Crowdsourcing and competitive creativity

These are notes from a workshop on crowdsourcing and competitive creativity at DSRD quite a while back but did not post online. It was of much interest to me as I am a big fan ofcrowdsourcing and a user of eLance, Rentacoder, iStockphoto, uTest and other such sites.Wikipedia is considered the most famous example of crowdsourcing.

The concept was very well presented by Alec Lynch, founder of DesignCrowd.com. Alec is of course a crowdsourcing expert, being the owner of one of the premier crowdsourcing platforms on the Web. DesignBay allows a user to publish their logo, Web site or graphic design requirements, name a prize or reward for completing the task, and let designers compete to get the assignment.

He described the benefits of crowdsourcing which involves outsourcing a task through an open call (generally with the support of a Web site) to help find the best idea, design or supplier. It was interesting to note that the building of Australian icon Sydney Opera House was crowdsourced to the global community of architects through an open contest, albeit using offline processes, way back in the late 1960s.

Crowdsourcing is faster, cheaper and, most importantly, minimises risk and helps get the best result possible. Crowdsourcing can be applied to almost any task of medium complexity that requires creativity.

He listed a number of other crowdsourcing resources:

NameThis to name a business or product

DesignCrowdy for logo, Web site and graphic design,

iStockphoto or photography

Bootb for advertising

Voice123 for voice acting and radio ad production

TopCoder for programming.