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The Future of Vehicle Design

Jun-24-11 By Aminda
A few weeks ago, a post discussed a crowdsourcing project by the U.S. military to source a new vehicle design.

Governments Get Creative

Jun-21-11 By Aminda
The news that Iceland is crowdsourcing its constitution has made headlines around the globe this month, from the gossip blogs to the biggest global newspapers. A previous post on this site shared a video from a panel of young Icelandic leaders who have been working on the project since 2009.
Along with this news, many writers are digging up or republishing other stories on how governments are creatively using technology to evolve traditional ways of government communication and decision making.

Crowdsourcing’s Coming of Age?

May-24-11 By Aminda
This year has already seen several major accomplishments for providers of crowdsourcing solutions. Clickworker, headquartered in Germany and provider of business services including SEO text creation and data authentication, in March announced the close of a 4.25 Million € Series B round of financing. About the same time, San Francisco- based Crowdflower announced that it has raised $7 million in its second round of funding. The second round of funding, used to spin out additional niche services for outsourcing, was oversubscribed.
 
Business School professor and blogger, Panos Ipeirotis, writes an interesting post explaining what he sees as being behind the rise in solutions that target a very specific vertical.

Embedding Workers in User Interfaces

May-11-11 By Aminda
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has become commonly known as the platform that has an interface which allows job-posters to have a job divided into small parts and distribute it among multiple workers for completion. Now developers are asking if that same, human-powered system can be refined as a software application along the same lines as Microsoft spell-checker.

Making Farm Fans

May-06-11 By Aminda
A UK nonprofit dedicated to conservation has launched a unique campaign that has brought international attention to their work.
Capitalizing on the enormous success of the Facebook game Farmville, where players run a virtual farm, the National Trust is allowing participants to discuss and vote on what to buy and plant on a real 2,500 farm which is currently home to cattle, pigs, sheep and crops.

Newpapers Need the Crowd Too

Mar-09-11 By Aminda
The age of the paper newspaper may be declining but a positive new door has opened in the field of journalism. News media outlooks probably wouldn’t be considered to have been quick to integrate crowdsourcing. After all, reliable, well-researched, thoughtfully writing reporting doesn’t lend itself to being bid on for the lowest price from an anonymous crowd. But news outlets around the world have found ways to integrate the crowd without compromising the reliability of their work. Here are a few examples.

Capitalizing on Complexity

Mar-07-11 By Aminda
A recent post shared insight from IBM’s, 2010 Global CEO Study, Capitalizing on Complexity. The report indicated that the most pressing concern among today’s business leaders was how to manage complexity. It then identified current leaders who were rising up to the complexity challenge and providing direction on how to capitalize on complexity. One of the areas in which these “standouts” focused their attention on was creativity, a practice that deserves more attention. Here are some more excerpts from the study.

Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs. Standouts practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organizations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realize their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas, and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.

The Complexity Challenge

Mar-03-11 By Aminda
IBM recently released the report Capitalizing on Complexity, containing insights from their 2010 Global CEO Study which consists of face-to-face conversations with more than 1,500 chief executive officers worldwide.
The report states that a shift has taken place in what is weighing on the minds of today’s leaders. No longer primarily concerned with how to cope with change, as in the past three studies, the 2010 interviews identified a new primary challenge: complexity.

Toyota’s Time

Mar-02-11 By Aminda
There’s no doubt the past couple years have been rough for Toyota. Now, they appear to be committed to shedding the somber, apologetic stance following a string of safety recalls, and embrace 2011 as their year. The campaign includes a new tagline, “#1 for a reason” (moving away from "moving forward"), the launch of 11 new automobile models and a couple of savvy PR campaigns.

Fans Eat Up Crowdsourcing Campaigns

Feb-21-11 By Aminda
There are plenty of examples of how companies are using crowdsourcing to strengthen brands and engage consumers. Mashable, a social and digital media, technology and web culture news site, has posted an interesting article on how three major food and beverage brands have creatively used the technique to strengthen their brands. Here are some highlights:
Ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s already has several fan-developed flavors that are best sellers, and last year ran a successful campaign utilizing crowdsourcing not only to engage the consumer but to raise awareness for CSR initiatives. The winner of 2010’s “Do the World a Flavor” competition not only saw their idea produced, but won a trip to the Dominican Republic to visit a sustainable cocoa farm.