Leveraging the crowd as a source of innovation: does crowdsourcing represent a new model for product and service innovation?

In today's fact-paced global marketplace, many organizations are turning to the "crowd" as a potential new source of innovation. However, little is known about the strategic use of crowd and how best to integrate them into internal processes. This paper presents preliminary findings from an ongoing grounded theory research study designed to identify trends and patterns associated with crowdsourcing by established organizations. Four common uses of the crowd are identified (i.e., productivity, innovation, knowledge capture, and marketing/branding). Further, key reoccurring themes related to task type, crowd knowledge, crowd location, and organizational goals, challenges, and value extraction are identified. Finally, a discussion of the emerging relationships between organizational goal, tasks to be completed, crowd characteristics, and the potential risks and benefits such initiatives create for organizations is provided.