What is "crowdsourcing"

n. (context neologism English) delegating a task to a large diffuse group in order to introduce new or more developed skill sets and improve efficiency. There is usually no substantial monetary compensation involved. vb. (present participle of crowdsource English)

Crowdsourcing, a modern business term coined in 2005, is defined by Merriam-Webster as the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially an online community, rather than from employees or suppliers. A portmanteau of crowd and outsourcing, its more specific definitions are yet heavily debated. This mode of sourcing is often used to divide work between participants, and has a history of success prior to the digital age—" offline". By definition, crowdsourcing combines the efforts of numerous self-selected volunteers or part-time workers; each person's contribution combines with those of others to achieve a cumulative result. Crowdsourcing is distinguished from outsourcing in that the work can come from an undefined public (instead of being commissioned from a specific, named group) and in that crowdsourcing includes a mix of bottom-up and top-down processes. Regarding the most significant advantages of using crowdsourcing the literature generally discussed costs, speed, quality, flexibility, scalability, and diversity.

Crowdsourcing refers to a wide range of activities, providing different benefits for its organizers. Crowdsourcing in the form of idea competitions or innovation contests provides a way for organizations to learn beyond what their "base of minds" of employees provides (e.g., LEGO Ideas). Crowdsourcing can also involve rather tedious "microtasks" that are performed in parallel by large, paid crowds (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk). Crowdsourcing has also been used for noncommercial work and to develop common goods (e.g., Wikipedia). Arguably the best-known example of crowdsourcing as of 2015 is crowdfunding, the collection of funds from the crowd (e.g., Kickstarter).