Managing Digital Crowds

March 21, 2017

Read The Full Prompt

In this module we have examined how firms can leverage digital technologies to harness the power of collective intelligence from the crowds to tackle a range of problems such as innovation problems and funding startups. For this assignment you have three options:

1 – Pick one industry where no firms have leveraged crowds, and come up with a crowd-based business model that may potentially transform the industry. Describe how you plan to create and capture value. Explain why the crowd will participate, and why your crowd-based model is better than the current model employed by the incumbents.

2 – Describe a company that is using crowds (external or internal) in an innovative manner. Describe how they incentivize participation and manage the crowd. What are the challenges? Describe how value creation and value capture occur, and the growth potential of this business.

3 – Companies often struggle with crowds as well. Describe failed crowdsourcing efforts and explain how and why the company failed. Given what you have learned in the course, what would you do differently?

Create an approximately 500-750 word post to make your contribution by 6pm on March 20. Please create appropriate tags for your post. Please also respond to and comment on three other posts per module. Feel free to use graphics, data, videos and links to other sites to corroborate your points.

Please prepare a two minute pitch about your blog entry before the class.

Submitted (92)

Wikipedia
Megan Wu
Last modified on March 20, 2017 at 5:21 pm
Crowdsourcing Knowledge
Angie’s List: The Original in Crowd-Sourced Reviews
Lauren
Last modified on March 20, 2017 at 3:24 pm
For over 20 years, Angie's List has leveraged technology to help homeowners make wise purchasing decisions, but does the company have staying power?
[2] Kaggle: Building deep communities for deep learning
Oyku
Last modified on March 20, 2017 at 1:40 am
Kaggle is a competition platform that leverages crowdsourcing to find solutions for deep learning problems. This blog summarizes how Kaggle managed to create value and its challenge to stay relevant
Ancestry.com: Crowdsourcing Genealogy
shsenior
Posted on March 20, 2017 at 12:43 pm
Ancestry.com uses a combination of technology, historical archives, DNA testing and the contributions of members to help amateur genealogists trace their family histories. Ancestry has over 2.5M paying subscribers and over 20Bn records dating back to the 13th century that [...]
TED: Changing the World, 18 Minutes at a Time
Kathy Wang
Last modified on March 21, 2017 at 8:00 am
Power posing. Underwater sea creatures. Reinventing the education system. Most of us have watched a TED Talk – but how did it leverage its community to grow into a global phenomenon, or is it really just one big groupthink bubble?
Waze: Traffic from the Crowd
Will Newell
Last modified on March 20, 2017 at 4:02 pm
Waze promises more reliable traffic information using active and passive driver inputs.
Quantopian: Crowd Sourcing Hedge Funds
David
Posted on March 17, 2017 at 5:34 pm
Quantopian harnesses the power of crowds by allowing anyone to contribute quantitative investment strategies through their platform - and get paid for performance.
Athenahealth Marketplace – crowdsourcing in health care
Steelhead
Posted on March 20, 2017 at 3:36 am
In 2013, Athenahealth launched the “More Disruption Please” (MDP) program, a platform that brings together entrepreneurs, investors, clinicians and industry experts to discover new ways to improve healthcare. The MDP Accelerator invests in startups through the MDP program and provides [...]
Unilever – Crowdsourcing Sustainability
dturenshine
Posted on March 19, 2017 at 10:46 pm
Can Unilever effectively utilize its consumers to reach its lofty sustainability goals?
OpenBazaar: Using the power of blockchain crowds to disintermediate Amazon
Erik K
Posted on April 12, 2017 at 10:59 am
To what extent will blockchain peer-to-peer crowds like OpenBazaar disintermediate the likes of Amazon?
Amazon Studios: Using Crowds to Find Their Next Hit
HBSstudent11
Posted on March 20, 2017 at 3:09 pm
Amazon Studios is disrupting the traditional film and TV development process by letting crowds submit scripts and help pick their next productions.
Boaty McBoatface and the “Wisdom” of Crowds
Nicolas II
Posted on March 20, 2017 at 11:30 am
What happens when crowds lead you places you don't want to go?
Tradiio – Experimenting with Crowds in the Music Industry
Stephanie Chan
Last modified on March 19, 2017 at 7:00 pm
This is the story of Tradiio, a music startup that launched as a crowdsourced virtual stock market for emerging artists and later pivoted to become a direct-to-fan crowdfunding platform.
Vine: Short Lived Video, and Fame
GJ
Last modified on March 19, 2017 at 11:39 pm
Vine was a microblog in a form of super short clips. The video will run for six seconds and repeated in continuous loop. The company was founded in June 2012 by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll. By limiting [...]
Jones Soda: Birthday Cake Cane Sugar Soda, Anyone? (Contest-Based Crowdsourcing Failure)
Alexander Clamor
Last modified on March 20, 2017 at 6:00 pm
When I lived in New York, I used to walk into my favorite Starbucks shop and always see a healthy stock of Jones Soda in the small refrigerated section near the cash register. Waiting in line, I would peruse through [...]
Gigwalk
Megan Trout
Posted on March 19, 2017 at 9:57 pm
Expanding the Brand Manager’s reach through Crowdsourcing
Lithium // The Future of Customer Service
changeme_26
Last modified on March 21, 2017 at 8:33 am
Lithium started as a gaming platform - it later became a Crowd Sourced Customer Service Platform.
Gold Rush Crowdsourcing
Seunghyun
Last modified on March 20, 2017 at 11:41 pm
Golden Crowdsourcing in the very Conventional Industry
Innocentive : Incentivizing Innovation
Charu Manglani
Posted on March 19, 2017 at 2:27 pm
Innocentive pioneered the concept of crowdsourcing for R&D especially in the Pharma Industry which is highly dependent on innovating novel ideas. It lent challenge a new meaning through sourcing ideas from a wider auudience.
Foursquare: Using Crowdsourcing to Fuel a Turnaround
Alex Sambvani
Posted on March 20, 2017 at 11:59 pm
Foursquare used crowdsourcing to pivot in the midst of stalled growth, quietly becoming the world's leader in location-based data.
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