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Journal ArticleDOI

Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving : An Introduction and Cases

01 Feb 2008-Convergence (SAGE Publications)-Vol. 14, Iss: 1, pp 75-90
TL;DR: An introduction to crowdsourcing is provided, both its theoretical grounding and exemplar cases, taking care to distinguish crowdsourcing from open source production.
Abstract: Crowdsourcing is an online, distributed problem-solving and production model that has emerged in recent years. Notable examples of the model include Threadless, iStockphoto, InnoCentive, the Goldcorp Challenge, and user-generated advertising contests. This article provides an introduction to crowdsourcing, both its theoretical grounding and exemplar cases, taking care to distinguish crowdsourcing from open source production. This article also explores the possibilities for the model, its potential to exploit a crowd of innovators, and its potential for use beyond forprofit sectors. Finally, this article proposes an agenda for research into crowdsourcing.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, sustainable business models (SBM) incorporate a triple bottom line approach and consider a wide range of stakeholder interests, including environment and society, to drive and implement corporate innovation for sustainability, can help embed sustainability into business purpose and processes, and serve as a key driver of competitive advantage.

2,360 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, existing definitions of crowdsourcing are analysed to extract common elements and to establish the basic characteristics of any crowdsourcing initiative.
Abstract: 'Crowdsourcing' is a relatively recent concept that encompasses many practices. This diversity leads to the blurring of the limits of crowdsourcing that may be identified virtually with any type of internet-based collaborative activity, such as co-creation or user innovation. Varying definitions of crowdsourcing exist, and therefore some authors present certain specific examples of crowdsourcing as paradigmatic, while others present the same examples as the opposite. In this article, existing definitions of crowdsourcing are analysed to extract common elements and to establish the basic characteristics of any crowdsourcing initiative. Based on these existing definitions, an exhaustive and consistent definition for crowdsourcing is presented and contrasted in 11 cases.

1,616 citations


Cites background from "Crowdsourcing as a Model for Proble..."

  • ...The second refers to the fact that the crowd has to solve problems [8,9,4,33,34,37], in many cases for companies....

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  • ...Nor is there an agreed definition; instead there are a variety of definitions, which look at crowdsourcing from differing points of view including problem resolution [8, 9] or innovation applied to business process improvement [10, 4]....

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  • ...To complete this document repository, all of those documents that made reference to the most cited document [4] are searched, as are all the references of the most prolific author, Maja Vukovic....

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  • ...Moreover, the theoretical knowledge base is still not solid, being developed with works like Brabham’s, in which he defines crowdsourcing [4] and creates a typology of it [5]; Vukovic’s, in which she makes a general overview of various characteristics of crowdsourcing including the kind of crowd that can participate, the incentive schema, the different variants of crowdsourcing initiatives [2], or the requirements of a crowdsourcing initiative [6]; or Geiger’s [7], in which he develops a taxonomy using different examples....

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  • ...Others indicate that it is a production model [9,44] with an example being Threadless, while there are others who identify it as a business model or practice [15,35] or a strategic model, relating crowdsourcing directly to the business area [4]....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare two forms of crowdfunding: entrepreneurs solicit individuals either to pre-order the product or to advance a fixed amount of money in exchange for a share of future profits (or equity).

1,573 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare two forms of crowdfunding: entrepreneurs solicit individuals either to pre-order the product or to advance a fixed amount of money in exchange for a share of future profits (or equity).
Abstract: With crowdfunding, an entrepreneur raises external financing from a large audience (the "crowd"), in which each individual provides a very small amount, instead of soliciting a small group of sophisticated investors. This article compares two forms of crowdfunding: entrepreneurs solicit individuals either to pre-order the product or to advance a fixed amount of money in exchange for a share of future profits (or equity). In either case, we assume that "crowdfunders" enjoy "community benefits" that increase their utility. Using a unified model, we show that the entrepreneur prefers pre-ordering if the initial capital requirement is relatively small compared with market size and prefers profit sharing otherwise. Our conclusions have implications for managerial decisions in the early development stage of firms, when the entrepreneur needs to build a community of individuals with whom he or she must interact. We also offer extensions on the impact of quality uncertainty and information asymmetry.

1,400 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Zhi-Hua Zhou1
TL;DR: This article reviews some research progress of weakly supervised learning, focusing on three typical types of weak supervision: incomplete supervision, where only a subset of training data is given with labels; inexact supervision, Where the training data are given with only coarse-grained labels; and inaccurate supervision,Where the given labels are not always ground-truth.
Abstract: Supervised learning techniques construct predictive models by learning from a large number of training examples, where each training example has a label indicating its ground-truth output. Though current techniques have achieved great success, it is noteworthy that in many tasks it is difficult to get strong supervision information like fully ground-truth labels due to the high cost of the data-labeling process. Thus, it is desirable for machine-learning techniques to work with weak supervision. This article reviews some research progress of weakly supervised learning, focusing on three typical types of weak supervision: incomplete supervision, where only a subset of training data is given with labels; inexact supervision, where the training data are given with only coarse-grained labels; and inaccurate supervision, where the given labels are not always ground-truth.

1,238 citations


Cites background from "Crowdsourcing as a Model for Proble..."

  • ...An interesting recent scenario of inaccurate supervision occurs with crowdsourcing [12], a popular paradigm to outsource work to individuals....

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References
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Book
01 Jan 1996

12,313 citations


"Crowdsourcing as a Model for Proble..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Such is a profound paradigm shift in our view of the professional, of the corporation, of the global commons, and of the value of intellectual labor in a transnational world (Appadurai, 1996)....

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Book
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: The functional source of innovation general patterns economic explanation shifting and predicting the sources of innovation innovation as a distributed process is discussed in this paper, where users as innovators are considered as the innovators.
Abstract: Chapter 1: The functional source of innovation general patterns economic explanation shifting and predicting the sources of innovation innovation as a distributed process. Chapter 2: Users as innovators. Chapter 3: Variations in the functional source of innovation. Chapter 4: Why does the functional source of innovation vary? How do innovators benefit from innovations? Do benefit expectations differ? Chapter 5: The hypothesis in testable form methods five empirical studies discussion. Chapter 6: Shifting the functional source of innovation. Chapter 7: Root of the problem: market research constrained by user experience Lead users as a solution testing the method discussion. Chapter 8: Innovation cooperation between competing firms applications for innovation management.

5,805 citations

Book
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: Worship at the Altar of Convergence: A Paradigm for Understanding Media Change as discussed by the authors is a new paradigm for understanding media change, and it can be used to understand media change.
Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction: "Worship at the Altar of Convergence": A New Paradigm for Understanding Media Change 1 Spoiling Survivor: The Anatomy of a Knowledge Community 2 Buying into American Idol: How We are Being Sold on Reality TV 3 Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling 4 Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars? Grassroots Creativity Meets the Media Industry 5 Why Heather Can Write: Media Literacy and the Potter Wars 6 Photoshop for Democracy: The New Relationship between Politics and Popular CultureConclusion: Democratizing Television?The Politics of ParticipationNotes Glossary Index About the Author

5,608 citations

Book
01 Jan 1979
TL;DR: Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style as discussed by the authors is an attempt to subject the various youth-protest movements of Britain in the last 15 years to the sort of Marxist, structuralist, semiotic analytical techniques propagated by, above all, Roland Barthes.
Abstract: 'Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style is so important: complex and remarkably lucid, it's the first book dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. Hebdige [...] is concerned with the UK's postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.' - Rolling Stone With enviable precision and wit Hebdige has addressed himself to a complex topic - the meanings behind the fashionable exteriors of working-class youth subcultures - approaching them with a sophisticated theoretical apparatus that combines semiotics, the sociology of devience and Marxism and come up with a very stimulating short book - Time Out This book is an attempt to subject the various youth-protest movements of Britain in the last 15 years to the sort of Marxist, structuralist, semiotic analytical techniques propagated by, above all, Roland Barthes. The book is recommended whole-heartedly to anyone who would like fresh ideas about some of the most stimulating music of the rock era - The New York Times

4,217 citations

Proceedings Article
01 Dec 1991
TL;DR: The Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush holds up an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased, and urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible the authors' bewildering store of knowledge.
Abstract: As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coordinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. In this significant article he holds up an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased. He urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge. For years inventions have extended man's physical powers rather than the powers of his mind. Trip hammers that multiply the fists, microscopes that sharpen the eye, and engines of destruction and detection are new results, but not the end results, of modern science. Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages. The perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective of our scientists as they emerge from their war work. Like Emerson's famous address of 1837 on "The American Scholar," this paper by Dr. Bush calls for a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge.

3,464 citations


"Crowdsourcing as a Model for Proble..." refers background in this paper

  • ...The hypertextual nature of the web mimics the very way we think as humans (Bush, 1945), so it should come as no surprise that humans should see themselves in the medium as actors, creators, innovators, as implicated in the information flow rather than witnesses to it....

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  • ...Successes in distributed intelligence – or intelligence amplification (Bush, 1945; Smith, 1994), or crowd wisdom, or innovation communities (von Hippel, 1988, 2005), or whatever the nomenclature – existed prior to the arrival of the web, as Surowiecki (2004) notes throughout his book....

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