If you are among the many people and companies that are considering using crowdsourcing for the first time, after a bit of research you’ve probably started to realize that there are many considerations that you need to take into account. The good news is that while it may seem daunting at first, we’ve seen and worked on many, many highly successful first-time crowdsourcing projects.
But we’ve still seen too many companies get off on the wrong foot with crowdsourcing. Usually these are companies that make the assumption that crowdsourcing is as easy as setting up a site and asking a question. This leads them to make some poor decisions that affect the success of their crowd engagement.
If you are an open innovation champion (or market research or brand leader) in your organization, the goal of your first crowdsourcing initiative should absolutely be to generate a strong proof-point of how crowdsourcing can bring value to your organization. Companies who are successful with crowdsourcing are finding that it can drive incredible value. A recent study by McKinsey and Company concluded that there is high correlation between market share gain and companies that have adopted social collaboration techniques such as crowdsourcing with their internal and external networks.
So, it’s essential that your first step into crowdsourcing be designed for the highest chance for success. To help that happen, here are the top ways we see companies shoot themselves in the foot when getting started with crowdsourcing… so you can avoid them:
Focusing on cost rather than results. Rather than focus on achieving the desired outcome, people often focus on trying to do as a lowest cost pilot. Sure, in times of tight budgets, saving money certainly makes sense, but if you save money on something that doesn’t set you up to show success, doesn’t that work against you?
Assuming crowd recruitment is easy. Crowdsourcing doesn’t work without the right crowd; attracting your stakeholders (customers, employees, partners, general public) to participate is as important as anything else. Your crowd doesn’t have to be huge – many programs are highly successful with just a few hundred participants. But the world is noisy – people are asked to donate their time constantly, so even if you have an existing relationship with a potential group of participants, how you invite them in, incent them and keep them involved is very important. For your first program, it’s often better to work with someone who has experience with crowd recruitment.
Choosing the wrong first crowdsourcing topic. We’ve seen companies pick, as their very first topic, a challenge that has stymied their experts for years, or requires specific expertise that only a small number of people have. Sure, you want to hone your ability to use crowdsourcing to eventually address those demanding needs, but your initial goal should be to make it easy for lots of people to get involved. Pick a topic that almost anyone who works in your company, or is a customer, or a key stakeholder of your company can participate in, and one where the likelihood of showing value is high. These are topics such as ideas for new products or enhancements to existing products, new business models, ways to improve internal operations, or even better, something fun such as how to improve the corporate culture to make it a more enjoyable place to work. That’s something everyone will want to participate in, and add value!
Overlooking daily moderation. Crowd moderation is a critical ingredient of successful crowdsourcing. We’ve seen some companies get off to a good start, only to lose momentum because they tried to do it all themselves, often assigning the task of daily moderation to someone who has never done it before and already has full time responsibilities. What invariably happens is that essential moderation steps such as prompting discussions, answering questions and sending periodic updates to participants to keep them informed and coming back doesn’t happen, and participants come once but don’t come back again. Leaning on an experienced moderator can absolutely make the difference between gaining momentum and losing it.
You may have to do some significant lobbying for approval and budget to undertake your initial crowdsourcing program, and certainly you won’t want to negate all that hard work with a program that’s not likely to show the results you want. So when you sit down to think about that first campaign, align yourself with someone who has done it before.
For internal champions in larger organizations, we recently wrote about how to overcome resistance to crowdsourcing in enterprises , with some tips that have helped some to break through the resistance often put up by the legal departments or conservative senior management teams.