The first article (Malone, Laubacher and Dellarocas, 2010) focuses on explaining the collective intelligence genome, by focusing on the 16 principles genes framework, of which it consists. Their research uses building blocks (‘the genes’) to explain the intelligence systems. A gene is explained as a particular answer to key questions such as: What?; Who?; Why?; How?. The article goes in great detail of the Linux case answering all the four main questions. An interesting part for me is the answer to the Why-question. Namely, Why would you want to consider the Crowd option? In the case of Torvalds, he simply did not have the time to do all the activities by himself, which left him with no choice by to use the Crowd option, which automatically also answer the How-question: people would accomplish the task through creating certain interdependencies. In terms of disadvantage, I believe that the only major one I could mention would be the fact that at a certain point the framework gets too complicated and the reader might miss the meaning of the paragraph.
The second article (Pisano and Verganti, 2008) talk about what should be taken into consideration when it comes to choosing the best way of collaboration for a particular business. It is so important due to the fact that failing to choose the right model would result in failing the race to lead in new technology development. I personally cannot direct any criticism to the authors of the article due to the following reasons. It provides incentives as to what kind of network a company should use according to its structure with examples as in the case of Alessi Italian company, Apple model as well as IBM in a consortia. It goes in great details regarding crowdsourcing and its advantages and disadvantages as well as it provide valuable tips.
The third article (Borison and Hamm, 2010) talks about strategic decision making-theories, processes and tools used to limit uncertainty both in the private and public sector. The article’s aim is to outline the conventional approaches being used in terms of decision-making and introduce a new promising tool called ‘prediction market’. The article goes in great detail outlining the decision theory consisting of probability encoding process and expert aggregation. A big advantage of the article and I believe the core strategy of the writers was to explain those processes in great detail, outlining the main problems when it comes to their usage in order to highlight the new tool they want to introduce.
The fourth article (Konnikova, 2011), which was chosen by me, challenges the concept behind all the articles and examples related to Crowdsourcing. It has been considers as correct that from diversity of estimates comes improved accuracy. The article uses a study of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science), which states that social influence could have an impact on the wisdom of crowds.
HARIBO FAN edition campaign was announced as ‘one of the most successful crowdsourcing project in the German-speaking world’ (innosabi, 2015). The project was such a success due to following a three-pillared structure. The first pillar states the motivation behind participation: to take part in the Haribo Goldbären selection. Secondly, the familiarity of the brand allowed for a development of the stand-alone platform. Lastly, the fans’ desire to include a blue bär in the Haribo selection. The biggest advantage this campaign had for the brand was creating a growing community and excitement around the label due to the fact that every week a winner was selected. This campaign proved that large companies with long tradition could profit a great deal from crowdsourcing.
An example of a successful crowdfunding campaign (Peaksmaker.com, 2015) was that of the The Women’s Fund Endowment of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County. The foundation provides grants to improve the lives of women in the community through education and by fighting to solve the inequality of women in the community. Their fundraising goal was $5,000 dollars and at the end the total raised was $5,005 dollars, so their crowdfunding campaign was successful. Therefore, I wanted to use this example to highlight what is needed for a campaign to be successful. Firstly, the campaign had a vision and mission behind it with which women were able to identify themselves. This helped to raise funds for the campaign. The second thing is the transparency they were providing by sharing with people successful stories in the community. Lastly and very importantly is that the campaign was boosted by social media and marketing promotion.
References:
1.Borison, A. and Hamm, G. (2010). Prediction Markets: A New Tool for Strategic Decision Making. 1st ed. California: California Review Management.
2.innosabi, (2015). GOLDBÄREN FAN-Edition Case Study – innosabi. [online] Available at: http://innosabi.com/en/goldbaeren-fan-edition-case-study/
3.Konnikova, M. (2011). The Wisdom of Crowds, Revisited: When The Crowd Goes From Wise to Wrong | Big Think. [online] Big Think.
4.Malone, T., Laubacher, R. and Dellarocas, C. (2010). The Collective Intelligence Genome. 1st ed. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
5.Peaksmaker.com, (2015). Why Crowdfunding Campaigns Succeed: 10 Case Studies from the Best Crowdfunding Websites – PEAKS. [online]
6.Pisano, G. and Verganti, R. (2008). Which Kind of Collaboration is Right for You?. 1st ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review.
