How Crowdsourcing is Transforming the Way Businesses Operate

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Recent advancements in technology have helped change the way many businesses operate. Yet, none of these innovations is as promising as Crowdsourcing. Defined as the strategy of outsourcing high-risk, high-cost tasks to an online community known as a crowd this relatively new concept has proven to be a highly effective organizational tool. As a result, an increasing number of private and public sector organizations are incorporating it into their operations. In fact, the only thing that appears to be constraining Crowdsourcing is the speed at which the technology it utilizes advances.
The purpose of this essay is to examine how the emergence of Crowdsourcing is changing the way business operate. This current event will be examined from its conception through its inception into public organizational settings. Within this context, this paper will examine how this technological application has been used to reduce costs. It will discuss how online companies used Crowdsourcing as the foundation of their business model and how Crowdsourcing has emerged in public healthcare and government acquisitions. By advancing the understanding of Crowdsourcing, this study provides useful examples of how organizations are using this relatively new resource. Consequently, this essay serves a conduit for understanding the broad-reaching usefulness of information technology.
Crowdsourcing
Overview
Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson thought up the concept of Crowdsourcing in 2005. However, Howe was the first to write about the concept of Crowdsourcing in 2006. His coined the idea after observing a production model developed by a small group of computer programmers. The model showed that a collection of small teams could create a better product tha...

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..., 2014).
Howe, J. 2006. “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.” http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html. (accessed March 28, 2014).
Lohr, S. 2009. “Netflix Awards $1 Million Prize and Starts a New Contest.” BITS: NY Times. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/netflix-awards-1-million-prize-and-starts-a-new-contest. (accessed March 28, 2014).
Sophocleous, A. 2009. “New business tool that's pulling the crowds and saving money.” Business Day: Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/business/new-business-tool-thats-pulling-the-crowds-and- saving-money-20090408-a0vl.html. (accessed March 29, 2014).
Swan, Melanie. 2012. "Crowdsourced health research studies: an important emerging complement to clinical trials in the public health research ecosystem." Journal Of Medical Internet Research 14, no. 2: e46. MEDLINE with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed April 1, 2014).

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