![[hugo-jehanne-LOHVrTsdvzY-unsplash.jpg]] Photo by [Hugo Jehanne](https://unsplash.com/@hugojehanne?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/LOHVrTsdvzY?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) Why we have CrowdSourcing here and why we discuss this phenomenon now is partially based on overall human motivation specified by Abraham Maslow in 1943. His Pyramid of needs basically shows different level of human needs driven by motivation from essential needs (Physiological and Safety), through Love / Belonging and Esteem to final stage - The **self-actualization**. ![[Pasted image 20230709111703.png|Figure 1: The Power of self-actualization]] We connected Maslow’s hierarchy of needs with our Information Pyramid of Motivation, signaling direct connection between self–actualization and two top levels of Information pyramid. Specialized Knowledge and Ultimate Entertainment are motivation levels enabled by top level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and also key reason for overall human participation in CrowdSourcing. Chris Anderson  in his book “FREE – THE FUTURE OF A RADICAL PRICE” ,explained motivation divided into several reason areas and majority of these reasons where defined as: **Mimetic Desire: **We want to do things that other people do, because their decisions validate our own behavior and acts. This is substantial part of our desire for creation of communities and social networking and it’s one of the basic elements which guarantee success of CrowdSourcing. **Follow Leaders:** We tend to follow leaders , resulting in herd behavior and concentration around them in natural way . Leaders are shaping members into groups and communities • Natural leaders concentrates most connections and are able to abstract multi connections form more groups / communities **Abundance Thinking:** Economist Nick Szabo came with terminology “Mental Transaction Cost”, which describes buyer’s low cost decision methodology “**Toll of Thinking**”. In short, people don’t think if something is for free but they start to think if the cost is even only 1 cent. This method predicted fall of micropayment systems as ineffective for reasons specified above. Overall definition of Abundance thinking is depicted below ![[Pasted image 20230709111724.png|Figure 2: Connection between Communities and Abundance Thinking]] Cloud Computing makes technology so cheap, ubiquitous, that anybody can use it, so it propagates around the world and into every possible niche. This collective exercise opens Pandora’s Box collaboration on all social; technology and business levels, shifting economical landscapes by creation of services with cost close to zero or for free (Mass effect). This leads to overall fixation of CAPEX close to zero (XaaS consumption) by increasing OPEX (only for a short period). Service cost will continuously fall down and will decrease OPEX to minimal value, which creates paradox, where all services will be **close to free** and there won’t be any pushback to increase CAPEX for small and mid-size companies. ## Independent World Phenomenon Community members have a desire to act independently and their interactions are limited if there are any visible constraints in sense of discussion control or if they feel unsafe to openly interact with other members. This is partially eliminated by Crowd self-management which is achieved by voting on actions and crowd goals. This barrier doesn’t exist in public social networks and it’s also one of the reasons why there is such a huge and increasing crowd concentration. And this is the “Independent World Phenomenon” indicating highest density of crowds spread out among various social networks. ## Social Integration Factors Social Integration factors (diagram below) answers basic questions about crowd concentration and their behavior ![[Pasted image 20230709111821.png|Figure 3: Social Integration Factors]] **Why** 1. “Living on the Net” paradigm – There are more and more people “On Line” connected to Internet via computers, mobiles and other endpoint devices. This brings crowds into cyberspace and enables communication of virtual communities 2. Geographical distance – Digital world omits proximity issue (of social communication) and time zone problem is greatly minimized by messaging (time constraints) 3. “Everybody is there” argument – People already uses social networks, email communication and instant messaging, so there isn’t any “hire” problem for Crowdsourcing purposes 4. To follow Leaders – people follows their leaders everywhere, so if they are accessible on the web, they will go there and connect with them anyway 5. “Free Brain” capacity and “Free Time” triggers – People have a free time and they are looking for interesting activities, to entertain themselves. There’s also “Free Brain” motivation (Open Innovation Model), where they enjoy thinking and if it’s paid – even better. **Who** 1. People - Anybody connected as a user or anonymously 2. Communities – Physical and virtual communities represented in Cyberspace 3. Partners – 3rd Party Companies, Industries, Academic Ground 4. Companies – Business Markets and Business Entities 5. Government – Local and Global Governments (*.gov) **When** 1. Events – scheduled 2. Invitations – on demand 3. 24x7 Online – anytime **Where** 1. Everywhere! – literally at any place covered by wireless or wired signal 2. Cafeteria – connection to lowest human needs (Maslow’s hierarchy of need) – physiological 3. Airport, Airplane, Train – Global world connections and travel – we spend significant time traveling and even during this time we are able to socially interact inside our digital communities 4. Home – Family time, social interaction with friends (social networks) 5. Work – Corporate interactions and enterprise collaboration **How** 1. Interactive Communication – video conferences, mobile video (3G) , webex , zoom 2. Messaging Systems – emails , sms, twitter, mms 3. Endpoint Devices – mobile, eReader, Playstation, Xbox, Internet TV, computer 4. Meetings – online, offline (Archived) 5. Information Streams – sensors, machines, data hubs ## Crowdsourcing for Enterprises We asked ourselves, how the Enterprises could use Crowdsourcing and enhance their business models, just as they invited outsourcing couple of years ago. We believe, the best definition of Crowdsourcing is through collaboration aspect and this leads us to the idea that #CrowdSourcing is actually a new collaboration framework. This thinking is aligned with Hutch Carpenter’s article “Crowdsourcing is the new collaboration” and shows distinction between traditional collaboration and Crowdsourcing Collaboration (depicted below). ![[Pasted image 20230709111849.png|Figure 4: Traditional vs. Crowdsourcing Collaboration]] With the CrowdSourcing approach, participation is predicated on you actually having an interest in a given idea. Not that you are tasked to bring a particular set of skills to a project that you may or may not care about. Crowdsourced collaboration does not replace traditional collaboration. If traditional collaboration is the process of executing on a known objective, crowdsourced collaboration is the process of discovering and building ideas that are not yet known. Crowdsourced collaboration creates new opportunities, and traditional collaboration executes on them [1]. --- Vasil Remienuk in his article “Internal Crowdsourcing: Enterprise Edition” described internal Crowdsourcing as “When it comes to prototyping or planning of internal applications for the enterprise, the common practice is to involve into collaboration process representative(s) of the user party. Normally, they’re the heads of departments (marketing, sales, etc.) or just the most experienced users; in total, no more than 3-4 persons, who can define, whether a technically implementable and economically sound requirement has any sense for users. Whilst those persons can have impact on the development process, specifying requirements and assessing viability of ideas, the main reason of their presence is to help building the cultural bridge between users and new applications (IOW, to get the users ready for change). The problems is that, like with any other kind of mediators, user representatives, who aggregate demands of the community and promote them to other parties (technical, business), can be inaccurate in their conclusions and vision of major demands. At the end of the day, the things that users really want can be out of the picture. Internal CrowdSourcing will help to setup many-to-many relationships between users and other parties. Without slowing the planning and development processes down, it may continuously reveal bottlenecks and impediments that users face interacting with the system. Employees of customer service, marketing, sales and other departments are those who use internal applications on a daily basis (literally breath those application) and have a very deep insight into them. Working with the applications they admit the problems that doesn’t let them act effectively, or things they lack that will increase the productivity. If they try to push those points forward via bug-tracking engine (create a ticket for a proposal), they have a very little chance to succeed – the ticket most likely will be treated as “not a bug” and put off. With CrowdSourcing application as the place where employees can submit their ideas, no brilliant ones will be lost. Filtering and promotion of ideas is managed internally by the crowd, so the hottest ones are always highlighted and very little external impact is required. Compared with other media tricks, internal CrowdSourcing resembles self-organized continuous brainstorming, most of all.“ Using internal CrowdSourcing judiciously, you can find this simple concept explaining: - Stimulating innovations. End users can be authors of innovative ideas that will increase share in existing markets, add new value to a current project and help entering new markets. Fresh eyed users can see the problem in a new light; - Solving impediments. Users may have problems using existing products, or have no ability (functionality) to do what they want. Crowdsourcing may reveal the most popular impediments; - Highlighting creative agents. Management may be interested in figuring out the most creative employees for the future; - Employees on themselves have a strong motivation to share ideas, which can also be stirred up with money or public approval [2]. ## References [1] HUTCH CARPENTER: CROWDSOURCING IS NEW COLLABORATION, 02/2010 [2] VASIL REMENIUK: INTERNAL CROWDSOURCING, ENTERPRISE EDITION, 02/2010 ## Related to [[SPHERES and Social Management - Introduction]]