Question

• Why do you think crowdsourcing has become popular in recent years. What are some disadvantages of the crowdsourcing approach?
• Discuss one major crisis an organization is likely to encounter as it grows. What can managers do to help their organizations through this crisis?

Answer 1

As per policy only first question will be answered

1. Crowd sourcing is gaining popularity due to the following advantages

• Reduced costs: Outsourcing to professionals sometimes increases cost since they charge premium based on their experience and reputation in the market. Crowd sourcing on the other hand reduces the cost since the large participation makes the product a commodity and reduces the cost
• Reduced overheads: Some work can be crowd sourced rather than employing a full time employee and pay him regular salaries and perks/benefits
• Increased option and creativity: Crowd sourcing increases the options due to participation by tens and thousands of people and increases the likelihood of getting creative ideas. Moreover, with such a large number of ideas available, it is easier to customize them by picking the best element from each idea

Disadvantages of crowd-sourcing

• Crowd-sourcing jeopardizes the confidentiality due to open discussion at public platforms
• Crowd-sourcing increases sub-standard entries and hence requires the task of eliminating the bad ones
• Crowd-sourced ideas may be copied and non-original with no liability of the provider. Hence it increases risk of litigation and copy-right violation
• Crowd-sourcing may mislead due to overemphasis on popularity
• One may miss out the best solution which gets lost in a crowd of sub-standard entries