Crowdsourcing to add capacity
This is the process during which you split a large job into smaller parts. You then let the crowd take care of these parts. That way, the whole job will be completed more quickly.
There even exist some marketplaces where you can find people to carry out your microtasks.
Usually there is no need for members of the crowd to have had special training to perform tasks. You should, however, provide clear enough directions on how each task should be completed. You must also make sure that the assembling of the whole job from its sub-tasks will be successful.
Crowdsourcing is for using if you simply don’t have the amount of resources necessary (e.g. building large databases of samples). Usually the larger the crowd available the better for this type of crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing to access expertise
This type of crowdsourcing is essentially about leveraging the wisdom of crowds. You use it to gather expertise, creativity or skills from outside your organisation. This might be called crowdsourcing innovation. It is not about performing a modular job but rather solving a problem, e.g. designing a new product or optimising performance.
You must define the problem clearly and explicitly outline all requirements for a possible solution, according to the business2community.com website.
The crowd you want to utilise must consist of people with relevant experience or insights. The pool of incoming proposals and contributions should include as many different, novel or even unorthodox ways as possible of solving the problem, although only a few of these will be viable.
Therefore, your target crowd should be diverse but it doesn’t necessarily have to be large.
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