Crowdsourcing

The social value of Crowdsourcing- A new way of solving some of societies most pressing problems
The academic essay deals with how crowdsourcing could be used to solve social problems like poverty, inequality, natural disasters, financial crisis and disease. This is discussed with the help of practical examples. Among the practical examples are “Kiva” a crowdfunding platform, “Ushahidi” a platform that facilitates citizen Journalism, “Foldit” a platform that engages people in scientific problem solving to track new cures for diseases, “Busuu” a language learning website and a project called “FreeRisk” that uses crowds to monitor the financial market.

Content and Structure:
The essay mainly consists of indroduction, body and conclusion. The introduction starts with Crowdsourcing and its role in problem solving. It points out that Crowdsourcing has a high problem solving capability and is suited for solving easy problems like finding a t-shirt design (e.g.Threadless) as well as for complex problems like finding the answer to an mathematical or scientific problem (e.g.Innocentive).

Then it states that there is increasing evidence that crowds could help to resolve some important social issues (already mentioned above). Evidence is given by “James Surrowicki” in his book “the wisdom of crowds”.
In the body paragraphs example by example is explained. Here it is just important to explain how each example creates social value by solving a certain problem of social relevane. The first three examples Kiva, Ushahidi and Busuu are very specific in showing how crowds can solve a problem. The last two examples “Foldit” and “Prediction markets” are not really elaborated and just show how crowds could potentially help (more like a future outlook). The conclusion should shortly summarize the characteristics of Crowdsourcing that are essential to solve problems.