Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business

by JeffHowe (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.22

  How were a bunch of part-time dabblers in finance able to help an investment company consistently beat the market? Why does pharmaceutical giant Proctor and Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStock and Threadless employ just a handful of people and yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year? The answer is that they all draw on the power of Crowdsourcing. First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in an article in Wired in June 2006, Crowdsourcing describes the process by which the power of the many can be harnessed together on the internet to build and to innovate.Now, in his eagerly awaited book, he shows precisely how this has become possible - how complex social, technological and economic developments have fused together to make Crowdsourcing an increasingly powerful force in more and more areas of our daily lives. And in the course of showing how Crowdsourcing is going from strength to strength, he investigates why it is that Crowdsourcing communities are so smart - why intuition rather than deep knowledge can lead to major breakthroughs, why a collection of dilettantes often seem to know more than lone experts, and why Crowdsourcing causes ideas to snowball and yield astonishing results. Crowdsourcing is now a part of our lives, whether we're aware of it or not. If we're to benefit from what it can achieve, we need to understand where it's come from and how it works - and where it's taking us.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.22

  Jeff Howe coined the word 'Crowdsourcing' in a 2006 article for Wired magazine to describe the way in which the Internet has broken down traditional employer/employee relationships to create vibrant new enterprises that are 'staffed' by informal, often large gatherings of enthusiasts. A few weeks before the article hit the news-stands, a Google search for the word 'Crowdsourcing' returned zero results. One month after the article appeared, the same search returned nearly 500,000 hits. These days anyone and everyone can write book reviews on Amazon, post videos on Youtube, come up with new uses for Google maps or design T-shirts for Threadless. What makes this phenomenon so remarkable is that it is starting to transform the way many companies operate and to change their relationship with their customers: iStockPhoto.com has revolutionised the world of digital photography; Cambrian House is having a profound impact on the way films get made; and, Second Life has created a vast, profitable business with only a few formal employees but thousands of dedicated contributors. Moreover this revolution is rapidly changing our culture, introducing a consumer democracy that has never existed before. Jeff Howe has now followed up his initial, ground-breaking article with months of research, and the result is a book that will define the next stage of the Internet revolution.

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $15.86

  Jeff Howe coined the word 'Crowdsourcing' in a 2006 article for Wired magazine to describe the way in which the Internet has broken down traditional employer/employee relationships to create vibrant new enterprises that are 'staffed' by informal, often large gatherings of enthusiasts. A few weeks before the article hit the news-stands, a Google search for the word 'Crowdsourcing' returned zero results. One month after the article appeared, the same search returned nearly 500,000 hits. These days anyone and everyone can write book reviews on Amazon, post videos on Youtube, come up with new uses for Google maps or design T-shirts for Threadless. What makes this phenomenon so remarkable is that it is starting to transform the way many companies operate and to change their relationship with their customers: iStockPhoto.com has revolutionised the world of digital photography; Cambrian House is having a profound impact on the way films get made; and, Second Life has created a vast, profitable business with only a few formal employees but thousands of dedicated contributors. Moreover this revolution is rapidly changing our culture, introducing a consumer democracy that has never existed before. Jeff Howe has now followed up his initial, ground-breaking article with months of research, and the result is a book that will define the next stage of the Internet revolution.