Crowdsourcing
We’ve discussed crowdsourcing and Netflix more than once. That it works for some uses better than for others is pretty clear… But Netflix has apparently messed up the database used in the original contest and that allowed some contestants to identify the actual people behind the movie choices, despite the promise of privacy. Needless to say, the FCC wasn’t too happy about it – and Netflix had to cancel its “Contest 2.0″, at least for now. Doesn’t mean that the tool doesn’t work, it just means that you have to be careful using it.
There’s one aspect that seems overlooked in the whole “multidisciplinary approach” cult: communication. If you don’t have the adequate communication policies/ environment, how does one reap the rewards from all this multidisciplinary goodness? How does a team interact in order to extract value from its members’ diverse interests and skill sets?
Read more about Multidisciplinary approach and communication
DARPA, the US military agency that 40 years ago spawned the Internet, organized a contest to study how people collaborate online and, most importantly, how information spreads virally through social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter. The winning team took less than 9 hours to locate 10 balloons spread throughout the US – unthinkable maybe even 5 years ago… And the implications are quite interesting.
Booz Allen is offering words of caution on crowdsourcing. It is a new thing, therefore relatively untested, and it certainly has its optimal applications and its limits – which probably haven’t been found yet. It’s just another tool available and should be subject to the same rigorous analysis before the company starts using it.
The Netflix Prize has been awarded and it’s a great example of crowdsourcing. But is such “open collaboration” a tool for every situation? How open do you really want to be? Some are looking at his and saying “hold your horses”. That’s always good advice in our book.
