Crowdsourcing: dos and don'ts

Remember that the crowd has a short attention span – as with most online content, make sure that all jobs are broken down into digestible pieces that people can complete within 30 minutes.

Make use of the many specialists around the world – by using the correct portal for your business you could be communicating with anyone from a brain surgery expert to a gifted young artist.

Expect them to solve all your problems Networks such as InnoCentive, Mechanical Turk, and iStockphoto don’t increase the amount of talent, they make it possible to find and leverage that talent. Any open call for submissions – whether for technological solutions, new product designs, or amusing YouTube clips – will turn up mostly rubbish. The trick is to implement a cheap, effective filtering process from the beginning

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