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Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business Paperback – September 15, 2009

by Jeff Howe (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 59 ratings
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Why does Procter & Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStockphoto and Threadless employ just a handful of people, yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year?

"Crowdsourcing" is how the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the responsibility of a specialized few. Jeff Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise–it’s talented, creative, and stunningly productive. It’s also a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education, and job history no longer matter; the quality of the work is all that counts. If you can perform the service, design the product, or solve the problem, you’ve got the job.

But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent is employed, research is conducted, and products are made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable, and Howe delves into both the positive and negative consequences of this intriguing phenomenon. Through extensive reporting from the front lines of this workplace revolution, he employs a brilliant array of stories to look at the economic, cultural, business, and political implications of crowdsourcing.
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  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    September 15, 2009
  4. Dimensions
    5.19 x 0.76 x 8 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0307396215
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0307396211
  7. See all details
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3.9 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • John Possumato
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Overall Treatise on the Influence and Power of Crowdsourcing
    Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2009
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    From the positives of crowdsourcing and in its influence on business (the creation of Google with citation information being a key example) to its "dark side" of mob rule and mass mediocrity (the creation of Google can be used as the same key example), Howe very effectively explores by analysis and representation the phenomena of crowdsourcing as its "hyper fueled" by the World Wide Web. Howe effectively outlines the transformation that crowdsourcing on the Web has created, from business and the means of production, to information distribution, to finance, what factors caused this transformation and where this may lead in the future. Finally, Howe projects the future, when the "digital natives" (those children now coming of age in the Internet era), supplant the "digital immigrants" (the rest of us), and, reminds us of the Pew Internet & American Life Project study that determined that, as of 2007, 93% of all American 12 to 17 year olds are regular Internet users, and, of those, 64% are creating content among themselves on the Web, and finally, the majority of those content creators are creating content in crowdsourcing, social network type environments. All and all, this is one of the most worthwhile books on the every expanding, and talked about, topic, and is a "must read" for anyone interested in the emerging crowdsourcing evolution.
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  • My wife won't let me pick a name.
    4.0 out of 5 stars Great book, although slightly outdated.
    Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2013
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    This book, authored by the man who coined the term "crowdsourcing," was written at a time when online crowdsourcing was still in its infancy. Due to that, he tends to rely heavily on a few stories to make his points. However, despite that, the book is a fascinating read that will contribute enormously to my thesis studies on how businesses should utilize crowdsourcing.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Jay P
    3.0 out of 5 stars Howe's exuberance has some merit but is ultimately a little misguided
    Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2010
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    "No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else," quips Bill Joy, a Sun Microsystems co-founder. This declaration was articulated as a paean to the wisdom of crowds, the subject of Jeff Howe's 2008 book, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business. Why limit yourself to a small, expensive subset of the available talent, the argument goes, when a global network of freelancers will gladly do the job better for little or free?

    Howe's enthusiasm is very nearly unequivocal. He predicts that today's tech-savvy youth will "help accelerate the obsolescence of such standard corporate fixtures as the management hierarchy and nine-to-five workday," concepts he deems to be "artifacts of an earlier age when information was scarce and all decisions...trickled down from on high." And Howe's praise of the community as exemplified in crowdsourcing is so complete that it borders on subservience: "Yes, communities need a decider," he concedes in his concluding chapter, but while "...you can try to guide the community...ultimately you'll wind up following them."

    The author's unabashedly optimistic chronicle of the ascendancy of crowdsourcing (a label he created) brings to mind a phrase once made famous by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan: "irrational exuberance." Jeff Howe's full-fledged advocacy for the crowd's potential is equally as overreaching as Jaron Lanier's dire warnings on the same topic. In You Are Not a Gadget, Lanier writes ominously, "We [have]...entered a persistent somnolence, and I have come to believe that we will only escape it when we kill the hive."

    Both authors fail to account for some basic rules of human nature. Lanier laments that "when [digital developers] design an internet service that is edited by a vast anonymous crowd, they are suggesting that a random crowd of humans is an organism with a legitimate point of view." To which Howe would undoubtedly respond, Damn right. In fact, he explicitly states that "a central principle animating crowdsourcing is that the groups contain more knowledge than individuals."

    Howe and Lanier are each right in their own ways. Crowdsourcing does indeed represent an entirely new model of work, one that transcends business and could upend a sizable chunk of existing corporate practices. Many of Lanier's fears, while understandable, are not feasible now or in virtually any other conceivable time horizon. And yet he is right that crowdsourcing will never replace the value of specialization. While Howe correctly lauds the democratization of decision-making -- for example, aspiring filmmakers are no longer beholden to studio executives' every whim -- his populist celebration of online egalitarianism is not bounded by realistically described limitations. "The crowd possesses a wide array of talents," Howe writes, "and some have the kind of scientific talent and expertise that used to exist only in rarefied academic environments."

    The key word here is "some." Howe notes Sturgeon's Law ("90 percent of everything is crap") and briefly admits that this may present an inaccurate portrayal of reality: "a number of the people I talked to for this book thought that was a lowball estimate." Even for the ten or fewer percent that actually do provide reasonably intelligent contributions to the marketplace of ideas, much will be repetitive or non-cumulative. A thousand people with a hobbyist's interest in chemistry may all eagerly contribute to a forum on noble gases, but it hardly follows that they will achieve any real breakthrough that eludes far more studied experts in the field.

    Ultimately, it is not so much the anecdotes that undercut Howe's thesis, nor is it his own repetition (which, in one particularly egregious case, consisted of several sentences copied wholesale from an earlier section of the book). Instead, it is his idealism that brings to mind countless earlier predictions of technology's ability to transform human nature, prophesies that have more often than not been proved demonstrably untrue. It remains to be seen what will become of crowdsourcing; will it go the way of the flying cars that American prognosticators naively envisioned over half a century ago? This seems unlikely, and yet so does the author's vision of a crowdsourcing revolution in business. The truth will likely lie somewhere in the middle, lodged comfortably between Jeff Howe's crowd-fueled utopia and Jaron Lanier's "hive mind" hell.
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  • R. Mandel
    5.0 out of 5 stars I loved it
    Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2013
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    After reading " what would Google Do", I decided to read this as well. Really informative and interesting. Information is still useful and current to apply to today's marketing.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Nat Talbott
    5.0 out of 5 stars More power to you
    Reviewed in Germany on July 12, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    A few years back, Surowiecki's book 'Wisdom of Crowds' took a long look a the power behind groups, as opposed to Single experts. Howe takes this ideas a notch further and explores the possibilities of harnessing the power of the many in the Age of the Internet. A delight to read and packed with ideas for every business.
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  • Alizée Bourdeau
    3.0 out of 5 stars bien
    Reviewed in France on December 12, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Livre bien conforme à la description qu'il y avait sur le site. Bien que je l'ai recu un peu tard (1 mois après la commande), je suis contente.
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  • Lukas Eder
    4.0 out of 5 stars Ganz ok
    Reviewed in Germany on February 16, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    Hab das Buch für meine Bachelorarbeit verwendet war ganz hilfreich. Preisleistung ist gut.

    Wer eine Günstiges Buch für die Grundlagen des Crowdfunding sucht kann dies ruhig bestellen.
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  • Litschi
    5.0 out of 5 stars Gutes Buch
    Reviewed in Germany on September 4, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    Das Buchbhat mir beim Schreiben meiner Bachelor-Thesis sehr geholfen. Es gibt einen guten Überblick über den Themenkomplex und ist leicht verständlich.
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