Crowdsourcing For Dummies

Chapter 9

Combining the Intelligence of Self-Organised Crowds

In This Chapter

Getting to the bottom of self-organised crowds

Using crowds to obtain information and make decisions

Working through the crowdsourcing process

Using a prediction market to gather opinions

Some of the most innovative applications of crowdsourcing are those that use self-organised crowds. Self-organised crowdsourcing is similar to crowdcontests in that, to engage a self-organised crowd, you post a goal, something that you would like to accomplish, and you offer a reward for the group of people who are able to accomplish that goal. But instead of telling the crowd how it should work and how it should be organised, you let the crowd answer those questions. You let the crowd decide the best way to work and the best way to organise itself.

Self-organised crowdsourcing is most useful for helping you learn things from the crowd that you can’t imagine, such as an idea for a new consumer product that might radically change the market, or a new service that might offer a tremendous improvement to a neighbourhood. ...