Assignment 1.10 Crowdsourcing activity

Transcription

1 Crowdsourcing activity Senior Management & ICT

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS: Most relevant points Weak points....2 Modern crowdsourcing definitions..2 Comparison between new definitions with article s definition....2 References..5

3 Most relevant points. The most relevant point of this document is the capability to bring a complete definition of crowdsourcing, and we can say that the definition proposed in this paper is wide accepted because of the high number of cites that this article has received. Another goal from this paper is that has been able to merge the different point of views from crowdsourcing definitions in just one. In order to create the complete definition, the authors have performed the following classification with several items that every crowdsourcing process has to accomplish: About the crowd: (a) who forms it; (b) what it has to do; (c) what it gets in return. About the initiator: (d) who it is; (e) what it gets in return for the work of the crowd. About the process: (f) the type of process it is; (g) the type of call used; (h) the medium used. Finally, as the process of creating a definition of a wide and transversal concept as crowdsourcing is really difficult, the authors has checked and verificate the definition comparing the proposed definition with eleven internet initiatives that can be considered as crowdsourcing processes. Weak points. In our opinion, the weakest point of this paper is the fact that the concept of crowdsourcing will change constantly at the same way that technologies evolve. And another weak point is that some nuances of crowdsourcing may have been lost over the review of the literature selecting several databases and establishing specific search criteria. However, the author were concerned about that, and they propose to complete the article trying to describe crowdsourcing taking into account the definitions of crowdsourcing from other sources more related to business or human sciences. And the last weak point is that the definition represents certain types of crowdsourcing initiatives and they are shown in a blurred way. That is because crowdsourcing is a really wide concept that encompasses other concepts as crowdfunding or crowdvoting. 1

4 Modern crowdsourcing definitions The term was popularized by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson in an article published in Wired. Jeff Howe proposes the following definition: Simply defined, Crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often Undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the wide network of potential laborers. (Howe, 2006) This definition is considered like the most important and relevant for other scientists and researchers. But we can found others definitions where it is complemented with different points of view. There are more definitions about crowdsourcing like these: Crowdsourcing can be viewed as a method of distributing work to a large number of workers (the crowd) both inside and outside of an organization, for the purpose of improving decision making, completing cumbersome tasks, or co-creation of designs and other projects. Crowdsourcing is an umbrella term for a set of tools, approaches and concepts that deal with the process of outsourcing work (including seeking ideas) to a large and possibly unknown group of people (the crowd) usually external to the organization (Chiu, Liang, & Turban, 2014). The term certainly derives from business to identify the process of outsourcing part of an activity to an external provider, but it is currently used to identify a wide array of initiatives, both commercial (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk) and non-commercial (e.g., Wikipedia) (Carletti, Giannachi, Price, McAuley, & Benford, 2013). Crowdsourcing, a successful mechanism to harvest information and expertise from the masses in domains ranging from gold meaning to t-shirt design, is becoming increasingly popular, and is attracting global enterprises given a promising, low cost, access to scalable workforce online. Crowdsourcing takes many different shapes and forms, from mass data collection to enabling end-user driven customer support (Vukovic & Bartolini, 2010). Comparison between new definitions with article s definition. The definition proposed by this article is: Crowdsourcing is a type of participative online activity in which an individual, an institution, a non-profit organization, or company proposes to a group of individuals of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, and number, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task. The undertaking of the task, of variable complexity and modularity, and in which the crowd should participate bringing their work, money, knowledge and/or experience, always entails mutual benefit. The user will receive the satisfaction of a given type of need, be it economic, social recognition, self-esteem, or the development of individual skills, while the crowdsourcer will obtain and utilize to their advantage what the user has brought to the venture, whose form will depend on the type of activity undertaken. 2

5 As newly shown in research, forty original definitions were found in thirty-two articles published between 2006 and 2011 (Estelles-Arolas & Gonzalez-Ladron-de-Guevara, 2012). So it s very difficult to find any weak point in this definition because it takes into account others and it s a mix of them. In despite of, attending to each definition and making a comparison for each one, we can observe little differences. In the first definition, Howe 2006, the author only take account the employees within the company. The definition is limited about enterprise environment and doesn t take account (because in this date didn t be common) crowdsourcing like a global process thanks to internet. So Howe s definition was the first but with the advances over time it is incomplete. If we compare the Estelles & Gonzalez definition with the second one (Chiu, Liang, & Turban, 2014), we can observe that there are more similarities between both. This definition is more actual (2014) and it seems that understand crowdsourcing like a global process and not only like an enterprise issue. They talk about important keywords like co-creation and outsourcing, two words that represents crowdsourcing like an external process that needs the knowledge of people outside organization. In despite of, the definition doesn t talk about the benefits for user and crowdsourcer. Comparing the definition with the provided for Carletti and others, this one is far too because only attend to business and commercial and non-commercial environment, and it s known by all, that crowdsourcing has other goals like sharing knowledge, social benefits, etc. Finally, the last definition, Vukovic & Bartolini, takes into account crowdsourcing like a global concept, a mechanism to share expertise and knowledge. Furthermore, it talks about crowdsourcing like a very wide concept because thanks to the internet this process could have a lot of meanings. But the great difference respect to the main definition is that this doesn t take account the benefits for both parts. So, in conclusion we can say that the definition proposed by the article written by Estelles- Arolas and Gonzalez-Ladron-de-Guevara is the most accurate and complete that we have analysed. In any case, we propose an slight modification from this definition: Crowdsourcing is a type of participative activity, that is usually used in enterprise environments; like start-ups; in which an individual, an institution, a non-profit organization, or company proposes to a group of individuals of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, and number, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task. The undertaking of the task, of variable complexity and modularity, and in which the crowd should participate bringing their work, money, knowledge and/or experience, always entails mutual benefit. The user will receive the satisfaction of a given type of need, be it economic, social recognition, self-esteem, or the development of individual skills, while the crowdsourcer will obtain and utilize to their advantage what the user has brought to the venture, whose form will depend on the type of activity undertaken. 3

6 Some of the most common ways to overtake crowdsourcing activities are through co-creation and outsourcing. 4

7 References. HOWE, J. (2008), Crowdsourcing, Crown Publishing Group, New York. HOWE, J. (2006), The rise of crowdsourcing, Wired, 14 (6). Chiu, C.-M., Liang, T.-P., & Turban, E. (2014). What can crowdsourcing do for decision support? Decision Support Systems, 65, Carletti, L., Giannachi, G., Price, D., McAuley, D., & Benford, S. (2013). Digital humanities and crowdsourcing: an exploration. Museums and the Web. Vukovic, M., & Bartolini, C. (2010). Towards a Research Agenda for Enterprise Crowdsourcing. In T. Margaria & B. Steffen (Eds.), Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification, and Validation (pp ). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. 5