Crowdsourcing for Businesses First Draft

Justeon P. Kimmons - William E. Townsend

Honors English II

Mr. Rehak

Period: 8th

Date: 2014

Crowdsourcing for Businesses

First Draft

From funding new inventions to movies to new business, crowdsourcing covers it all. This up and coming form of fundraising is rapidly growing. The days of going around town asking for donations are long gone and in its place is the crowdfunding. Crowdfunding allows for individuals with an idea to reach out to the millions of possible funders over the internet.

The History of Crowdsourcing:

Although crowdsourcing is rapidly becoming more and more popular in the modern era, it is not a new concept. Crowdsourcing has been around for three centuries starting in 1714. Even though during that time period it wasn’t coined as “crowdsourcing”. The very first marine pocket watch was invented as a result of crowdsourcing. The British Government turned to the public to find a solution to a problem that killed thousands of seamen yearly. They offered twenty thousand euros, which nearly five million dollars in today’s money, to the person that could come up with a solution to their “Longitude Problem” The reward was rewarded to John  Harrison for inventing the first ever marine pocket watch. This was the first example of crowdsourcing in its vast three century history, but it certainly was not the last. In 1936 the well known car company, Toyota, turned to crowdsourcing by holding a logo design contest. The car company garnered twenty-seven thousand entries for their contest , which was won by Risaburo Toyoda. These are just two examples of many when it comes to crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing was not always called crowdsourcing. In 2006, in Wired Magazine, author Jeff Howe coined the word “crowdsourcing”, which has been used ever since.

Crowdsourcing is arguably the best way to reach out to potential business partners and customers when trying to launch or expand an idea or product. One reason that support this claim is that when other see the idea some entrepreneurs will invest start up money. Another reason is that customers can give feedback on the product to make it strive. One might say that crowdsourcing is risky as people may imitate your product.

Crowdsourcing is trying to reach out to others about an idea or invention for help. the help could be defined as finances, deeds, goods, advertisement,comments and concerns.  Most of the world tries to use this process. majority that of the people that use crowdsourcing are small businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs.  What is so significant about this is the broad and availability to others this brings. Also crowdsourcing could involve stock. Stock is a business technique where you partially own a company by buying some of it for a set rate. they can help run the company but only proportional to how much they own.  An example of this would be facebook where they became a public company and people could buy shares (stocks of a company) so they would have more money.  When crowdsourcing is taking place the range to the consumers is great so getting feedback from the buyers are great.  There are three advantages to that crowdsourcing has which are range, finances and ideas and comments.  Range basically means that the company can be helped by the many people that reach out to. This help could be around the corner or around the world. Finances mean investors and entrepreneurs are able to reach  the owner and potentially help push the company forward or buy the company. With the company being so exposed the company gets tons of feedback.