Crowdsourcing through Students to Bring a Billion Dollars back into our Economy

In one of my recent interviews, Doron Reuveni, Co-Founder of uTest, suggested that "2009 will be the year for crowdsourcing." Especially with the state of our economy, crowdsourced business models can help companies save money, produce higher quality products, and receive an overall higher return on investment. What happens when we apply this model to students? Can we bring money back into our economy to help spur growth?

Crowdsourcing projects through students:

GrouperEye is a recently launched college startup that aims to crowdsource business case studies through college students. The concept is straight forward, simple, and has a clearly defined value proposition. The site works in the following way:

1. Companies post a case. For example, the Motley Fool has a case posted to develop a premium newsletter service. Honest Tea has another one to develop a sampling plan for one of their products.

2. Students have 40 days to provide the best solution.

3. Companies evaluate solutions and post results.

4. Students receive $100 and employment consideration.

The platform gives students an opportunity build real world business writing and analytical skills while opening up networking and job doors. On the other side, businesses can save time and money by crowdsourcing from pools of talent within universities.

Ted Williams, recent grad from Washington and Lee University, Founded GrouperEye in July 2008. The site already has over 500 job and internship postings combined with 9 active case studies running.

Reel a billion dollars back into our economy:

Reena A Jadhav, Founder of nuResume, has similar goals. In a recent interview on Vator.tv , she proposed the idea of more "student powered economy." Reena shared that "almost every company has small projects that can be done by a student here in our country but what's missing is a platform to support that, and nuResume aims to be the missing link. If just a million students do a $100 project each month, we bring back into our economy over a billion dollars."

Reena hopes to build out this concept with nuResume - a startup that provides a "virtual career network" that lets students build an interactive resume to showcase skills beyond just text on a page. In a similar way to GrouperEye, students can compete in various different competitions to gain access to employers, win money, and build experience that extends from the classroom setting.