrestrial applications, including vehicles and renewable energy generation systems.

Dates are approximate at this time and will be finalized at time of registration and rules announcement.

 The prize purse is $1.5 million. Detailed rules and plans will be announced in the coming months.  The competition is expected to occur in early 2014. More information at www.NightRover.org and www.nasa.gov/challenges

Important dates

Submission Period:

Start: Feb 01, 2013 12:00 AM EST End: Oct 25, 2013 10:00 PM EDT

Winners announced:

Apr 01, 2014 10:00 PM EDT"

Source: Night Rover Challenge 2014

"Additionally, The ISS Fit challenge is to design, develop and produce an iPad app that will allow International Space Station crewmembers to easily enter and track food items.  It is your job to develop an app to identify the user, track dietary intake, and provide a timestamp of when the food was consumed.   We need a more detailed log of dietary intake so that we can better understand the role of nutrition in spaceflight, and provide better dietary recommendations to help mitigate the negative physiological effects of spaceflight.  The app could take photos of the foods, use a voice recorder option, provide an easy way to enter foods manually or by creating an interactive voice command system.

Important dates

Submission Period:

Start: Feb 10, 2013 09:00 AM EST End: Jul 01, 2013 05:00 PM EDT"

Source: Nasa Iss Fit Food Intake Tracker Ipad App Challenge

How is Crowdsourcing on Pinterest Benefit Your Business

A right social media can be a really effective crowdsourcing tool for your business. 

One of the hottest crowdsourcing social media in the market is Pinterest;

How Does Pinterest Work?

Think Pinterest as an online pin board that everyone can generate ideas and visions. Pinterest has almost every categories from food to home, design to fashion, and gardening to humor. Business owner can easily to target customers by using different categories. It is extremely easy to share things on your board. You can pin everything from you electronic devices and other websites also re-pin other people's pin. Click on one pin, it will lead you to the source website directly. By this way, your product can be dispersed quickly and easily. 

Inspiration 

Pinterest can work for double ways. As well as you share items with others to generate your business, you can also see what other users are sharing at the same time. You can get some inspirations for you own business. Also, it helps you to have a better understanding of the market. You can determining trends and the most popular things in the market and develop your products. 

Market Your Product

Pinterest is not an online shop, but when you pin your product on your board with a price tag and the link to your website. Your product will go on the Pinterest gift page automatically. This will increase traffic to your site and generate business. 

Other Benefits

Like other social networks, Pinterest helps you to interact with others. You can understand the market by read and respond comments on your post. By using social media, every internet user become your potential customers. It is a free platform for you to develop your business. 

Photo Credit: http://www.basekit.com/how-pinterest-could-benefit-your-businessOther Source: http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2013/02/06/use-the-right-social-media-for-your-crowdsourced-projects/http://www.basekit.com/how-pinterest-could-benefit-your-business

SAS and their use of crowd sourcing

SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) is one of the first airline companies to use crowd sourcing. They have successfully been using it in order to gain knowledge of what their customers want when they are traveling with them.

For the summer of 2012, they launched a crowd sourcing campaign - "The Summerplane 2012" by asking their customers the simple question "Where should we fly?" They invited people to go to their website and suggest a new destination.
They received the amount of 850 different destinations and the top 10 most popular ones where possible to vote n through Facebook. In one week they received more than 5000 votes and the destination with the most votes where Alanya in Turkey, and SAS now fly there twice a week.

Furthermore, they decided to "crowd source everything", by developing My SAS Idea they reached out to all of their customers. The idea was launched June 13th 2012, and within the first 6 days they got 500+ members, 400+ ideas and 2000+ votes. 
My SAS idea is open to customers as well as employees. One benefit is that the employees has their own portal and can go in and check out internal ideas. Only the most popular ideas will be evaluated by SAS. This is a super creative way which creates a buzz and  a good tool to communicate with your customers. 

Global Companies Taking Advantage of Crowd Sourcing

Sure crowd sourcing sounds like a great idea, but is it effective? Do companies even use crowd sourcing? The answer is yes and yes. Companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, IBM, Microsoft, General Electric, even Google all take advantage of crowd sourcing. What these companies all have in common is that fact that they are all global companies. Coincidence? Most likely not, these companies appreciate the idea of receiving feedback and ideas from individuals and customers. A company is only as successful as their customers make it, and becoming a globally successful company requires a great deal of research into different parts of the world, including seeking out information pertaining to the specifics of where their customers are coming to them from. 

Coca-Cola takes advantage of crowd sourcing by holding contests where individuals may create and send in a video/animation contest for their Coke-Zero product. IBM on the other hand hosts meetings called innovation jams where people come from countries and companies all over the world just to brainstorm areas the company could improve upon. In their largest jam session, IBM had more than 150,000 people come help support the company. In one of the most simplest form s of crowd sourcing available, Microsoft began what they referred to as a 'crowd sourcing blog' where some of the company's developers wanted to start up a discussion with the public getting their opinions on Windows 8. Google also has become well known in the crowd sourcing aspect of allowing individuals to send in video contests and have asked for videos including ideas for promoting Google Chrome, as well as videos promoting Google tools. GE constantly seeks information from individuals regarding eco-friendly ideas for their company. And finally, McDonald's held a contest requesting real pictures of individuals to be used on their products.

Source:http://news.eyeka.net/2012/03/the-6-best-global-brands-use-creative-crowdsourcing/

Photo Credits:  http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog/2011/03/coca-cola-cut-ad-spend-and-invest-more-in-socia-medi/
 http://www.bubblews.com/news/80632-mind-blowing-facts-about-mcdonald039s

Starbucks: My Starbucks Idea

A customer is the person who understands your brand best and has the most valuable ideas. Crowdsourcing is an effective way to collect customers ideas. Starbucks applies this idea to a website called "My Starbucks Idea", where Starbucks customers all around the world can share their experiences and ideas about how to improve Starbucks products and services. Also, "My Starbucks Idea" allows customers to vote and leave comments for other people's idea.

 

Starbucks divided all ideas into three major categories, product ideas, experience idea, and involvement ideas.  This way, Starbucks can understand customer satisfaction for each category and improve customer satisfaction by implement the most popular and useful ideas in their business. Customers can see all the implemented ideas under the tab "IDEAS IN ACTION". It makes customers feel that Starbucks really cares about customers' feeling and encourages more customers to engage in this online community. 

Starbucks uses "My Starbucks Idea" as a tool to understand customers needs. It is also a great example to combine the concept of crowdsourcing and marketing research together. 

"My Starbucks Idea" Link: http://mystarbucksidea.force.com

Other Source: http://dailycrowdsource.com/20-resources/projects/93-starbucks-crowdsources-ideas-to-understand-customer-needs

http://www.digitalsparkmarketing.com/customer-focus/customer-insights/business-crowdsourcing/

Photo credit: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-rewards-and-3-risks-of-making-customers-brand-ambassadors/

- Coco Liu

Crowd Sourcing Week Start-up Challenge

Making its debut for the first time this June 2013; Crowd Sourcing Week is a 5 day excursion of events focused on how "Crowds" are taking business models to new heights, collaborating and innovating at the enterprise level. Hosted in Singapore, a variety of speakers have donated their time to build upon this event.With more than 30 sessions planned that feature case studies, keynotes and panel discussions businessmen around the world can look to this week as a productive one. They also have themes dedicated to each day. I expect this to be a great opportunity for both learning and networking. As of right now they have a brief overview of what is to be expected at this event, but based on the array of speakers and topics covered throughout we can expect a show. As the event comes closer, we will learn more. 

Schedule:

Day 1: Government, Architecture & Urban Planning

Day 2: Marketing, Advertising, Design and Media

Day 3: Healthcare, Science and Technology

Day 4: Crowdfunding & New Business Models + Startup Competition

Day 5: Tourism, New Product Development, Fashion & Film

Along with the exhibitions, a competition sponsored by RocketHub, allows entrepreneurs all over the globe are invited to pitch their innovative business plans to earn $30,000 to get off the ground. The top three finalists will be featured at this years Crowd Sourcing Week. RocketHub, like Kickstarter is a pledge-driven Crowd Funding website that looks to help regular people get their start by giving them a platform to raise money. Through RocketHub, the applicants are tasked to submit their business plans and will be picked by a panel of venture capitalists and start-up mentors for which they believe have the most potential for success. 

If you are interested in attending this event, getting involved, submitting a business plan or learning more about what they have to offer feel free to visit crowdsourcingweek.com.

Also if you're interested in keeping connected with their blog visit Crowd Sourcing Week Blog.

Types of Crowd Sourcing

Several forms of crowd sourcing are available to anyone and everyone. Whether you're trying to start up a business, need helpful ideas and insight, or simply looking to seek advice from the public, crowd sourcing is for you. 

 

Darren Stevens, (http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/what-is-crowdsourcing/) classified crowdsourcing into three main categories; crowd funding, crowd sourced design, and crowd wisdom. Here is a little information on each of the different types.

There are several different forms of crowd sourcing that exist, all extremely beneficial. The first, crowd funding, consist of companies that use crowd sourcing to obtain money from people who voluntarily pool their money together in order provide money to the company they wish to support. Some examples include everything from disaster relief to funding need for a new start up company.

Another form of crowd sourcing is known as crowd sourced design (creative crowd source). Crowd sourced design allows companies that may be low on resources or in scarce supply to obtain contextual opinions, or helpful information in regard to the design of a company's website. Crowd source design allows the community to feel engaged in supporting their company of choice.

Crowd wisdom takes advice, information, and basic wisdom from individuals willing to contribute any knowledge they may have on a subject and submit it to a website in order to answer questions. Crowd wisdom can be beneficial in the fact that it takes into account the wisdom from a crowd of individuals rather than getting the information from a single expert. That way individuals can compare the responses a crowd provides to the expert in order to come to a well thought out conclusion.

Photo Credit: Introducing Crowdsourcing http://www.thinketc.com/introducing-crowdsourcing/

How to be successful using crowdsourcing within your company.

Anneli: Are you like me, curious of what crowdsourcing is and how you can use it in your company? 

Jeff Howe, who is defined as the creator of crowdsourcing after an article he wrote for Wired Magazine in 2006, defines crowdsourcing as "Crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined network of people in the form of an open call."
 

Why use crowdsourcing?

• Involve your customers in developing new product
• Show off new products early
• Ask for advice and input
• Customers will feel ownership of your products and services
• New ideas can come from outside your company (external)
• Interesting and powerful way of market new products

6 tips on how to be successful in crowdsourcing

1. Make something interesting to make your customers involve
2. Make it easy for them to involve
3. Engage the CEO
4. Anchoring throughout the organization
5. A plan to deal with ideas internally
6. Success stories

To gain more knowledge I have attached a Youtube video where crowdsourcing is explained more detailed.