How does this change our workplace? If product development and daily communication -- in addition to production -- can be handled by
the crowds, we are no longer limited by geography. How does crowdsourcing change our relationship to the workplace? To fellow workers? How do these ideas extend beyond the workplace?
The Crowdsourced Workplace
Posted March 15th, 2007 by David Cohn


Crowd source is the best way
Crowd source is the best way to expand and get the best rating. I think, IT the change in culture and the change in relationship between customer.its basically a shuffle in thoughts, as we all know that our mind is in constant state of flux and it randomly change from joys to sorrow so this crowd sourcing is another way of approaching traditional values.
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Hierarchy
I think that one of the most important aspects will be an entirely different view on hierarchy and power in organisations. The crowd can not be controlled in the way that employees or an outsourcing company can be controlled. This means a much more open view in accepting the lead that the crowd is taking. After all, the people that are in the crowds are not ants. An ant has a very small and specific set of rules that are fairly predictable (when in doubt, follow the ant in front of you). People in the crowd are much more advanced and therefore much more unpredictable than ants. The company that outsources work (especially the management) to the crowd will have to deal with this.
This is a problem that counts for all types of mechanisms based on social software and intelligence of crowds (I call them iCrowds). They do not mix easily with hierarchical cultures. But the decision to start with these processes is taken by management that became management because they are good in the hierarchical game. I deeply believe in the advantages of these community type of working processes because working in an environment like these is much more rewarding. One gets rewarded for the content you deliver and not for the position you are in the hierarchy. At the moment I am writing about these mechanisms under the title "From pyramid to pancake" (see www.iCrowds.net).
Crowd Sourcing
IMO a major obstacle is we all have different skill sets, and different expectation of what the goal of the group are. The majority of projects fail because the rules are vauge, which makes them worthless. The small percise effort establishes the chain of disciplines that allow the group workplace to evolve. I think that it is always possible that there is a payout, a discovery, and a fair benefit of some kind to the group.
The inimate workgroup
A core part of a successful group must be intimately aware of others in the group. It takes a lot of time and communication. In my own experience, I find it takes about a year of studying and reviewing work before I have a clear idea of where the most significant mistakes are being made. There are an endless number of reasons fixable things can still fail once we understand the correct answer. So the rareness of success has to be better understood, not as random chance, but the chance that a very percise set of working rules/crowd evolves. When growth does evolve the intimate behavior, facilitates individual uniquenesses.
The group that endures the duress of successful growth will have learned unique skills, that could be difficult to transfer.
The skillful leader
There is something human in wanting fairness. When the work at hand is complex and often fails, success seems like a moral reward. The comradery of the skilled group with a single goal has succeeded and that truthful sincerity infects others. A good leader leaves no doubt they will be successful because they recognize a successful idea and are constantly tapping the intimate group for potential, pressing for preformance. It's a fine line, but the skilled leader is usually prolific and would be productive without the group.
The perception of crowdsourced
When all things have worked, they have worked because they responded to the community. The human community will find infinitely diverse reasons to rationalize a united group behavior, like blogging for stangers. If the discipline grows legs, and the crowd comes to feed; then evolution takes over. Being crowdsourced is a skillful conspiracy of a small group producing a crowd response, that sustains a core discipline. It is why technology grows expotentially and why genocide exists. The crowd acts in concert, without the benefit of personal experience.
Someone will make money, others will be victimized. The crowd and the itimate group operate on different principals. Intimate relationships need a high level of tolerance, trust and a long learning curve. The crowd does not need to completely understand, but will enforce a rigid definition of rules. The crowd is a powerful force that must trust the rule that is working at the moment.
read Surowiecki on crowds and outsourcing
not sure it's entirely applicable (sounds like you're mostly asking about outsourcing, while Surowiecki's talking about wisdom of crowds be they in or out) - but he talks about in what situations it is/isn't wise to outsource your company's functions, and also about how to structure communications, incentives etc so as to make the most use of the wisdom within the company.
(this is in The Wisdom of Crowds; thanks to macirish i have now read it, and recommend it highly.)
Adding on
Of course the hard core economic aspects are just one of the main issues that I see needing to be addressed. I think another aspect is how from an innovative aspect, actually existing crowd sourcing fits. So adding onto that I would include the following main poiints to expand on the last post.
What about Inputs?
- resources, i.e. the various human resources based on occupations that are required, in the case of this experiment the news story production process, see the listing that the editors have outlined
- we also need capital resources, i.e offices spaces, computer equipment, distribution network, communication equipment and others
How from a crowd sourcing perspective do these inputs differ from a traditional approach?
- for example, capital equipment would be reduced in a dramatic fashion versus a traditional new room, as much of the equipment and office space would be provided for by the crowd. If however, the crowd secures legitimate renumeration, they would ideally include in their cost structure and would be billed back to the central node, in this case Assignment Zero. If we use the open source model to a fix how these cost structures are actually dealt with, then we can most likely assume that most of these costs are not renumerated and are paid for by the crowd. We could, if using the open source model pretty much include the wages bill into this category as well.
Human resources- how does the wage structure and what quality of inputs can one expect to be attracted to the crowd sourcing method.
- using a traditional model, the scarcity of resources typically determine the wage of a worker. So scarcity in a human resource sense is tyipically determined by, skills, experience, accreditation and educational qualification, accomplishments, leadership traits, personal aspects like motivation, group work and other such intangibles. Some are a bit of a black art in quantifying but an HR professional can be versed in accessing these abilities.
- one could do an analysis of the opne source movement to compare or use a guide post for guidance on this aspect
Workplace process-
Communication
- I think this is one area that much innovative thought could be used in distancing the crowd sourced workplace from a traditional. Creativity would be a good guiding aspect in conjuring up a whole slew of possibilities for the crowd space office.
- we know it will be distributed and is not limited by geography,
- the ease of flexibility in the communciation vehicle is the initaior behind the whole process
- various dimensions of the communciation process that can be deployed in this work process is another angle to cover, i.e. email, virtual offices, voice and video conferencing, enev such things as second life could be considered.
- explore with some granualarity how these innovative communication methods compare and contrast to the traditional wokpalce, ie. face to face vs the crowd sourced, what are the benefits what are the drawbacks.
Authority and decision making
- I will explore this and the rest in another posting.
Workplaces and Crowdsourcing Main Issues to tackle
Here is a start to an outline that I think highlights the main issues that Workplace Crowdsourcing ought to address please post some other thoughts and we'll try and fit them into the outline.
- as a worker within such a process, how does one receive some kind of legitimite compensation for involvement.
- the number one reason so many of us get up in the moring and motivate one to perform and produce an output is through some kind of guarenteed compensatory renumeration that provides us with a means, that at a minimum provides for our daily regeneration.
- does this necessarily mean that we should view crowdsourcing in such a traditional light.
- if so then we must compare it to such economic entities
- Production process under a market based system
-acquire the inputs and assign them to a task,
- perform some value adding through completing these tasks as guided by process,
- monitor the process that use up these scarce resources that under a market based system is determined theoretically by their degree of scarcity.
- take the completed output that has the congealled value and resell it on in the market.
- secure the monetary gains from this sale
- pay for the inputs that were allocated and consumed during the value adding process
- determine the amount to be distributing as profits to owners of the production process,
- re-invest the remainder back into the process.
- how does this this process fit with crowd sourcing
- I think you could base the crowd sourced story by identifying how each part of the crowd sourced production process would fit with this model.
Crowdsourced Workplace
I think there are two important points in the questions:
1.Will big corporations really hand out their product development to the crowds? PR industry has told companies over the last decades to keep control. Control of their products, their message, their image. That is why the PR industry has become so big. So I am not sure whether big companies will really risk doing big projects open source style, especially as copyright issues and keeping things secret always play a big role in the production, especially in the manufacturing industry. So the crowd voting on the design of a new Chrysler? Yes. The crowd actually designing the car body? Maybe, but only after certain pre-decisions by the company. The crowd developing the motor of a new Chrysler? No way.
2. A vision: We are all freelancers. Companies use crowdsourcing for certain decisions and ratings, anyone can work for any company and gets paid for his or her contribution. But will we get paid to make a living?In Germany, some talk about crowdsourced marketing is going on. It is based on the "AAL-principle". That means "andere arbeiten lassen", "letting others do the job". What will people demand for their contribution and what will they get? Remember, if the company uses a crowd, they will only do so if the benefits outnumber the benefits of a classical production.
Two options: One, people participate because they like to be part, like the product, like the idea. Then you do not have to pay them at all. Great! For the company at least. But this will not be the case in most of the products. Two: People participate, but they want something for it. But they do not know what their contribution is worth. So the you contribute to the design of a, let's say, buggy. The company gives you a buggy for free, or you get discount when you buy one. You contribute to a the design of a sportscar and you get one ride for free. Great! At first glance for you - and for the company. But the company has to calculate. So they give 2,000 people a buggy discount (it can also be a small sum of money, does not play a role). But they do not know whether the buggy will sell enough - and they have to calculate beforehand. So they have to get the buggy-discount-money back somewhere.
So the easiest thing is to get rid of the employees who did the design of your buggy or sports car before, or at least cut the staff.Because now, the mighty "crowd" is doing the job.
So what you have then is a lot of people getting a small discount on their buggy (which they probably don't use, they just liked to design one), on the other hand a couple of people losing their jobs.
If only one company does this, no problem (except for the people that get fired of course), for the economy at least. It is just what happens in outsourcing - you get rid of staff and let others do the job - except with crowdsourcing the product might be better and you have free marketing because the people tell their friends they design a buggy for your company.
But if you have done this by a lot of companies, the workless-rate goes up and the wealth goes down. The buggy-discount is not enough to make a living, even ten of those projects probably will not be enough. Because the people who participate in the crowd that creates value (among other things,by making other workers dispensible) do not get the same amount of money back.
And I do not think that companies will let the people of the crowd participate in the benefits they gained - simply because if they do not gain more by the crowd then by the conventional metods, they do not have a reason to use the crowd anyway.
Quite long, but I hope you understand what I mean.
I think we should do an assignment on what the economic results of crowdsourcing could be.
If anyone knows an economist or scholar who has done research on this subject or is familiar with it, we should put him or her on the list.
Economist on Crowd Sourcing
I think I might be that economist or Labour Economist to be more specific.
And I am on the list. Not sure you are going to like what I have to say about crowd sourcing though.
Which workplace?
Not all workplaces will be impacted equally by crowdsourcing. Which ones have the most to gain from implementing crowdsourcing initiatives? What is the publics motivation for participating in workplace related crowdsourcing beyond the workplace for an extended period of time?
Nice Thesis!
David, I love the thesis. Rad, truly rad. As one of the editors here, David and I have worked together for several months now in getting this project off the ground. He knows, as do I, that it wasn't until the developers, designers and editorial team got together in one place (New York) that we were able to make true progress in getting this site to go live. I was talking to an old boss the other night about a similar situation and how despite all our communication abilities, there is no substitute for face-to-face communication. Will crowdsourcing change workplace situations? I'm skeptical of any wholesale changes. As my old boss used to say, it will be on a case-by-case basis. Only truly revolutionary corporations (think Google) will think along these lines. Most corporations prefer to play Big Brother and monitor their employees. Telecommuting should be the standard, not the exception but I think that's a bit too utopian for this society. But, it's a nice thesis, David!
Steve, I like your points.
Steve, I like your points. I don't think only the revolutionaries will utilize crowdsourcing, they will just be the early adopters. The assembly line might have seemed a bit out of leftfield to Ford's competitors, but once it became clear what it meant to labour costs everybody got onboard. I agree with the general consensus in here about "which business/marketplace?" when talking about crowdsourcing, but at the end of the day an innovative mind behind almost any product can incorporate users/consumers.. i.e. look at the Netflix or Amazon customer review portions of those respective shopping experiences, who would have thought that those communities, propped up by user generated content would become selling points for online purchase/rental. I'm presently looking at the spatial implications of crowdsourcing in the newspaper industry as part of my architecture thesis (i.e. what is the newsroom of the 21st century with the assumption that there is indeed a room) but I think the most interesting developments will be in non-spatial, immaterial industries (i.e. topcoder).
Second Life as face-to-face proxy (also shout out to co-working)
I'm a huge fan of face-to-face, and am a huge fan of co-working therefore (and am part of it in Citizenspace and also getting government into by creating NASA CoLab), and I'd love to see the co-working movement covered in depth as part of this story-- but what I really wanted to write in this comment is that Second Life and other 3-D virtual worlds are becoming a reasonable proxy for the power of face-to-face... Not as good as face-to-face, and not a total replacement for it, but a huge step above conference calls and email and IM and even video conferencing for geographically distributed teams. More of my thoughts on that here.