Getting Results From Crowds: The definitive guide to using crowdsourcing to grow your business [Paperback]

Ross Dawson (Author), Steve Bynghall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 2011

Build your business by tapping one of the most powerful trends in business today: Crowdsourcing.

Getting Results From Crowds provides practical, pragmatic, clear guidance on how you can draw on the power of crowds to grow your business. Filled with real-life case studies and useful examples, it gives you everything you need to know to create success in a world where talent can be anywhere.

WHAT BUSINESS LEADERS ARE SAYING

“Ross Dawson and Steve Bynghall have masterfully delivered a comprehensive and strategically pragmatic guide to crowdsourcing. Each chapter elegantly lays out a key concept and then provides practical advice. This is the must read bible for effective crowdsourcing.”
- R “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst & CEO, Constellation Research

“This is the smartest, most practical overview of crowdsourcing I’ve seen (and I think I’ve seen them all). It will be particularly valuable in helping larger and more established companies to adopt crowdsourcing.”
- Lukas Biewald, CEO, CrowdFlower

“A must-read for anyone looking to easily and cost-effectively leverage skills from around the world.”
- Davy Adams, Managing Director, IDG Australia

“Ross’s latest book is a fantastic guide for businesses looking to access skills and drive innovation through crowdsourcing. I highly recommend it.”
- Peter Williams, CEO, Deloitte Digital

“Ross Dawson, the “crowd king”, provides with Getting Results from Crowds a comprehensive and up to date review of how to make crowds work for you!”
- Matt Barrie, CEO, Freelancer.com

“To make the most of the different crowdsourcing options available for your business grab a copy of ‘Getting Results from Crowds’ – it will pay for itself many times over!”
- Mark Harbottle, Founder, 99designs.com

"Ross Dawson has demystified crowdsourcing, and more importantly given us the best road map I’ve seen to think through recent experience and show you where it fits in your organisation’s repertoire. He shows you how to make it work for you.”
- Nicholas Gruen, CEO, Lateral Economics and Peach Financial, and Chairman, Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Advanced Human Technologies Inc (December 2, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0984783806
• ISBN-13: 978-0984783809
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #768,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I just wish I read it sooner December 15, 2011

By Terri L. Griffith

Format:Paperback

Getting Results From Crowds: The Definitive Guide to Using Crowdsourcing To Grow Your Business by Ross Dawson and Steve Bynghall is one of those books where you're mad at the authors... for not writing it sooner. Getting Results from Crowds offers itself as a guidebook where you can dip into the different sections of the material as you have the need. Even so, I read it from start to finish so I could feel like I had a handle on all my options. Well done, Dawson & Bynghall.

I have the pleasure of teaching bits and pieces of the crowd phenomenon. I'm even a contributor via Kickstarter (my latest investment: My cousin's documentary about the unclimbed peaks of Ethiopia). Even so, I've yet to make formal use of crowdsourcing for my basic work. Now I feel empowered to take my first steps.

The book starts with a solid overview of all the ways crowds are participating in work around the world. Everything from crowdfunding (Kickstarter), micro tasks (Amazon Mechanical Turk), crowd platforms (Elance, oDesk), innovation (XPrize, Spigit), to content (iStockPhoto) and everything in between. Every time I thought they'd missed a nuance, I discovered it in the material ahead.

Dawson and Bynghall then take you clearly into the considerations of each of these different ways of using crowds. This is the down in the details information that would have had me sourcing to the crowds far more than I have been, and with much greater success. They provide overviews, risks and benefits, and clear how-tos to help anyone take advantage of, or participate, in these great resources.

They also are asking us, the readers, to help them with the second edition. Where I think we could do the most good is in helping to identify additional case studies for the different options. These case studies may not fit in the book itself, but I imagine a template where readers could contribute their own cases and assess the outcomes. The options continue to grow and a bit of learning from others, our crowd of readers, would be a nice additional contribution. Again, well done.

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended - crowdsourcing or crowdfunding February 7, 2012

By Nick F

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm a novice at crowdsourcing and funding. I wanted a clearly written, simple to read reference book. This is it - first you skim through it, then you go through it writing down what's appropriate to your idea. The authors want the crowd to help them improve their book. I'll certainly be contacting them.