The first example I decided to explore is CrowdSPRING – one of the largest marketplaces for creative crowd-sourced services with almost 150 000 designers which offer great service for amazingly low prices.
Strengths
You get a huge amount of contributors which leads to large amounts of ideas. Pisano and Verganti (2008).
Weaknesses
First, the open model does not identify the best of professionals to deal with your problem. Second, criticizing their 100% Money Back strategy which seems rather unfair for the designers.
The second example is Trevolta – a crowd-funded travel site. The idea behind it is that travelers are able to submit their ideas and get funded by people who are inspired by them or sponsors who are looking for marketing enhancements or brand awareness.
Strengths
“Travelling for the purpose of doing research for publications, science, education, etc”
Weaknesses
Resembles a lot other projects connected to “random” people going to different places for, mainly, their own benefit and so except for companies who want more marketing or brand recognition, “ordinary” people seem less likely to fund the projects on the principle of “why should I pay for someone else to travel around the world when I have to sit in my office?”.
CrowdSPRING. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.crowdspring.com/how-it-works/
Pisano, G.P. & Verganti, R. (2008). Which kind of collaboration is right for you? Harvard Business Review 86(12) 78-86.
Trevolta. (2013). Retrieved from http://signup.trevolta.com/faq
