Six platforms to get results from crowdsourcing

(Fromk Trends in the Living Networks, by Ross Dawson)

MyCustomer.com has just published a nice article based on an interview with me, titled Ross Dawson: Six tools to kickstart your crowdsourcing strategy.
After beginning with some background on the topicality of crowdsourcing, the article goes on:


But suddenly crowdsourcing seems to be reaching some kind of critical mass. From reports that Microsoft crowdsourced the making of Office 2010, to David Cameron asking the UK’s civil servants for money-saving ideas via the Government’s Spending Challenge, it’s not just that interest in it is peaking, it’s that organisations are already bringing crowdsourcing plans to fruition.

This all comes as no surprise to Ross Dawson, a globally recognised futurist, strategy advisor and best-selling author – and at last month’s Creative Sydney event he delivered a keynote entitled ‘The Future is Crowdsourcing’.
"We are now at the opening phases of what is a global talent economy," he explains. "Talent is now everywhere and far more available. We’re seeing professionals increasingly working independently rather than necessarily in large corporations; we are seeing retired people who are interesting in continuing to be engaged and entrusted to projects. And clearly we have access to people around the world. So we are moving from a world where the talent was all inside big organisations to a very fluid world where the talent is available globally. And there is now a whole host of tools and platforms to be able to access all of this talent in a wide variety of ways."
After running through some of the examples I gave in the interview, including Procter & Gamble's embrace of open innovation, IBM's alphaWorks initiative, and Dell's IdeaStorm, the article goes on to highlight six of the 14 categories of crowdsourcing described in my recently launched Crowdsourcing Landscape, quoting me extensively from our interview and mentioning companies that were covered in our landscape.

Here are the six types of crowdsourcing mentioned in the article, together with excerpts of what I was quoted saying about the category. See the excellent article for complete details.