An online expert discussion on the future of paid crowdsourcing in business will take place this Thursday, Sept. 17 at 9am PDT.   The panel of industry experts will look at how and when paid crowdsourcing will become a mainstream component of business operations. Paid crowdsourcing is currently in the “innovators and early adopters” phase [...]

1. During the summer, Forbes magazine interviewed Jeffrey Housenbold, Chief Executive of Shutterfly, the online supplier of customized photo-based goods. It provides an interesting overview of the way the company addresses the question of ‘how much choice is enough choice?’ and preventing situations where customers get overwhelmed by the level of choice. It (the degree [...]

1.  Jeff Howe, author of the Crowdsourcing book, has written an interesting and comprehensive blog post about the possible future online business models that might be adopted by the print media. 2.  RPI, a provider of automated, mass-customized manufacturing and fulfillment for the consumer print-on-demand market, recently announced that it has set an industry record [...]

The music industry has faced considerable strategic challenges in recent years, not least the trend towards reduced revenues caused by file sharing, but also the shift in market power from labels towards online aggregators such as Apple iTunes. Another side-effect of the world wide web on the music industry has been the trend towards dis-intermediation, [...]

Since the crowdsourcing phenomenon was first documented during 2006, in a Wired magazine article by Jeff Howe, followed by his book of that name in 2007, the business and technology world has continued to adopt the concept, with varying models and methods. In some cases, the crowdsourcing model used involved a reward of some kind [...]

Could 2009 be the year that crowdsourcing takes root in the area of car design? My last 2008 post here described how Caterham, a specialist British sports car maker, is crowdsourcing the design of its next car. In late December, an article in the Boston-based XConomy website described how Local Motors, a startup company in [...]

Caterham, the specialist British sports car manufacturer, has launched a crowdsourcing initiative for the design of its next model, in association with PerformancePR, an automotive public relations company.  The project, named Splitwheel, which is described as “a revolutionary online project to design and build a new performance car based on the collective decision-making of its [...]

ZD Net reports that Intel is joining with Asus to create WePC, which serves as a sales site for Asus but is also an effort to gain community input in the PC design process. Make Your Own Jeans, which provides made-to-measure denim fashions at affordable prices, has announced a new add-on service that allows clients [...]

Paul Greenberg, a writer and thought leader in the area of customer relationship management (CRM) has, over the last few months, published extracts on his blog from the fourth edition of his book CRM at the Speed of Light. The most interesting extract from my viewpoint is from Chapter 6, which describes ‘characteristics of the [...]

The ranks of online marketplaces for user-designed apparel has been swelled by the arrival of Yerzies. This new company allows anyone to create, purchase or sell their own customized tee shirts, hoodies and other apparel items. In addition to the ability to upload images for printing on a t-shirt or other item of clothing, Yerzies [...]

Custom furniture maker Context Furniture has launched a new website called Design Democracy ’08 – Power to the People, which they describe as a grass roots event aimed at raiseing awareness about mass customization. This website offers curriculum for DD08 ‘citizens’ (members) to learn about mass customization processes, philosophies, materials, design elements and software/hardware applications.  [...]

Wikinomics, or to use its full title “Wikinomics – How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” is a chronicle of how traditional collaboration – in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention centre – has been superceeded by collaborations on an astronomical scale. The book opens by telling the story of Goldcorp Inc., a mining [...]

A recent post on this site profiled FellowForce, an open innovation project that acts as an intermediary between enterprises and individual innovators. At the time I had noted that the FellowForce website had certain limitations which limited the prospects for success. However, since then FellowForce has made an innovation of its own that should enable [...]

Springwise recently reported on developments involving the new trend of crowdsourced band management, which can also be referred to as ‘crowdfinancing’ as the participants pay a fee for the privilege of being involved in deciding the direction of a band. The first entrant in this new marketplace, Sellaband, recently celebrated its first anniversary. The Sellaband [...]

The Economist, a weekly UK magazine that is one of the most influential business publications in the World, recently undertook a project which it described as crowdsourcing but is probably closer in nature to open innovation. The magazine asked its readership what new directions it should take in leveraging its intellectual capital and resources. They [...]