Don't Crowd my Source

 Is it like, a groupthink type of situation?  

All the big companies are doing it and people are LOVING it!  You’ve got Lego and Amazon, Pepsico and Unilever among others who are reaching out and utilizing this crowdsourcing resource to get new product ideas, new shows to watch and new ways to watch.  It’s a great way to find out what the people actually want and to allow the people to feel like they are a part of your company.  Thus creating a unity and family type feels along the way.  

Sometimes they’ll offer you a small incentive to get your creative ideas and suggestions, but other times they simply accept your freely given ideas.  It’s actually a bit surprising that people are so willing to share their thoughts, ideas and suggestions so freely like this, but then again, I suppose at times the reward can be simply that acknowledgment that someone likes and appreciates what you’re suggesting.  

Companies have utilizing this resource for a long time.  It works, It saves them money.  It gives the people (consumers) what they want (thus, making them more money).  How could they go wrong?

The most beautiful thing about it though has nothing to do with big companies and money and all that stuff.  The best thing about crowdsourcing is the good that it can do for others.  The awareness it can bring.  The important information that can be shared at lightning speed. 

This guy, James Surowiecki. Wrote a book called The Wisdom of Crowds.  In the book he talks about three types of crowd wisdom.  They are:

Cognition

Thinking and information processing, such as market judgment, which he argues can be much faster, more reliable, and less subject to political forces than the deliberations of experts or expert committees.

Coordination

Coordination of behavior includes optimizing the utilization of a popular bar and not colliding in moving traffic flows. The book is replete with examples from experimental economics, but this section relies more on naturally occurring experiments such as pedestrians optimizing the pavement flow or the extent of crowding in popular restaurants. He examines how common understanding within a culture allows remarkably accurate judgments about specific reactions of other members of the culture.

Cooperation

How groups of people can form networks of trust without a central system controlling their behavior or directly enforcing their compliance. This section is especially pro free market.

He goes on to talk about five different elements required to form a  wise crowd.  Those elements are:  Diversity of opinion-each person should have private information even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts. Independence-People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them. Decentralization-People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge. Trust- belief in the reliability of something or someone. Basically (according to him) these are the things one needs from a crowd to appropriately source good and useful information.

Crowdsourcing works.  It just does.  Will it always attract participants with the proper foundational knowledge to help solve the problem?  Not necessarily.  But, it can attract someone who knows someone with the proper knowledge to help, or the right amount of money to help with the issue at hand.  There are just so many scenarios where one person needs help with something and another person is sitting somewhere across the country (or across town) ready and willing to help, but has no idea that theres someone who needs their help or that they're capable of offering. Here lies the reason that crowdsourcing is such a wonderful source.  

Just because this is and can be such a useful source does not mean that it will always work.  It has to hit at just the right time and/or have just the right person see it, like it, share it or make reference to it for it to go viral.  

In order for a strategic communicator to frame an issue in a way that it will go over well with the public will truly depend on the issue at hand.  As communicators, one has to know and understand how to speak to the crowd you are trying to reach.  What is going to touch them.  What is going to cause them to stop and think.  To stop and care enough to pay attention?

That is how you get this whole thing started.