Two Contemporary Companies' Use of Crowdsourcing: Threadless and ChallengePost
The renowned American physicist Linus Paulingonce observed that "the best way to have a good idea is tohave lots of ideas." And the growing popularity of a strategy knownas crowdsourcing is very muchin that spirit.
Crowdsourcing is defined as the act of outsourcingtasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined large group of people or community(a "crowd"), through an open call made possible by the wide and instantaneous reach of the Internet.
Jeff Howe, one of the first authorsto employ the term, contends thatcrowdsourcing works because open calls to a large undefined group ofpeople attract those whoare the most motivated and ableto offer relevant and fresh ideas.
In the following, we highlight two contemporary companies that arecreatively employing crowdsourcing to address some of their mostimportant objectives. Thread less is an online apparelstore co-founded in 2000 by JakeNickell and Jacob DeHart. Thefounders started with just $1,000 indeed money that they had won inan Internet T-shirt design contest.
The company has now grown tobe a multimillion-dollar enterpriseand is revolutionizing the process ofproduct design.While most design shops employhigh-priced talent to create theirproduct lines, Thread less uses thecrowdsourcing concept to execute an entirely different approach. More specifically, the firm invites anyone interestedin being part of the Thread less community to submit T-shirt designs online-afterward, the designs are put to a public vote. A small percentage of submitted designs areselected for printing and then soldthrough their online store.
Creatorsof the winning designs receive onlya small cash prize and some storecredit. In the open-source community, aThread less T-shirt or designis considered to be crowdsourced because the designer and the companyretain all rights to the design. On average, around 1,500 designscompete in any given week.
Designersupload their T-shirt designs to thewebsite, where visitors and membersof the community score them on ascale of 0 to 5. Each week, the staff selects about 10 designs. Not surprisingly,the printed T-shirts tend tosell well because they have alreadybeen proven popular via the designprocess. Thread less shirts are run inlimited batches and when shirts aresold out, customers can request areprint.
However, reprinting occursonly when there is enough demand, and the decision to reprint is up to the company. The Thread less experienceamounts to something of a revolutionin product design models and cost efficiency. It is an intriguing example of the power of crowdsourcing.
Answer :
1. Why is Threadless so successful?
2. What competitive advantages do they have over comparable design firms using traditional strategies for product design?
3. What is the logic of crowdsourcing and why has it caught on in so many areas and for so many applications?
4. What are some potential traps and limitations of crowdsourcing efforts?
5. Identify at least two other businesses, or business functions, that you think could achieve breakthrough gains via the use of crowdsourcing.
Document your citations throughout the text of a 2 - 3 page paper; APA is the accepted format. Your papers must include an introduction and a clear thesis, several body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Top papers demonstrate a solid understanding of the material and critical thinking.