The wisdom of collectives is prolific and ubiquitous in the world of open innovation, where crowds are tapped to surface and solve problems, discover opportunities, create new products and design creative experiences. Most people don’t realize, however, that crowdsourcing, as a technique, has been around much longer than our current digital history
Although the term crowdsourcing was coined in 2006, examples date back to the 18th century, from the study of moon movements in the creation of nautical tables, to the Oxford English Dictionary (in the development of the first dictionary), and the Meteorological Project at the Smithsonian (developing the first weather maps). These original examples of crowdsourcing were primarily focused on mechanical tasks, or those requiring significant (literal) manpower to accomplish, with data being transferred via mail and telegraph over very long periods of time.
From customer service to customer experience
Distributed task management
Reprint from Ivey Business Journal
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