Comments on: Crowdsourcing: A Live Discussion – reactions to Jeff Howe’s interview on WNPR

By: Dan Robles

Dan Robles — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:58:19 +0000

In the future, all human knowledge will become tangible outside the organizational cosnstruct of teh Corporation, Government, or even Academia – and reside in Social Networks. In fact, all financial instruments will be backed by tangible assets that are implicitly “crowdsourced”

The current financial system has reached the limits of it’s effectiveness. Interest on debt has exceeded the system’s ability to pay it off. But debt is simply a promisory note on future productivity – any caveman can tell us that the only way to increase productivity today is to innovate yesterday, not tomorrow. In modern times, this means that the only way to sustainably create more money tomorrow is to innovate today. This is the tiny little flaw of Wall Street that Innovation Economics will correct.

http://www.ingenesist.com discribes a few simple web applications that will allow human knowledge to become tangible outside of the organizational construct of a corporation, et al., Whoever developes these applications will generate a great deal of wealth INSIDE SOCIAL NETWORKS and COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE.

These applications are as follows:

1. The knowledge Inventory

2. The Percentile Search Engine

3. The Innovation Bank

Believe it or not, human knowledge would make a wonderfully tangible asset upon which to peg a currency – better than Gold, Silver, Oil, or Debt.

While this may seem trivial at first, the reality will be that everything changes. Many of our most durable paradigms will be challenged and millions of new business models will be created while nearly every existing business will be made more efficient. Wall street will be transformed from master to steward.

Crowdsourcing….bring it on.

By: Liz Moise

Liz Moise — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:10:55 +0000

If you didn’t get a chance to listen live, this segment on Crowdsourcing was very good – the host interviewed folks on various sides of the debate over crowdsourcing. It should be on wnpr.org in the “Where We Live” section soon as a podcast.

What do you think – does crowdsourcing take advantage of the individual? James brings up a good point, that he never would have had the funds or connections to develop his idea into a product, but enjoyed the freedom of working on part of the solution, earning money for it, and then sitting back and letting the professionals develop the final product and market it.

What motivates you to work on these problems? What de-motivates you? What could be done, that isn’t being doing yet? How can InnoCentive or other crowdsourcing companies harness this power to do more good in the world?

By: John Davis

John Davis — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:20:36 +0000

Crowdsourcing brings new perspective to problems faced by industry and the global community at large. It also gives experts an opportunity to apply thier knowledge and experience to problems outside their niche area work. Since many innovations may be thought of as applying a technology in a new way, crowdsourcing should be an effective way to solve many problems that require “outside the box” thinking. I believe the biggest challenge for crowdsourcing companies to overcome in the near future will be to filter the responses to identify the most viable solutions to their problems. The beauty of crowdsourcing is that it creates a global community think tank.

By: Nikolay Barashkov

Nikolay Barashkov — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:33:00 +0000

I believe that InnoCentive and NineSigma have found their niche. For last 2.5 years I’m collaborating with both of them. More luck with InnoCentive so far. I never heard the term “crowdsourcing” before. However, I like what Jeff Howe wrote in “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” and I just ordered his book through amazon.com.

By: James Mitchell

James Mitchell — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:27:00 +0000

I have had the experience of taking an idea through development and having it commercialized by a large corporation. It was exciting, then stressful and finally painful as I was not equipped to deal with the economic aspects of the process. I am a scientist, not a businessman. As a result of this experience, I shied away from pursuing other ideas until Innocentive came along. There, I can respond to a challenge and if my idea is good enough to be accepted, I gain money and satisfaction and leave the development to the professionals. Plus it is great fun for me. Now if only I could think up a replacement for chewing gum!