Saturday, July 28, 2007

Innovation: Crowd Sourcing

National Public Radio broadcast a story on July 28, 2007 on "crowd sourcing" also called "open sourcing" that involves putting problems out to a world wide network of innovators to come up with solutions. One firm mentioned was Innocentive (http://www.innocentive.com/) that links research and development needs with a worldwide network of problem solvers. "Crowdsourcing" according to Wikipedia is " a neologism for a model in which a company or institution outsources the solution of a problem to the public. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task, refine an algorithm or analyse large amounts of data." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing). What applications of this approach might be there be for addressing challenges in the public sector? (Note 1)

1 comment:

guglio1001 said...

I recently reviewed (http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/2007/06/crowdsourcing-d.html) an interesting report written on behalf of the UK governement that looks (without mentioning the concept directly) at the applications of crowdsourcing in the public sector. It's an unusual report, with some interesting insights.

Cheers,

Giulio