In the last 20 years we’ve seen some major disruption to business models far and wide. The Internet has turned out to be far more disruptive than anyone could have guessed. Google’s PPC ad model added a new layer of disruption to that model and now another shift, crowdsourcing, which is largely driven by social media is threatening to disrupt the traditional agency model.
Agencies that do product design and development, creative shops that do branding and advertising agencies are all feeling the coming storm of crowdsourcing. If they’re not then they have their heads buried in the sand. Why else do you think IDEO is taking a step into the game with OpenIDEO?
I’ve heard all the arguments about quality and professionalism and even the exploitation of creatives. I’d like to point out that these were all arguments that newspapers and every other business disrupted by the Internet has made before. So let’s stop whining about why the traditional model *should* survive and talk about how it’s going to get ripped apart.
Almost 3 years ago I wrote a little read post (my blog was still pretty new) about how to disrupt your business model using advertising. Having just read Clay Shirky’s new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
, I want us to look at crowdsourced disruption.
How could your business be crowdsourced? If your business is services based you’re the most at risk, if you’re actually producing something, you’re not as safe as you may think you are.
What do you need to effectively crowdsource today?
- First you need a motivator. Causes seem to work better than money but under the right circumstances money works too. The cause doesn’t have to be a “save the World” thing either.
- You need a website to aggregate and coordinate.
- You need willing participants with sufficient motivation. It doesn’t take as many people as you might think but you will need a strong core group.
- You need the job to be broken out into bite sized chunks.
It’s deceptively easy but it’s going to be hugely disruptive.
Photo credit By Sam Felder
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