Case studies on the exploitation of crowd-sourcing with Web 2.0 functionalities

Web 2.0 functionalities have allowed businesses to implement crowd-sourcing for activities that would be better performed by a crowd than any specific pool of knowledge workers. However, relatively little is known about how a business can leverage collective intelligence for competitive advantage. This study uses interpretive field research to validate the findings of a multiple site investigation. An extended theoretical framework to identify the significant dimensions at strategic and functional levels for the effective use of crowd-sourcing is first proposed. Using the framework as the analytic lens, the empathic design approach is used to determine how five successful e-commerce firms deploy Web 2.0 functionalities for effective crowd-sourcing. Our analysis suggests that each business has to customise the functional components based on the strategic objectives that have been designed by its management. These core trends identified may be distilled into design rules for the effective exploitation of crowd-sourcing.

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