Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business

I’ve been in the process of reading “Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business” by Jeff Howe, and highly recommend the read. The book and concept of crowdsourcing [What is crowdsourcing?] build upon the ideas and underpinnings of open source technologies. Howe elaborates to explain how companies are utilizing crowdsourcing methodologies to build new business models and hyper efficient systems  that can be used by startups and the corporate world.

The video above (click to view) is a trailer for the book and highlights some of the neat concepts and ideas that the book covers. Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” in an article that he wrote for Wired Magazine. We wrote another article that examines how Microsoft’s PhotoSynth technology was used to enhance security during the Barack Obama Inauguration. Our writer, Matt Bachman examined how we might be able to create highly effective, yet controversial, crowdsourced security systems that could potentially be more lethal than the secret service.

I’m going to be interviewing the Founder of uTest this Friday. uTest crowdsources quality assurance testing for applications and software by providing a SaaS marketplace that unites a global community of professional software testers.

Drop any questions you would like me to ask in the comments below. I’ll be sure to try and get them answered in the interview.