co>innovative

I meant to write about this a while ago, but am just getting to it. Sami Viitamaki has an interesting, exhaustive overview of what one needs to consider when implementing crowdsourcing.

He looks in detail at five areas:

• Focus
• Language
• Incentives
• Rules
• Tools

In addition he makes the important distinction between the various levels of participation to whom the service needs to be tailored:

• Creators,
• Critics
• Connectors
• Crowds
• Non-participating consumers

Successful efforts follow these guidelines and you’ll see the ones that fail missing on one or many of these dimensions. Lacking transparency. Ignoring incentives (both extrinsic and intrinsic). Being exploitative. Taking as a given that your customers will care.

There is so much opportunity here, but we are sure to see many failures as companies ignore these considerations and fail miserably. Should be fun to watch.

Share This