Crowdsourcing/Definitions

Learning Task: Definitions
Identify the appropriate definition for your crowdsourcing pilot/project
 * Analyse the following definitions!
 * Derive an appropriate definition for your own crowdsourcing project according to the objective!

Definitions
The term "crowdsourcing" was coined in 2005 by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson, editors at Wired, to describe how businesses were using the Internet to "outsource work to the crowd", which quickly led to the portmanteau "crowdsourcing." Howe, first published a definition for the term crowdsourcing in a companion blog post to his June 2006 Wired article, "The Rise of Crowdsourcing", which came out in print just days later: "'Simply defined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential laborers.'"

In a February 1, 2008, article, Daren C. Brabham, "the first [person] to publish scholarly research using the word crowdsourcing" and writer of the 2013 book, Crowdsourcing, defined it as an "online, distributed problem-solving and production model." Kristen L. Guth and Brabham, found that the performance of ideas offered in crowdsourcing platforms are affected not only by their quality, but also by the communication among users about the ideas, and presentation in the platform itself.

After studying more than 40 definitions of crowdsourcing in the scientific and popular literature, Enrique Estellés-Arolas and Fernando González Ladrón-de-Guevara, researchers at the Technical University of Valencia, developed a new integrating definition:

"'Crowdsourcing is a type of participative online activity in which an individual, an institution, a nonprofit organization, or company proposes to a group of individuals of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, and number, via a flexible open call, the voluntary undertaking of a task. The undertaking of the task; of variable complexity and modularity, and; in which the crowd should participate, bringing their work, money, knowledge **[and/or]** experience, always entails mutual benefit. The user will receive the satisfaction of a given type of need, be it economic, social recognition, self-esteem, or the development of individual skills, while the crowdsourcer will obtain and use to their advantage that which the user has brought to the venture, whose form will depend on the type of activity undertaken'."

As mentioned by the definitions of Brabham and Estellés-Arolas and Ladrón-de-Guevara above, crowdsourcing in the modern conception is an IT-mediated phenomenon, meaning that a form of IT is always used to create and access crowds of people. In this respect, crowdsourcing has been considered to encompass three separate, but stable techniques; competition crowdsourcing, virtual labor market crowdsourcing, and open collaboration crowdsourcing.

Henk van Ess, a college lecturer in online communications, emphasizes the need to "give back" the crowdsourced results to the public on ethical grounds. His nonscientific, noncommercial definition is widely cited in the popular press: "'Crowdsourcing is channeling the experts’ desire to solve a problem and then freely sharing the answer with everyone.'"

Despite the multiplicity of definitions for crowdsourcing, one constant has been the broadcasting of problems to the public, and an open call for contributions to help solve the problem. Members of the public submit solutions that are then owned by the entity, which originally broadcast the problem. In some cases, the contributor of the solution is compensated monetarily with prizes or with recognition. In other cases, the only rewards may be kudos or intellectual satisfaction. Crowdsourcing may produce solutions from amateurs or volunteers working in their spare time or from experts or small businesses, which were previously unknown to the initiating organization.

Another consequence of the multiple definitions is the controversy surrounding what kinds of activities that may be considered crowdsourcing.