The Future of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing, for those who are new to the term, is the concept of entities outsourcing problems to a large and typically unrelated group of people. For example, Netflix has an ongoing competition - open to anyone - to develop an algorithm to predict customers ratings based on their past ratings that bests Netflix's proprietary algorithm by 10%. The prize is a million dollars.

Crowdsourcing is not a new concept. The Longitude prize was an open competition established by Great Britain in the 18th century to solve the maritime problem of discerning longitude at sea. John Harrison was awarded the prize for his invention of the Chronometer. He wasn't treated well either. The dude solved the problem and was delayed the prize money for a full 30 years.

John Harrison's poor treatment by Great Britain illustrates one potential problem with crowdsourcing however there are others - little to no contracts, lack of continuity with contributors, potential lack of interest thus little to no participation, low to no wages, and risk of malicious intent.

The global recession has resulted in rapid growth of crowdsourcing due to two major factors:

1. It is often cheaper for companies to crowdsource solutions as opposed to directly hiring or contracting with professionals.
2. There are lots of people out of work so the pool of willing participants is high.

When the economy turns around will the resources currently involved in crowdsourcing dry up? Will the competition for intellectual property and time to market pressures move corporations back to more traditional methods that are more easily managed?

My answer to both questions is no.

With corporations having the ability to tap into a world population for ideas and solutions there is bound to be better results than with a small set of specialists. Crowdsourcing offers the possibility of tapping into brilliance without having to interview for that special person who will develop that next killer product.

As far as the contributor is concerned, crowdsourcing offers recognition, flexibility, collaboration, pay, and other self-satisfying attributes. The city of Los Angeles provided a survey to it's population asking questions such as "What services should be cut to balance the budget?" with a list of city services from which the constituent may choose. This type of crowdsourcing relies on non-monetary rewards but still has a high rate of participation.

One of the more interesting things to consider is how crowdsourcing will effect various occupations such as those in the creative design industries. When creativity is outsourced to the world, there is a potential for deleterious effects on wages and the number of permanent positions in those fields.

In my opinion, crowdsourcing, like social media, is in its Wild West phase. There will be significant movement and change along the way and its current incarnation will be unrecognizable 5-10 years from now.

As crowdsourcing models mature and become easier to manage the majority of us will be involved in some sort of crowdsourcing as an inherent part of our lifestyle. Just as I continue to manage my LinkedIn contacts and update my status on Facebook, I will likely also be contributing to my favorite crowdsourcing activities.

What are the drivers of success?

I'm reading a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers. Malcolm Gladwell has previously authored terrific books called Blink and The Tipping Point. Each of the books, including Outliers, are focused on identifying hidden truths which I find fascinating.

Outliers is about what makes people successful and how the primary drivers of one's success are not as they appear. Gladwell proposes that success is more related to environment than genetics. One criteria is the 10,000 hours rule. The rule states that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be an expert at anything. He sites studies that have researched world class skill at things such as professional sports, music, computer science, etc. and there has not been one person studied who qualifies as a world class talent that has less than 10k hour of effort into their profession.

Specifically, Gladwell relays a study performed on a set of violinists at a prominent undergraduate school. Each of the violinists was categorized by their talent as falling into one of three categories - 1) destined for elite professional status 2) professional status but in the middle of the pack 3) not proficient enough to make professional status thus their destiny was in teaching. What was found after surveying the students is that as they progressed over time the category 1 students practiced 10K hours or more over their life, category 2 practiced and average of 8k hours, and category 3 practiced and average of 4k hours. The most surprising fact is that not one of the category 1 students was under 10k hours of practice nor were there any category 2 students over 10k hours of study. This is compelling evidence that talent is not as important for proficiency as practice.

He mentions another analysis that was done on Olympic hockey and soccer teams. When analyzing the players, it was observed that many were born between January and March. None were born in October, November and December. This pattern repeated itself over and over again with championship teams, alll-star teams, etc. and the correlation appears to be with age cutoff dates for team levels. When the age cutoff is January 1, the oldest are bigger, stronger, and more physically mature thus they stand out. As a result they are targeted into more competitive leagues, intensive training programs, and progress faster than those born in December who are almost a year younger and not as physically mature. In this context, most recruitment programs are self-limiting themselves - albeit unknowingly - to half the population.

There are caveats such as Nobel prize winners must be smart enough to get into a mid-level college, basketball players need to be over 6 ft tall, and others depending on the vocation.

Could it be possible, that my son Wesley - who at 8 years old wants to be a professional baseball player when he grows up - can actually be one if he wants? All he needs to do is cross whatever the threshold is for baseball players, put in the time, and his goal is not only possible but probably?

Everyone should read this book. There is so much more than what I've conveyed here. The idea that anything is possible with time is fascinating to me.

I'm interested in your thoughts.