The concept of online collaboration or crowd sourcing can certainly be a benefit to many businesses, both big and small. Particularly small businesses with limited research and development budgets that still want to have access to the latest technologies. If you are unsure what exactly crowd sourcing is, here's an example:
I own a small business and I would like some special software to track customer information, sales, and accounting. There are websites, like elance.com, where you can post your requirements and your budget and people from all over the world can contact you about the job you need done.
A few basic benefits are obvious, by contracting out a single job you don't need to worry about hiring a person long term, since it is a large public forum competing for business costs tend to be more competitive, and the business owner gets the advantage of having, in this case, something customized to fit their needs rather than just buying something generic out of a box.
The business owner also has go be cautious when crowd sourcing for a few reasons. Depending on the work being done are there any specific copywriting issues involved? Just because you may be writing the check, doesn't always mean you have full access or full rights to the job being done. If you contracted internationally, are you subject to another countries laws governing ownership and copyright of produced material? What about technical support? What happens when you take the day off and somebody in the office "crashes" the database? What then? Finally, dispute resolution. What happens when both parties, both in good faith, have a disagreement regarding the finished product? Other than the use of "feedback" which customers at times can wield unfairly against the producers, is there an objective dispute resolution process? Probably not, so beware.
As with any business decision, the choice to crowd source has to be researched thoroughly to determine no only the cost, but the risks involved which could escalate those costs.
That's a good point about potentially not owning the rights to crowdsourcing. If you are developing something with the intent of making a profit, you have to be very careful about crowdsourcing.
ReplyDeleteI wonder really what the difference between crowdsourcing and open source initiatives that Rheingold mentioned are. It seems to me that crowdsourcing refers to a service that is being provided, or contributed to by many different people while an open source intiative refers to a software program that allows a particular service to be performed. According to the definition of open source intiatives that Professor Proctor provided, free redistribution and no discrimination against any fields of endeavor or persons are key aspects of an open source program. This allows for copywrite issues to basically become null and void. I wonder if it is possible to do the same with crowdsourcing work. Copywriting, like you mention, can limit the ability to use a service like elance.com freely to your full benefit. Can crowdsourcing services also be open source initiatives or are they inherently different?
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