Complete Sendhils Work

Chapter – 1

Introduction

Web based Crowd sourcing is one of the newly-emerging technologies in any industries. The jobs are outsourced from company to open market when a problem cannot be solved by computers but solved by human beings. The best employee solution will be rewarded through payment online. For example: Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome). Crowd sourcing has many advantages and disadvantages. It helps organizations to have an efficient use of crowds for competitive advantage through effective cost leadership. Currently this business model has various problems in-terms of human exploitation. Open innovation which leads to a customer- centric business model where customer or crowds are used to help business to solve problems and develop competitive advantage. Face book has used crowds for providing different language support in their website.

Aim and Objectives

Aim of this dissertation will be possible suggestion to solve some of the issues by analysing the different companies using the web based crowd sourcing. Major pitfalls/issues are as follows

Added costs to bring a project to an acceptable conclusion. Increased likelihood that a crowd sourced project will fail due to lack of

monetary motivation, too few participants, lower quality of work, lack of personal interest in the project, global language barriers, or difficulty managing a large-scale, crowd sourced project.

Below-market wages or no wages at all. Barter agreements are often associated with crowd sourcing.

No written contracts, non-disclosure agreements, or employee agreements or agreeable terms with crowd sourced employees.

Difficulties maintaining a working relationship with crowd sourced workers throughout the duration of a project.

Susceptibility to faulty results caused by targeted, malicious work efforts.Also my dissertation will give some key ideas to have an effective business model to solve issues using web based crowd sourcing.

Indicative Literature

The term crowd sourcing has been coined by Jeff Howe. He is the author of book “Crowd sourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business”. Currently companies like amazon.com; InnoCentive; Facebook etc are currently involved in crowd sourcing. Some of the industries are using B2B and B2C models to

have a competitive advantage. Crowds may be customer or firms who can help them solve the business issues. Competitor analysis of various companies who are involved in web based crowd sourcing.

Description of the chapters

The present study intends to delve the modern concept of crowdsourcing which is one of the newly emerging technologies in any industry. The aims and the objectives of this concept is explained and few examples are also cited.Chapter 2; comprises of the literature review with a brief account of the overview on the subset of ‘User centered innovation’ in which manufactures rely on customers a note on history or evolution of this innovative concept is well explained. Usage of this concept as a business model in various sectors such as advertising, E-business and the IT industry. The stratergy of marketing research and product development is dealt with.The advantages and disadvantages of crowdsourcing which seem to be less obvious to an average business person are highlighted. The do’s and don’t’s of this upcoming ,innovative method is discussed.

Chapter3;the mode in which the research was carried out is explained in addition to the research designs and research approach, the research strategy with a general plan of how to go about to create a deeper understanding of the phenomena. The study adopted both qualitative data (textual formats) and quantitative data (numerical data) approach. A case study approach was taken into account to understand the impact of Crowdsourcing on businesses around the world. The suitability of the technique of the research is derived from the opinion of using multiple source of evidence. The techniques involved in data collections is dealt with for the simple reason that imprecision in data collections would give results that are not valid. The key types of data which were collected and analysed are the primary and secondary.The fit between the data chosen and research question for analysis was laid emphasis on .Data analysis in terms of impact of crowdsourcing on the macro and sectoral level is well sorted and presented.

Chapter4;the results and the mode by which the sample data is analysed is presented in this chapter. This chapter provides an insight into how Crowdsourcing has been used as a successful business model by various enterprises. The following case studies are used to understand how Crowdsourcing can create new business model and improve the image of the organization.A typical and successful model of Dell’s ideastorm is an initiation to the present study.Case study of Istockphoto is explained.Goldcorp challenge ,Threadless are to name a few organizations which follow or go by the emerging concept of crowdsourcing and after implecating them their returs have increased to a great extent.hence depicting the application of this phenomenon in various business sectors

Chapter – 2

Literature Review

3.1 Introduction

Crowdsourcing is a very new, real and an innovative business idea. There are many definitions for Crowdsourcing, but the most basic definition is the process of tapping into the collective mind power of the public at large to complete business related tasks that are usually done by the company itself or they might do it by outsourcing to a third party provider (Cove, 2007). According to (Howe J. , 2006) it is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large

group of people in the form of an open call. By following this method organizations can get their hands on free labor. Also it enables the company’s managers to expand the size of their talent pool and at the same time they also get a very valuable and an in-depth insight into what customers really want. In today’s world the internet is considered as the most important and valuable business tool (Brabham D. C., 2008). Hence, almost every business organization, has tried in one way or another, to use the web to their advantage by trying to improve and streamline their logistics (Balasubramanyam, 1997). Two types of collective intelligence have emerged to handle the massive capability the internet has established. One of them is Open innovation and the other Crowdsourcing (Brabham D. C., 2008).

There are quite successful product based examples for Crowdsourcing in the growing world of online connected collaboration (Sinha, 2008). For example, ‘Wikipedia’- This massive online encyclopedia is a prime example for its crowd of passionate followers who contribute to its ever increasing database (Wales, 2001).

3.2 History

The term Crowdsourcing is actually derived from or coined from two words – ‘Crowd’ and ‘Outsourcing’. According to (Kendall, 2010), because of rapid technological advances have allowed for the prices of consumer electronics to be drastically reduced, thereby reducing the gap between amateurs and professionals. Companies are then able to take complete advantage of the public (Brabham D. C., 2009). Recently, the web has become the primary tool for publicizing and managing outsourced projects. It all started when more and more people got access to high speed internet connection. Now, sitting in the comfort of their respective homes, hobbyists and part time dabblers started contributing and suddenly companies had access to extremely cheap or even free labor. They also found out that the quality of work produced by these individuals was not that different to the one’s created by the companies highly paid employees. The companies also suddenly had access to labor and talent pool from all over the world and did not have to depend on cheap labor from certain parts of the world like India and China only. They also found that their products improved in their quality because of the influence of people from different parts of the world who each had unique perspectives.

3.3 Overview – How it works

Crowdsourcing is nothing but distributed problem solving and development model. Certain problems are uploaded to a certain unknown group of solvers in the form of general call for help in finding out solutions (Lohr, 2009). The users also called as the ‘crowd’ will generally form online communities and try to crack the problems and submit their solutions or findings (Kleemann, 2008). In most cases the crowds themselves sort through the

solutions, finding the best ones. Then these solutions automatically become a part of the entity which broadcasted the problem in the first place. Occasionally, the company may reward the crowdsourcer or the individuals who took part in providing the solution. In some cases, the only rewards may be intellectual satisfaction and in other cases the individuals and their efforts are well compensated, either monetarily, with prizes, or with recognition (Robert V. Kozinets, TheWisdom of Consumer Crowds: Collective Innovation in the Age of Networked Marketing, 2008). Crowdsourcing may produce solutions from complete novices or volunteers who work in their spare time, or from small businesses or from experts which were unknown to the initiating organization (Howe J. , 2008).

Crowdsourcing is a subset of ‘User centered innovation’, in which the manufacturers rely on customers not just to specify their needs, but to define the products or enhancements to meet them. The crowd sourced work is managed and owned by a single organization that sells the results. The company relies on the individuals’ willingness to give over their ideas to the company either free of charge or for a very cheap price, in order to see them in production. Individuals within the community participate because they have passion for the task. When individuals communicate via the internet, as part of Crowdsourcing, they participate for the opportunity to be acknowledged or seen by the larger intellectual community. By identifying the factors that motivate the people within a specific crowd, managers are able to gain a very good insight into the collective system and the type of business model used or deployed (Schenk,2009).

There are a limited number of variations when we consider how crowds create and decide. When the crowd is creating something new there are two variations:

a. One in which meaningful and independent information is collected without any dependence on others in the system.

b. The other where being independent and meaningful collaboration with the others in the system is required.

When the crowd is making the decisions, individual decision can be made where the members of the system act independently from others or in other cases they are influenced by other individual decisions or group based decisions where the group’s decision drives the final result. This combination creates the Collective Intelligence system.

3.4 Crowdsourcing – As a Business model

Crowdsourcing is nowadays being increasingly used to create business models in various sectors. They are used for:

3.4.1 Product Development

A quite common marketing task for which Crowdsourcing is being applied is for the purpose of product design and development (Libert, 2007). Companies use Crowdsourcing to get feedback and advice on their own product development efforts from existing customers or end users and experts who may be able to come up with a novel method of solving the design problem. In addition to this, other companies have challenged the Crowdsourcing online community to come up with their own designs for their own unique products, which the client firm may then adopt and create on the crowdsourcers behalf, sharing the profits. Sometimes, in other forms of product development, some institutions have turned to crowdsourcers to provide them with not only just the idea of the product but to provide the services that the firm then offers to its own customers.

Companies have been obtaining the consumers input for the purpose of development of the products and this is not a new phenomenon (Hippel, 1998). Manufacturers for years have turned to customers and end users for suggestions and advice on development of existing products or services. Salespeople have often been charged with the responsibility of collecting feedback from customers so that it can be used for further development of the product or service that are being provided by the parent company.

Crowdsourcing has quickened the process of obtaining feedback from the customers in at least three ways. They are:

a. The sheer number of end users consulted can be increased dramatically. Suggestions may come not only from existing customers but also from potential customers that previously the firm had no way of contacting. Also the company can engage experts who will lead to increases in the quality of the suggestions and the people who engage in the crowd sourcing activities are most likely to be companies’ most loyal and demanding consumers.

b. Crowd sourcing also gives the opportunity for the companies to interact indirectly or directly with the consumers as there is no need for the information to come from the salespeople or any other member from the distribution channels.

c. Companies can specifically tailor the areas of product development that they ask the crowdsourcers to focus upon, instead of consumers providing generalized suggestions on new products.

Using user generated content is not considered extraordinary nowadays, as a basis of a business model.

3.4.2 Advertising and Promotion

This is the second generalized marketing area where Crowdsourcing is used (Sherrett, 2010). In this area it is possible to distinguish two different forms of Crowdsourcing activities; one is the use of crowdsourcers for more hard and menial tasks which the client firm doest not have the

time or the man power to do. The second is the use of experts who are used by certain companies to help with their product development or advertising and other promotional events.

The kind of promotional tasks which the companies are crowd sourcing include activities that are labor intensive and time consuming. These are the kind of tasks that though laborious in nature cannot be computerized. For e.g. a company can delegate the task of creating, printing and distribution of promotional flyers to willing crowdsourcers (Sawyer, 2007). They can also have the crowdsourcers write positive reviews for their products and services and have them posted on various web sites on the net. Smaller firms have taken to employing crowd sourcing for the purposes of helping them with creating and developing advertising and promotional activities.

It has been suggested, that companies may eventually crowd source an entire range of activities that were previously carried out by marketing experts. These activities may be public relations, copywriting or the development of audio/visual materials (Snider, 2007). Some of the advantages that crowd sourcing has over a traditional advertising agency is that it includes access to exponentially increased amount of ideas, input from a highly diverse and wide group compared to the usual advertising executives. The second advantage is that all of these services are at a fraction of an agency’s cost.

3.4.3 Marketing Research

In any company, when its managers are presented with a tool that provides an opportunity to gather information from a large number of consumers in a timely fashion and at a relatively low cost, then among the very first thoughts of the managers would be how to utilize this methodology for the purposes of marketing research (The Wisdom of Consumer Crowds:Collective Innovation in the Age of Networked Marketing, 2008). In fact, many of the activities that are being placed with Crowdsourcing websites today are actually replication of traditional research activities and in most cases the end users are paid a nominal fee to answer some form of questionnaire (Home, 2009). Also using a Crowdsourcing approach for consumer research may not be accurate, especially if closed ended questions are utilized, which are then quantitatively analyzed. Problems arise, when crowd sourcing sites are utilized for this type of market research, due to the fact that users are being paid for providing the information. This leads to questions such as whether the answers being given are overly positive or in favor of the product are directly proportional to the amount of fee being given for the research. There is also the issue of whether the end users who are taking part in this research are representative of the target population. It is, after all, a relatively small segment of the population engaged in crowd sourcing when compared to the group of people who are willing to answer questions for just a small fee per questionnaire and therefore it may be an unrepresentative sample.

3.4.4 E-Business

The best business is to build one which has not been made yet (Kawasaki, 2004). Today’s e-business world is growing so rapidly that it is not hard to see why big corporations want to use

this as a model that taps into the vast potential that Crowdsourcing offers. A great example of a success story is a e-business model called the Mechanical Turk. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is an internet based service that gives the creators the ability to include human intelligence as a core component in their applications (Cabrera, 2006). MTurk is also called as a artificial intelligence system, in the sense that it asks a human for assistance rather than a piece of software trying itself to get a task done by using artificial intelligence. Developers use web services to submit their tasks to the MTurk site or for approving completed tasks and then including the answers into their software applications. People come to web site, search for appropriate tasks, complete them and receive payment for their completed work. People can also upload their tasks online for others to solve their problems with a set of online command tools (Crampton, 2009). Crowdsourcing appears to be throwing one problem or one issue (that needs innovation) to a crowd of people, and each will come up with hundreds or thousands of ideas of solution or innovation, which ultimately will mean that it is up to the client to decide which solution to use.

3.4.5 IT Industry

Information technology or as it is most commonly known as ‘IT’ is a general term that can be defined as technology that helps in producing, manipulating, storing, communicating and disseminating information (David Cyganski, 2000). The IT industry has become one of the most robust industries in the world and has particularly increased productivity in the developing worlds. Nowadays it has become a key driver of economic growth in the world (Brian Williams,2006). The IT industry assures easy accessibility to information. Therefore it can serve as a medium of e-governance. Its use in the service sector improves operational efficiency and adds to transparency. It also forms as a medium of skill formation. So far one of the most successful business model used by this industry was the outsourcing industry (Ilan Oshri, 2009).

Nowadays though, Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by an employee and then outsources it to an undefined group of people on a project by project basis, in the form of an open call. So instead of traditionally outsourcing to a select third party, companies are outsourcing to the common people at large. Firms wishing to follow this model could encourage employees to set up a company with ten or more colleagues and buy back their services as and when it is required. Hence Crowdsourcing is fast becoming a threat to the whole gamut of IT professionals. It can be seen in the case of IBM who are trying to cut down their workforce by a third of its original size by 2017 and keep them on as contractors instead of regular workers (Shedlock, 2010). By this means, they are moving towards Crowdsourcing.

Multinational firms may be burdened with rising people costs and Crowdsourcing provides an ideal way to counteract this. By Crowdsourcing, the companies do not have to deal with

employees’ insurance, no benefits, no building costs, no healthcare costs and thus make huge savings.

3.5 Advantages of Crowdsourcing

There are many advantages of Crowdsourcing. Some of them are:

1. Getting work done cheaply: This is the main reason as to why Crowdsourcing is widely used nowadays. The task to be completed is given to the Crowdsourcing community who then fight amongst themselves to give the company the best quality work.

2. Value for money: We get many different and unique solutions to the problems posed by us. These answers come at no extra cost and may come in handy at a future date.

3. Trouble free: There is no need to check the tasks to be completed. We can check all the finished solutions and pay for the one that best suits our needs. There also is no need to maintain those employees and no need to track the whole process in development.

4. Great marketing tool: Crowdsourcing is nowadays more commonly used for advertising and promotional events than for actual research or problem solving. The more the growth of internet, the better marketing tool Crowdsourcing becomes.

5. Talent comes searching for us: There is no need to waste time trying to interview a bunch of people and see who are fit for a particular role. Now we can just post the task online and the best talents come searching for the opportunity to try solving the problems.

6. Reducing the R&D budget: Nowadays companies directly ask the end users and consumers to participate in the design and development phase of their products, thereby reducing overhead costs and also improving the quality of their products and services that are tailor made by the end users themselves who also become customers or consumers for the company (Modavi, 2010).

7. Useful tool for outsourcing: Crowdsourcing has given the opportunity for the common man to outsource help in doing a task. It has created so many tasks online and the opportunity for every individual to contribute in whatever way he or she can.

3.6 Disadvantages of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing does have its own share of disadvantages which may seem to be much less obvious to an average business person. Some of the disadvantages are:

1. Lack of confidentiality: This is one of the deadliest downfalls of Crowdsourcing. When a company or person asks for advice or help from the online crowd sourcing community, it makes their plans and any competitive edge they may have over their competition public.

Putting one’s idea to the public exposes it in such a way that everyone can see what they are up to and may copy or use these ideas into their own business models. On the other hand, one cannot be cagey and not provide all the information to the crowdsourcers because then they will not have enough material to work on to bring an effective solution or offer any usable ideas.

2. Poor entry qualities: Crowdsourcing will give the opportunity to obtain a number of solutions for our problems; however this could be a proverbial double edged sword. Even though there are many different and unique solutions to the problems, most of the crowd sourcing community will not take a huge interest in trying to understand the queries before giving their solutions. As a result most of their solutions could be wildly off target and this will in turn mean that we have to go through all the solutions to find out which solution would best suit our needs.

3. Wrong direction: Since the vast majority of the online Crowdsourcing communities are amateurs, they will not have the interest or the knowledge to want to look at the entire business landscape. Therefore the chances of them or their solutions leading us away from our business model are very high. Therefore we must take due consideration while evaluating the solutions.

4. Misleading popularity: Just because an idea has a got a lot of votes, it does not necessarily mean that that particular idea is appealing to the target market. Also, the solution must be checked if it is free to use or not or whether it has any conditions that can backfire on the company or sometimes even if it is sufficiently different from that of a competitor. Sometimes Crowdsourcing can also result in wrong marketing by bad word of mouth publicity.

5. Stolen or Recycled ideas: Some of the people in Crowdsourcing competition have been known to submit ideas that have been copied by them or plagiarized or even submitted in other competitions.

6. Cost factor: Crowdsourcing is a field that does not follow the traditional financial patterns. Usually the more we can afford to pay the better the results will be because we can get expert opinions on the respective matter. However, that does not seem to be so in the case of Crowdsourcing. Since the Crowdsourcing communities are anonymous we cannot expect a better result just by increasing the reward. The same person can claim the reward again just by slightly tweaking the previous result. Also, going through 50000 replies or solutions to your queries will take vastly more time and resources than just considering the top 5, 10 or 20 suggestions that is offered by consulting with certain experts.

7. There are other bunches of possible pitfalls like the added cost to bring a project to a successful completion or the fact that Crowdsourcing usually includes barter system in which below market wages are paid or sometimes no wages are paid to anyone. There may be trouble when trying to maintain a working relationship throughout the project’s duration with the crowdsourced people. There are no written contracts, employee agreements and non disclosure agreements with the crowdsourced workers. Also there is

always the danger that the crowdsourced project will fail due to lack of prevailing interest, lack of funds, too few participants, lower quality of work, different language barriers or difficulty in managing a large scale crowdsourced project.

Conclusion

The emphasis is laid on internet which is the fuel spark in the concept of crowdsourcing coupled with the wisdom ,knowledge and information of the crowds. The present study not only conceptualizes but also explains the success factors which ensures sufficient crowd participation as the initiative. Reliability ,is another aspect which ensures motivation and participation of the user in crowdsourcing. Accommodation of the data into research boundaries in the near future requires the researcher to explore the incentives and motivation of the user.

Three multidimensional constructs such as motivation, activation and participation were not dealt in depth in this study. Exploration of the potentiality of technical or organizational support for activation and the active participation of ideas and innovation concepts. Future research on possibilities of appropriate reputation mechanism and development of mechanism for user- generated content users and operators is the key for active activation.

The users also called as the ‘crowd’ will generally form online communities and try to crack the problems and submit their solutions or findings (Kleemann, 2008). In most cases the crowds themselves sort through the solutions where these solutions automatically become a part of the entity which broadcasted the problem in the first place. Occasionally, the company may reward the crowdsourcer or the individuals who took part in providing the solution. In some cases, the only rewards may be intellectual satisfaction and in other cases the individuals and their efforts are well compensated, either monetarily, with prizes, or with recognition.The drawback to these collective efforts is when the crowd is making the decisions, individual decision can be made where the members of the system act independently from others or in other cases they are influenced by other individual decisions or group based decisions where the group’s decision drives the final result. This combination creates the Collective Intelligence system where the success rate varies due to circumstances.

More research is required to understand the background of the structural features, design parameters, and outcomes of ideas competitions, especially in the context of innovation communities.

CHAPTER 4

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Introduction

This section’s main aim is to give a summary of the sketch of the research that the student intends to put it into effect so as to examine the impact of Crowdsourcing in business. The research also strives to examine the various impacts of Crowdsourcing on trade particularly both positive and negative aspects. The particulars of the research Procedure of study adopted and the techniques adopted in the gathering of the data and analysis of data are described in this chapter. In addition, the researcher also explains the data collection method adopted for the present study.

Research designs

There are many different types of designs available to the researcher which provides positivism, interpretivism and constructionist approach. According to (Phillip Lewis, 2006), the research philosophy depends on the way you think about the development of the knowledge. The researcher has used a constructionist perspective because there are a large number of articles, government publications and policies available on the various ways Crowdsourcing is done and how it has affected buisnesses around the world. Also this method gives us a opportunity to get a holistic view of the data published in many different sources like newspaper articles, journals, reports etc. The researcher has also avoided collecting empirical data which has already been compiled from a variety of sources by various researchers. The researcher collected various sources that have been published, already, in relation to Crowdsourcing ventures and has built a critical review of the literature. Constructivism believes that there is no single valid methodology and therefore the constructionist method was found most suitable and was used by the researcher for this study.

Research Approach

“The research approach indicates whether the use of... theory is explicit within the research design” (Kenneth Bordens, 2007). (Jackson, 2010), describes the research approach as “deciding what theory does for your arguments”. This enables the researcher to “Take a more informed decision on the research design, support the researcher in the decision-making process as to what will work and what not, and adapt the research design to cater for constraints, for example insufficient understanding of the topic to form a hypothesis” (Neil J. Salkind, 2007)

Various research approaches have been used to study a particular research problem. There are three types of research approach which has been commonly used by the researcher, which is

Inductive approach, deductive and abdcutive approach. “Gaining access to understanding of meaning humans attach to events; to close understanding of the research context, the collection of qualitative data; a more flexible structure to permit changes of research emphasis as the research progress; a realisation that the research is part of the research process and less concern with the need to generalize” are the characteristics of the inductive approach as defined by (Phillip Lewis, 2006).

The deductive approach is used for a quantitative study and in this case, the surrounding facts are mostly a assumption basis and thus this approach may not be useful for our study. In abductive approach the available empirical information is taken and for this study, this approach is used as the ending acquired in this case may be useful to verify the findings of the earlier research.

Research Strategy

“The research strategies will be a general plan of how you will go about answering the research question(s) you have set” (Mark Saunders A. T., 1996). During the initial stages of this study, an exploratory research strategy was followed to create a deeper understanding of the phenomena at play within the systemic whole of the research project. The study adopted both qualitative data (textual formats) and quantitative data (numerical data) approach. In particular, there is a considerable amount of quantitative data has been published by several authors (Mason D. J.,2002).

Based on the research problem, the technique of obtaining the study varies. A case study approach was taken into account to understand the impact of Crowdsourcing on businesses around the world. The suitability of the technique of the research is derived from the opinion of (Denzin N. K., 1994) that it is on the type of the social phenomenon being studied.

Case studies

A case study is defined as an “empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context using multiple sources of evidence” (Yin D. R., 2008). As (Stake,1995) suggests, that a case is defined as “an event, an entity, an individual or even a unit of analysis”. The case is also concerned about the analysis of why and how the events takes place, so that the related realities could be caught and the variations in what was originally planned and what essentially occurred could be alleged. As a whole, the case study does not deal with the organization. But the research pays attention to a specific subject, aspect or a feature of analysis. In order to determine the various factors involved in Crowdsourcing and to gain an insight into Crowdsourcing, various case studies have been used in this study.

This case study is an appropriate technique to increase the deeper insight into the problem under examination (Dawson R. Hancock, 2006). Case studies are mainly important and helpful in cases which are rich in data and helpful in gaining an indepth view.

Fig - Steps involved in a case study

Data collection Techniques

The technique of data collection is a vital portion in any research because imprecision in the techniques of data collections would adversely affect the consequence of the research and therefore give results that is not valid. There are different varieties of data: the key types are Primary and secondary data.

Primary data

This kind of data is taken from the straight responses, which are being taken from the people who are being interviewed. The personal feelings of these individuals, their experience, attitudes and their opinion are gathered by means of primary data. This kind of data is brought out from the measurements made in the laboratory, observations and surveys in the field etc.

Secondary data

By evaluating the available literature in the academic domain, the proof obtained from the already existing studies could be investigated and a definite trend and pattern could be gleaned from such studies. The benefits of the secondary data are that it does not take into account time

saving, costs, and efforts of the researcher and is unremarkable. The problems related with the collection of information could be avoided by the secondary data analysis and provide a foundation for comparison.

The reliability of the basis, which has published the information at hand, is not in the hand of researcher and the researcher may not be able catch the shade of the research purpose of this study. There are also some drawbacks involved with the secondary data collection. This happens because of the availability of studies that would have been designed to capture data that already belongs to some other intention. The next drawback of this technique of information collection is that the data could be outdated. The validity of the methods and measures, which are used for the collection of data, is not known to the researcher.

Sources of data collection: The sources of data collection for the present study includes

Academic publications / journal articles Government sources Government policies Reserve Bank of India Newspaper articles.

Secondary Data Handling

The reliability of the information may be mainly increased, if the data is taken from various bases and this is a conservative and broad approach, used in the gathering of secondary data. A lot of possible bases can be taken in the gathering of secondary data. The main benefit of the technique is that all the data that is taken can be integrated or analyzed in a gathered and on a whole awareness. Therefore, a holistic perception on the style and determinants of crowdsourcing could be investigated .There may be a combination of data from basis and set of information may be taken as the part of puzzle and then an ultimate understanding on the subject on various impacts of crowdsourcing and their problems could be reached. This could develop the power of the study and every filament of the information could be better conceived.

The fit between the data chosen and research question for analysis:

The procedure by which the secondary data is situated is not simple in all situations. Therefore, there should be a successful proper fit between the research subject at hand and also the information that is selected to examine the same. Whenever a research subject is dealt with, it is common practice to consider all the information that may be relevant to the topic or subject at hand and then based upon that information, proper questions can be formulated. The most typical

method in which secondary data is used for research is to begin with a question and hunt for the data sets that may be useful for the analysis of the question. One more technique may be to start from the watching at the secondary data sets which is available and then continue with the action of formulating a question that may be examined by giving the data selected. Although the previous technique agrees with the conservative method of doing a research, the second way is helpful in case of instructions in class room. Though, both the techniques would create quality results. The sequence which is mentioned below can be followed using secondary data (Boslaugh)

Methods of data collection

In a detailed study approach, the information gathering includes the selection of some of the instances and figures on the research problems in hand and then going on to eventual ultimate strong examination of the characteristics of these detailed studies or instances. Primary data is taken from the straight responses, which are being taken from the people who are being interviewed. The personal feelings of these individuals, their experience, attitudes and their opinion are gathered by means of primary data. This kind of data is brought out from the measurements made in the laboratory, observations and surveys in the field etc.

For secondary data collection, a desk based approach can be used. As the worth and genuineness of the research is reliant on the techniques of collection of data, as observed by Jackson (1994), this way is an unremarkable technique as it grips the prose that has been issued earlier. In any case, there should be a critical assessment of the prose that has been gathered can be done in terms of its consistency and verification by making comparisons with other bases that is genuine (Creswell 2003). As a result, taking the background of the study into consideration, the data could be obtained from the earlier published documents, academic journals, studies, reports etc.

Data Analysis

The cases being presented after the researcher will try to give a whole picture of the overall concept taken for the examination to bring the present circumstances on the various impact of crowdsourcing in terms of various sectors (both macro and sectoral level). The study cases could be evaluated and balanced in the light of the facts that are gathered for the present study. In the portion on conclusions and summary, the implications of the explanation and findings would be given on the basis of the facts available instead of providing new particulars. Therefore, the procedure of separating and sorting and the explanation of the data available quintessence of the case study.

Chapter 4

Case studies

A business model is a combination of ideas, plans and strategies that an organization might use in order to create deliver or capture values which may be of social, economical or of any other form. Business model design is a process that is a part of developing an effective business strategy. Crowdsourcing is an upcoming and very effective business model. This chapter provides an insight into how Crowdsourcing has been used as a successful business model by various enterprises. The following case studies are used to understand how Crowdsourcing can be used to create new business models which improve an organizations brand’s image and simultaneously get more value out of it. The researcher uses these case studies to formulate certain recommendations.

Chapter 4 Case studies

A business model is a combination of ideas, plans and strategies that an organization might use in order to create deliver or capture values which may be of social, economical or of any other form. Business model design is a process that is a part of developing an effective business strategy. Crowdsourcing is an upcoming and very effective business model. This chapter provides an insight into how Crowdsourcing has been used as a successful business model by various enterprises. The following case studies are used to understand how Crowdsourcing can be used to create new business models which improve an organizations brand’s image and simultaneously get more value out of it. The researcher uses these case studies to formulate certain recommendations.

Case study 1: Dell’s Ideastorm

Launched in February 2007, Dell’s IdeaStorm is a typical example of a successful crowdstorming initiative. On www.ideastorm.com, Dell’s customers are encouraged to provide advice on how to improve Dell’s products and services. At the time of writing, more than 11,000 ideas and over 85,000 comments have been posted and more than six hundred thousand votes were cast. However, the results were not that positive from the start, as many contributions were negative. Only after a while the tone got more positive, changing complaints into ideas. One of these ideas was a PC running Linux, the open‐source operating system, instead of Windows. Some 30,000 users voted for this idea, which remained the number one idea on the site for months. With the confidence that came from IdeaStorm, Dell

tapped the community to decide on features, support methods, even the type of Linux to install. As a result, the Linux PC went from idea to finished product in just two months, versus the nine to fifteen months it usually takes to ship a new machine at Dell. By May 2007, Dell released three models using Linux (Williams, 2008).

Dell has taken advantage of the ideas coming from the community. In total, Dell has implemented or partially implemented 160 ideas from the community so far. Dell has been able to get around 6,000 of its customers into IdeaStorm, enough to make the site a productive source of ideas for the company. However, although the total number of members may be large, a smaller subset are active participants in the community. Management support is considered very important in this case. Dell’s CEO made sure that his executive team was paying attention to the ideas that would impact the business and assigned a cross departmental team to review results from IdeaStorm every week. Corporate strategy was deeply ‐involved and helped figure out which ideas got the green light – and who would be responsible for them. The company is keeping the community up to date about the activities concerning IdeaStorm and provides a full summary of ‘ideas in action’ on the site. Since the start, about 160 ideas from the community are implemented. At the start of the initiative, thirty employees were responsible for moderating the site, representing all areas of the company. Currently, the staff is reduced to five employees. While the discussion mainly evolved around problems at the start, the tone has become more positive, focusing on new ideas (Bernoff, 2008).

So, Dell’s idea of gathering comments from its customers and critics was hardly a new idea. In fact for well over two decades, this idea has been implemented by fortune companies, but generally it was considered to be nothing more than eyewash. It was a strategy implemented by the companies to guage customer’s views but not a lot of companies ever paid really close attention to those comments. Dell wanted to change that and its CEO made sure that the company persisted with its Crowdsourcing model. No one in the industry believed Dell would take it to the next level. However, it must be noted that even though Dell has listened to its online Crowdsourcing community, only a bare 2.9% of the ideas were used till date.

Dell’s Crowdsourcing based business model did not give work to the online community but rather, it gained an insight into its customer’s mindset. Crowdsourcing does not necessarily always mean giving a part of the company’s workload to the masses. Dell is a prime example for the other ways that Crowdsourcing can be used as an effective business model. Dell did not just create this model as a means to pacify its customers and show to the world that it has taken steps to improve its customer’s relations with the company. Dell initially did have trouble maintaining a working relationship with its crowdsourcers, but it persisted and it took pains to listen to its Crowdsourcing community and it tried to implement its suggestions. In order for Dell to create some value out of its business model, it had to have a vibrant community and that sort of community could not be created overnight. It was however, built by a lot of effort and humility from Dell’s side and this can be seen to be fruitfull as soon the comments started turning from just negative comments to positive ideas that were not only credible but could quite easily be implemented in the real world. This was exactly what Dell did. It brought out its Linux based computers within two months as opposed to a minimum of nine months, that a typical project takes to be designed and put in the market shelves. That helped Dell cut down on its R&D

budget by a massive 75%. Therefore, this proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Dell’s Crowdsourcing business model was quite effective. It does have its disadvantages, but it proved worthwhile in the long run.

It must also be kept in mind that Dell’s Crowdsourcing business model also had to deal with all the usual problems that a typical Crowdsourcing model has like poor quality ideas, financial inputs, maintaining the necessary infrastructure in terms of employees needed to maintain the site. Though it must be admitted that Dell’s Ideastorm model cannot be termed as a runaway success, it was in no terms a loss for the company. This business model also did not have to deal with any employee contracts, payments or loss of interest. Its did this by nurturing its Crowdsourcing community and encouraging them to participate in bringing out new products. This ensured the success of its endeavor and Dell still persists with this business model.

Case study 2: Istockphoto

iStockphoto is one of the many microstock photo sites, who sell stock photographs for just a few dollars. The company started out in 2000 as a non profit, consisting of a website where designers‐ could share photographs. Hereby they avoided paying for stock photographs and created the possibility to improve their skills. A community of mostly amateur photographers grew up around the site. Because of the rising costs of maintaining the site, the founder decided, together with the community, which includes about 500 people, to start charging a small fee for the photos. Charging a fee of 25 cents, later changed to $1, iStockphoto was undercutting the big stock photo agencies by‐ 99 percent. As of February 2008, iStockphoto has 1 million regular customers and a database of over 3 million photographs.

Currently about 50,000 photographers are contributing to iStockphoto, of which about 2000 are exclusive. Only 4 percent of them claim photographer as their chief occupation. However, more than half have had at least one year of formal schooling in art, design, photography, or related creative disciplines. Fewer than 10 percent of contributors earn enough from iStock to live on. One of the top contributors has already sold over 500,000 photos. About 55 percent of iStock photographers is from the US. The mentality of iStock photographers is different from professionals, since they do not have to making a living out of this. The contributors of iStockphoto are forming an enthusiastic community that share their knowledge and is therefore continually improving their skills. People who only consider photography their hobby – what it just would be a decade ago can now earn some money and recognition for their work, which gives it meaning.‐ Therefore, iStock photographers consider themselves amply compensated, although they are only paid 20 percent of sales (40 percent for exclusives).

Respecting the community is important at iStockphoto, since the community is the company. The contributors all want a voice, and the organization gives it to them. Any shift in the way the product is priced, sold and marketed needs the community’s approval. The company has experienced double digit growth nearly every month of its existence. Recognizing that iStock’s growth came at‐ the expense of its own business, in 2006, Getty Images bought iStockphoto for $50 million. Getty estimated that iStock’s earning would nearly quadruple by 2012, while its earnings from traditional

stock offerings would decline from 50 percent of its overall earnings to less than 30 percent (Howe,2008).

iStock’s business model is a more traditional example of Crowdsourcing. iStock is not only a online community for photographers, even though it started of as such, it is also a source of high quality, low cost photographs. iStock’s Crowdsourcing business model opened up a new market segment for stock photography which catered to customers who could not afford traditional photographs due to its high costs.

One of the main reasons for the success of this model is it offered a free alternative to a premium high cost service. It was unique as it offered high quality photos to be lice censed free of cost without any royalty fees. Thus it made possible for photos to be distributed from aspiring semi professional photographers to reach the larger market for the first time. Slowly, as iStocks popularity began to increase and more and more people subscribed to its services, it too faced the traditional hurdles in the form of financial burden due to increase in the cost of maintaining, hosting and bandwidth fees. This problem was overcome with the help of its own Crowdsourcing community, as the entire community worked on solving this problem. They came up with a solution of charging 0.25$ per photo which was mainly used to cover site maintenance fees. Also the community decided to transfer 20% of those charges back to the photographer.

iStockphoto has gone through many changes in its business model. It faced another obstacle that is commonly faced when Crowdsourcing is used as a business model which was appropriate compensation for its workers. This problem was also solved after the problem was put to its Crowdsourcing community itself. They came up with a solution and iStockphoto wisely, tweaked its Crowdsourcing model to its advantage again. It started charging 1, 2 or 3 credits (Where credits where charged at the rate of 0.50$ per credit), for photos of various sizes, offering a 20% commission to the contributing photographer which was later increased to 20% to 40% commission based on sales milestones reached and whether the photographer grants iStockphoto exclusive use of the images. This solved the problem of paying back to the Crowdsourcing community which helped this company reach its current potential. This could be reiterated with the fact that as of 2004, iStockphoto officially became a for-profit entity.

iStockphoto consciously nurtured and developed its Crowdsourcing community from the very beginning through establishing forums, emails and face to face meetings. There are many forums where new users can post questions which are then answered by more experienced users. This has helped in maintain a very good working relationship between the company and its online community. Also iStockphoto creates a positive sense of exclusivity among users by only approving those photos that have met certain quality standards. This process helps in maintaining a quality benchmark and thus does not allow any sub standard work to get through.

Case study 3: Goldcorp Challenge

The goldCorp challenge is organized as a one time crowdcasting event. In 2000, the mining‐ company GoldCorp launched the GoldCorp challenge. Inspired by open source software development, the company decided to open up to the public to see whether they could help them found the next six million ounces of gold. They published all their geological data, which is considered a very precious and normally carefully guarded resource, on Goldcorp’s Web site. However, GoldCorp’s CEO acknowledged that this data was of no use to anyone if GoldCorp’s internal geologists were ill equipped to make sense of it. As an incentive, they made $575,000 in

prize money available to participants with the best methods and estimates. And indeed, within weeks submissions came in from all over the world. Next to the expected geologists, participants included graduate students, consultants, mathematicians and military officers. Because they had no experience in geology, they came up with new methods and analyses that Goldcorp had never thought of before, such as math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics and organic solutions. In total more than 14000 people from over fifty countries downloaded the data and more than 140 of them submitted detailed drilling plans. They identified 110 drilling targets, of which 50 percent was new to they company. At 80 percent of these targets, actual gold was found, in total eight million ounces, which is worth about $3 billion. It was estimated that the challenge has shortened exploration time by two to three years, and the cost of production was slashed by over 60 percent in four years.

The Goldcorp challenge is a unique study as it is one of the most famous examples where Crowdsourcing was used as an effective business model in an extremely successful way. Usually companies tend to keep their survey information close to their chests, however Goldcorps business model utilized the power of Crowdsourcing and the results are there for everyone to see. The Goldcorp business model successfully harnessed the instantaneous global reach of the Internet and tapped into the minds of some of the most brilliant geological workers. In this case the company did not use Crowdsourcing as a continued business model but as a one of method to solve their problem. This is a way in which Crowdsourcing can be used instead of outsourcing, by providing a healthy financial incentive for those who could come up with the best possible solution.

However, the company did face a lot of challenges like irrelevant works submitted by amateurs who cost Goldcorp time and money to sift through and later discard. However the company claimed that all the monetary spending it had to bear where later paid back in many folds by the profit they would be making with the discovery of a new mine and also the time they would save by taking the help of the Crowdsourcing community. Crowdsourcing, in this case helped in ways that were not originally conceived of by the company. The company continues to use Crowdsourcing as an effective way to explore or confirm geological surveys for valuable minerals.

Case study 4: Threadless

Launched in 2000, Threadless involves a website where people can submit designs for a cool T‐shirt and vote for their favorite shirt. The winner gets a free T shirt bearing his of her winning‐ design, and everyone else gets to buy the shirt. Since the start, the revenue has nearly doubled every year. Threadless can be considered a typical example of crowdcasting, since the assignment of designing a T shirt is very clear and specific, and the winners receive a financial reward.‐ Threadless currently receives some thousand designs each week, which are voted on by the community, now six hundred thousand strong. Every week, nine shifts are selected from the top hundred to print. The winning designers are paid $2000 in cash and a $500 gift certificate, and Threadless keeps all the intellectual property. Each design sells out, since the community can not only rate the designs, but they’re also able to check an ‘I’d buy it!’ box. The community is important for the company, in fact, it is the company. Threadless shows its commitment to the community by giving them the opportunity to determine the company’s inventory. According to the top designers, it is not about the money, it is mainly about reputation. Designing for Threadless is addictive,

especially for people at design schools or companies where there are strict guidelines for the designs. Threadless gives participants the opportunity to use their creative potential. Threadless currently sells about 90,000 T shirts a month. Threadless spends $5 to produce a shirt that sells for‐ between $12 en $25. They don’t need advertising or marketing budgets, as the community performs those functions admirably: designers spread the word as they try to persuade friends to vote for their designs, and Threadless rewards the community with store credit every time someone submits a photo of themselves wearing a Threadless shirt or refers a friend who buys a shirt.

Threadless is a company that is based on Crowdsourcing. Its entire business is run by using Crowdsourcing as its core business model. This is one company that cannot go without Crowdsourcing. It has strived to maintain a healthy working relationship with its online community by interacting with them directly and by allowing them to interact with each other. This has led to a point where the entire processes of management to advertising are taken care of by its Crowdsourcing community. Also it has implemented a system in which the users themselves vote for the best products and ideas. By doing this, the company has absolved itself of having to face problems such as below par workmanship or low quality designs. Also the designers get a fairly large compensation if their designs have been selected. This ensures loyalty among the workers and they have a dedicated base of designers.

Chapter 5

Conclusion

Crowdsourcing as can be seen has the potential to transform product development and customer service. But only a handful of organizations seem to be aware of that fact and even fewer companies take advantage of that. Crowdsourcing as a business model has taken off especially after the recession because it is now being seen as a inexpensive and efficient way for brands and organizations to make their products and services more appealing to the general public. Crowdsourcing can prove to be hugely beneficial to organizations as a source of gathering information and opinions from people that matter.

According to Mark Bjornsgaard, “Crowdsourcing is far, far away from traditional market research, task-based, qualitative endeavours. Winning brands understand that the philosophy of crowdsourcing isn't a cursory, tokenistic marketing exercise, it involves a fundamental reworking of all business processes.” (Weekes, 2010). It is not just another new fad that is in fashion today nor is it just a term. It is a astute business model that is capable of finding talent, leveraging ingenuity while at the same time reducing costs and saving time that is needed to solve problems.

Although this study has been more exploratory in nature, it has nevertheless provided important findings for both theoretical and practical purposes. It is vital that we keep in mind that Crowdsourcing is still quite a new and emerging trend and that it is likely that more and more businesses will increasingly experiment with this as a new business model and thus allows us to study about this topic with far more insight than what we have today. This study has clearly proven that Crowdsourcing is not just a fad and is not something that has been hyped up, but it is a new business model that is quite likely to be relevant for many organizations across various fields. If any organization is serious about its development and wants to get ahead of the game, then they have to take advantage of Crowdsourcing

by figuring out how to implement it in their organizations business strategy and to take advantage of its results. Crowdsourcing is quite likely to continue to influence the means of economic production.

The limits of Crowdsourcing cannot be clearly identified as even today, there are many new applications that appear everyday. Companies have clearly started to rethink their strategies towards innovation, knowledge management and control. This study was done to gather an insight on Crowdsourcing could be used as an effective business model in relation to creating a competitive advantage in the marketplace within the context of for-profit organizations. Crowdsourcing is a radical new approach to problem solving. This phenomenon is still in stages of early development. This new age in which we are all inter connected by the internet and facilitated by Crowdsourcing is quite complex and uncertain. If all the business heads, practioners, and policy makers are able to learn from the research and past experiences and examples in the field of Crowdsourcing in a way that focuses on the factors that lead to successful outcomes then the potential of Crowdsourcing will surely be accomplished.

Recommendations:

Crowdsourcing can be used to gain a competitive advantage over the rest of the competition when it is used as a business model. There are certain conditions in which Crowdsourcing can be put to great use in the development of the organization like:

For funding: Crowdsourcing can be an effective way for gathering financial support in the initial stages when the business is still at its grass root level. If the business proposition is good, then there will no shortage of people coming forward to help. This will also prove to be a way to gauge the public opinion and interest in the business.

For marketing services: For the purpose of marketing startups or branded organizations, there is no other cost effective and comprehensive way than to crowdsource. Crowdsourcing provides effective marketing services which range from niche online ad programs to full service marketing, advertising and PR campaigns. So there is availability of experts to market one’s product or services which was earlier limited to just the preserve of big brands.

Use Crowdsourcing to solve problems. By putting the organizations details and problems to the Crowdsourcing community, we may get answers to our problems from never expected sources. Also, by going online, we may get answers from industry experts whom we may have had no chance of contacting in reality.

The problem solving capacity of sourcing from crowds has potent uses for non-profit organizations and the government in their broad range of activities such as urban and transit planning through testing public sentiment.

By asking for the input from the public, any information or ideas that has been put forward automatically becomes property of the client who has put forth the needs. This is quite an effective way to tap into the collective intelligence of the thousands of human minds.

Limitations

The present study deals with the concept of crowd sourcing and the applications of it in today’s world. Though there is lack of literature on the failed crowdsourcing projects ,to name a few of the other limitations , it is not able to discuss in depth the various variables in the industry such as competitions among the firms .Moreover the focus of the research is not on the customer point of view for mainly the Indian outsourcing industry. Further research in these queries is to be answered and new innovative ideas in improving them should be concentrated on.

A second limitation is the generalisability of the study in other words no evidence of the sample used in the present study represents typically the broader population. The samples used in the study were all cases in which the organizations used crowdsourcing as a successful model whereas literature does not deal with the same as failure one.In other words the cases cited as examples of crowdsourcing were all successful. Another aspect of statistical relevance is be laids hands on for the project can be developed further by interviewing more respondents .

Thirdly the time factor for the collection of data was done in a stipulated span or period of time. Concequently , the responses received would not be indicative of the responses solicited at another given time .A set of external factors such as setting, recent conflicts, time of day, fatigue of the participants would greatly influence the responses (Shell,2001).

The final and most interesting limitation is the researcher’s experience in carrying out the research and evaluating the data. The analysis done by the researcher is primarily a qualitative one and the results can be affected by any biases of the respondents.

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