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.

Conflicting Values

So what do you do when your values conflict? For example, I consider loyalty and honesty to be two values that can conflict. When they conflict, I need to violate one for the other. Thus, I think it is important for me to have an explicit order where I knowingly prioritize one over the other. My order is loyalty over honesty.

Hypothetical Example: My manager tells me that there is going to be a layoff in two days and employee x is definitely going to be one of those that will be leaving the company. She also tells me that no one can get wind of this because of other things going on internally and externally from the company. Employee x asks me, "Are layoffs planned and if so am I on the list?"

At that point I need to choose between loyalty and honesty. If I tell employee x that there will be a layoff, I've violated my loyalty value so I can adhere to my honesty value. If I tell that person I can't talk about that, then I've provider fodder for a reasonable person to think that there could be a layoff and thus, again, violating my loyalty to my manager and arguably adhering to my honesty value. So, in this situation my guess is that I would have a hard time saying "absolutely not" and would opt for something akin to "you know that kind of information is confidential so I could never tell you 'yes' so any other answer is completely unreliable."

Do you believe that values can be in conflict at times? In the example above, is there a way to adhere to both values? Can you provide and example of two different values conflicting?

I'm interested in your thoughts.

Are you a defender or an advancer of your MIVs?

People are a complex co-mingling of ingredients. Everyone is made up of varying quantities of creativity, assertiveness, sensitivity, athleticism, passion, patience, physical beauty, sociability, intelligence, and many other attributes. We are a smorgasbord of characteristics that makes everyone of us a unique concoction that is either delicious, repulsive, or somewhere in between depending on whom the taster is. We are all ordinary when it comes right down to it. There are combinations of certain attributes that result in a perfect storm of cult of personality – e.g. Gandhi and Hitler – but those attributes that lead to greatness is a blinders view into what makes a whole human-being. Believe it or not, there were people who despised and loved both men.

People are defined as extraordinary based on the social value system in which they live. Hitler is despised because he killed six million Jews and most of us believe that to be an evil act. Gandhi is widely revered for successfully leading a peaceful rebellion and most view the defeat of Great Britain as a highly moral victory.

So what are those social values based upon that result in general denunciation and support for those two men? Those social values are nothing more than an agreement among many individual value systems; yours and mine.

The level of visceral response invoked by what we value decides the level of support or abhorrence towards people. The killing of six million Jews is abhorred by 99%+ of the people (my estimate) while the values espoused by Democrats and Republicans, respectively, are not so universal. Clearly we feel more strongly towards someone killing millions of innocent people as opposed to someone’s stance on national healthcare.

Our individual relationships are a microcosm of the social acceptance and denunciation of Gandhi and Hitler. The attributes we value most and least determine who we admire, resent, dislike, envy, etc. and the fervency/vehemence with which we feel that way. As it turns out, the phrase "it's all about me" is spot on.

It’s human nature to judge the quality of others based on their success or failure with adhering to the principles we hold most dear. Their level of success is compared directly to our own success. Our individually weighted most important values (MIVs) invoke a visceral response that causes us to rank those around us. Because emotion is the driving force, the lesser important values are not important. The middle values are the ones we are willing to compromise to get what we want. Yes people, you do compromise some of your principles because some just don't matter enough to fight over.

The most interesting part is the internal weighting of our MIVs and our need to defend or advance specific MIVs. Two people can be driven to the same goal, let’s say advancing the arts through donating to the National Endowment of the Arts. However, one persons drive may be sourced through inspiration and desire to spread art to everyone as a gift while the other is driven by anger that government is letting art wither on the vine. The act alone of supporting an organization cannot tell us whether someone is defending or advancing a MIV. In my opinion, because we are comfortable with black and white answers and ambiguity is painful, people select the extroverted technique that they are most comfortable with - defense or advancement.

That takes us to our daily interactions. We meet people throughout our lives that are important to us because we either love them or hate them. Love and hate are what make people important. Absence will result in forgetting those that don’t invoke those feelings – it’s not the same for those we love or hate. We remember those people forever. We love people because they share one or more MIV. We hate people because we cannot tolerate the violation of MIV that mean so much to us. I’m sure you have met people that can actually fit in both categories simultaneously.

So the next time you say to yourself “that person bugs me” look at which MIV(s) of yours they are violating. Same holds true for love. And, those that don’t invoke strong feelings at all? Well those people’s convictions are probably too hidden or ambiguous to care about. It seems to me that all of us invoke love, hatred, and/or invisibility but most of the time it is purely by accident. Isn't that going through life somewhat blindly?

I'm interested in your thoughts and whether you consider yourself predominantly an advancer or defender of your MIVs?