Social media and digital communication has become a widely used and increasingly important part of modern day business functions. While the focus of these technologies is commonly for marketing and consumer research, it may be that many of these firms are missing out on a much more powerful form of utilization. This alternative function is the practice of crowdsourcing; using mass labor power as a means of broadening and improving the level of innovation, efficiency, and talent that exists in the workforce of a given company.
The common corporation is built upon a foundation of hierarchical relationships between employees, which often dispenses the least complicated or difficult tasks to the lowest workers. This work is often time-consuming, repetitive, and "easy" in the sense that it doesn't make use of the education or abilities of the laborers, which tends towards a great loss of productivity for the entire company. In some situations, businesses have tried to minimize the cost of "lost labor" (wage payments for unproductive work) by outsourcing to workforces that will perform the same "grunt work" for less money. This is usually done by relocating a portion of the work to the geographical location where labor costs are lowest, despite the initial expense for the relocation and continued expense of transportation (if need be, depending on the type of work being done).
However, it seems that with modern technology and advancements in global communications the relocation (and its cost) may be unnecessary. Many of the functions of businesses are becoming virtualized to a point where it is completely feasible to outsource "digital labor" to people in many different places without incurring the traditional costs of outsourcing. Additionally, many of the tasks assigned virtually are perceived to be less "valuable" in the eyes of the laborer. In other words, workers tend to feel that non-physical work, no matter how monotonous, is less tasking to perform and more convenient for their needs and so they are willing to accept much lower wage rates for the same hours of work. This labor-value perception has led to the creation of many independent forms of crowdsourcing, which occur in a C2C rather than a B2B structure with the consumer acting as the laborer for another consumer. Websites like fiver.com, elance.com, gigbucks.com, and 99designs.com have become more conventional, particularly for small businesses, startups, and independent entrepreneurs.
Instead of paying the big bucks that corporations shell out for outsourcing to other large companies, these small firms have found cost advantage by outsourcing to "freelance" workers that they can find, employ, and implement completely through digital communications. These outsourcing practices, as mentioned before, are now referred to as crowdsourcing because of the open nature of the labor location, which occurs completely without barriers to entry on the part of the worker. No barriers to entry means exactly as it sounds, anyone can choose to perform a task and there are no limits to how this work is performed or even what it may entail. This opens up a huge expanse of capacity, especially required for smaller businesses, which comprises of an even greater diversification of ability, intelligence, and creativity.
So why hasn't big business figured this out? Well, the truth is that they have, and there are many cases of larger firms that use crowdsourcing successfully. But, like with the explosive use of social media, corporations have shown to be much slower than small firms at adapting to new practices. The lag is primarily a result of the sheer size of the company. Corporations, that normally benefit from their hierarchical structures and somewhat democratic means of decision making, are also limited in their adaptivity. Instead of creating a structure of flexibility, the nature of these companies has largely contributed to a sort of standstill and gradual adjustment to change. In the past, this wasn't necessarily the biggest problem, because changes in tech, labor practices, and the like were also gradual. But now the internet has provided an exponentially faster means of creation. This creation can take infinite forms and oftentimes is done, not by the enormous corporations and monopolies, but actually by individuals. Take Facebook for example: today it is considered to be among the most valuable firms in history, but once upon a time (less than 10 years ago) it was an idea in the mind of an ambitious and highly intelligent college student.
In an age when anyone can create anything and turn the smallest nuances of thought into a revolutionary movement, it is unquestionable that it would benefit any company to reach out to these people-- the thinkers, the idealists, the artists. If anything could jumpstart (or at least support) the economy, it may be crowdsourcing. But this would require businesses to take the time and find ways to utilize the power of crowds then perhaps they can also think of a way to use it for good, and not corporate profit. But considering how crowdsourcing has been powerful thus far, it's not hard to think that it's best done between the crowds and by the crowds. Instead of waiting for the Goldman Sachs and WalMart's of the world to figure this out for the consumers, why not let the people, the 99%, do it for themselves? Remember, anyone can create anything, all they need is an idea.
