Crowdsourcing: One Step Beyond

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Crowdsourcing and Value Creation

The goal of every organization is to create value through its various activities. This remains true in the case of outsourcing. In this chapter, we will attempt to explain how a company can create value by means of a crowdsourcing operation. To do this, we will use a model linking types of value, types of crowd, and the means by which these crowds are accessed.

In classic outsourcing, it is possible to focus on the costs and on the notion of rare resources. From a cost perspective, we speak of transaction costs; the question is whether or not the cost of executing an activity internally is higher than the cost of the same activity when it is outsourced [WIL 85]. The first important point is that, seemingly in every case, crowdsourcing proves to be less expensive than other forms of outsourcing. This seems to us to be a crucial point, and it has not been sufficiently emphasized. However, even the very first example, given by J. Howe in 2006 [HOW 06] – the search for a photo by the National Health Museum – showed that the prices of istockphoto ¹ (a case of crowdsourcing) were unbeatable when compared with those of a classic photographer (a case of outsourcing), even when the latter’s prices were negotiable. The examples cited from Dell, Amazon, and Mechanical Turk also agree on the fact that crowdsourcing is cheap. However, the notion of price is not the only factor to be taken into account when outsourcing; there is also the notion of resources. ...