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.
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 [...]
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.
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.
Lessons from Duolingo’s Effort to Support Free Language Learning from Crowdsourcing
AJT
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 3:28 pm
@duolingo crowdsourced text translation platform allows users to learn a new languages online for free
AngelList Syndicates: Crowdsourcing the Limited Partner role
KMY
Posted on October 31, 2015 at 5:35 pm
AngelList – an investing platform with the tagline “Where the world meets startups” – has historically been a platform where angel investors could review self-created profiles from aspiring entrepreneurs (think LinkedIn for startups).  If an angel investor liked what they [...]
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.
Watsi: ‘Giving Back’ through crowd sourcing!
Karthik
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 5:59 pm
Watsi, one of the fastest growing non-profits in web history, represents the next generation of charities. It connects medical patients in the developing world who can’t afford the medical procedures they need with donors via the web who can donate [...]
Applause: Solving testing pain point with the power of crowds
GA
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 10:41 am
Doron Reuveni met Roy Solomon at a party in Israel in 2007. Both worked in tech businesses and discovered they shared a view on a critical pain point for many companies: they have to build apps to reach millions of [...]
Bark & Co.: Using the Celebrity Dog Crowd
Damla
Last modified on October 30, 2015 at 3:29 pm
How 400 famous dogs became the sales team
Motif Investing: Democratizing investment selection for retail investors
QC
Posted on October 24, 2015 at 10:47 am
The traditional model of personal investing looks like this: individuals like you and me either sign up for a brokerage account, select investments and construct our own portfolios (“the DIY approach”) or hire a financial advisor that makes investment suggestions [...]
eYeka: crowdsourcing creativity
HelloSof
Posted on November 1, 2015 at 6:04 am
Disrupting the creative industry by leveraging the power of the crowd.. or not
OpenIDEO Brings Crowdsourced Creative Solutions to Solve Social Challenges
Sara Alsadi
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 8:34 pm
OpenIDEO brings solutions to big challenges around the world by connecting sponsoring organizations with crowdsourced solutions from its community members
Lime Crime: Leveraging the Crowds for “Makeup for Unicorns”
Nazli O
Posted on October 31, 2015 at 11:43 pm
Lime Crime is an indie, cruelty free makeup brand created by the eccentric Doe Deere, a self-proclaimed misfit and a fan of 90s inspired grunge makeup. The company is best known for the innovative, trend setting and non-traditional color scheme of their [...]
Street Bump: Crowdsourcing Better Streets, but Many Roadblocks Remain
CEA
Posted on October 30, 2015 at 2:17 pm
Boston's Street Bump is an interesting effort at leveraging the collective intelligence of the crowd to improve road conditions but still faces many challenges in creating measurable value for and incentivizing users.
1 2 3 4 5 6