Chapter 9:Tapping the Crowd for Fast InnovationISTO SIPILÄ

Collective Intelligence Other term crowdsourcing

Deriving data, knowledge and insight from large groups connected online

Many varieties of collective intelligence

Three approaches that use Open Data in different ways are examined in the book Open innovation through collaboration (discussed in the next

chapter)

The Match.com model

The Data Hive

The Match.com Model Search for a small number of experts who have the right

experience, skills and interests to solve a problem

Someone with a problem to solve or data to analyze try to reach as large crowd as possible to find the few right people

If you understand a problem well enough to publish it and you put the right inducements around the system then innovators from all over the world can work with it

Often new perspective and outside thinking is the key to identifying new patterns and correlations

Examples InnoCentive: works with companies and organizations, runs contests,

largely focused on science and technical problems, offers prizes ranging from 500 dollars to over a million

Kaggle: presents challenges for data scientists, predicted what level of IT access different employees would need based on their jobs

TopCoder: another community for data problems, worked with Harvard Medical School, solution to the tough gene-sequencing problem

Washington University: tried to understand the structure of a virus, released their data on the foldit.com site, solution in three weeks

Peer-to-Patent: commenting and studying patent applications

Stack Exchange (started as Stack Overflow), Wikipedia etc.

The Data Hive Volunteers are doing routine work to analyze or improve Open

Data

Each individual does small pieces of work that contribute to the solution

Model has been applied to government data and scientific data with some striking results

Sometimes untrained amateurs see important things that experts miss (Galaxy Zoo example)

Examples NASA: invited people to help identify planetary systems in space

telescope images

Zooniverse: an international hub where anyone can help solve large-scale scientific puzzles, over 800 000 people registered Galaxy Zoo: participant looked at an image and said what type of

galaxy it is or is it a star, an artifact or more than one galaxy

CrowdCrafting.org: Zooniverse kind of approach, presents a range of challenges in areas like basic science, linguistics and the analysis of social media

SkyTruth: uses the crowd to analyze Open Data in satellite images to keep a collective eye on the environmental impact of corporate activities

How to Make People to Participate Mass data-hive projects that pay people to participate in dull

routine tasks have had limited success

The nature of the task and the community engaged in it seems to determine dedication and performance

Research done to InnoCentive says there are three factors motivating problem solvers: They want to take on projects that will have an impact

They want to be part of a group of elite problem solvers

They want whatever inducement is being offered, intrinsic reward or extrinsic rewards like money and recognition

Question

What is the best way to motivate people to take part on collective mind projects?