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More and more start-ups are turning to crowdsourcing as a cost-efficient method of generating the essential elements of their businesses, from websites and logos to creative strategies and even entire workforces. If you want to share your experience about how you’ve used crowdsourcing to build your business, please contact tips@crowdsourcing.org.
When Mark Hayes founded Data Protect, a firm specializing in data back-up and insurance based in Auckland, New Zealand, he made the decision to crowdsource several elements necessary to set up his company.
Starting a small firm with a small budget to match, Hayes said he was able to get the company off the ground with no exposure to debt and gave crowdsourcing a go because he was "trying not to spend a whole lot of money."
Hayes used the power of crowd to create the company's logo and website concepts, saving about $5000 NZD. Hayes said that one of the many benefits of crowdsourcing is that it’s like having 50 people working for you, but without the cost. In that regard, it’s perfect for small businesses that are on a tight budget.
Using a crowdsourced army of programmers instead of a traditional employed workforce, Ericsson’s Innovation Center in Brazil broke away from the traditions of the office environment and managed to reduce its cost of software production by 30%.
Clearly, this formula yielded positive results — Ericsson’s headquarters in Sweden is planning to implement this solution in other its research centers across the globe. Ericsson expanded the Center this year to meet all demands for customization and development of Latin America and the Caribbean, a sign that the company plans to pursue a similar strategy worldwide.
Last year LG Electronics, the world's second-largest manufacturer of television sets and one of the world’s largest electronic conglomerates, known for its use of top Korean music and film stars and its stunning TV spots, launched its first open communication forum called the Life's Good lab. Its aim was to intensify the interaction between the company and their consumers in Brazil and Latin America as a whole and to also infuse the company with fresh ideas. The initiative was a success building a community of over 118,000 fans on its Facebook Page who generated more than 15,000 ideas. This initial success provided the backdrop for LG Electronics to explore further ways of using crowdsourcing and social media to engage its audience. This year, LGE have chosen to use their social media outreach to promote Korean culture by using their Facebook fan Page to launch a video contest
LG has been using Facebook as a platform to connect with its audience while, at the same time, collect new ideas. The next step, according to the company, is to keep in touch with the fans of LG and to create a place where they can express and post not only their ideas but expressions about the brand.
To explain better what this strategy means for the company I talked to Paulo Santamaria, responsible for Regional Digital Marketing at LG. Santamaria said that the objective of the strategy is to revitalize the LG brand and to improve customer preference. He wishes to emphasize LG’s brand image as young, passionate and energetic. “Our target demographic are the younger generation, fans of good music, the generation that is really attached to technology, growing up in the new social media culture”.
On Monday, in a packed convention hall in Sao Paulo, Brazil, over three hundred practitioners, eager entrepreneurs, and curious bystanders’, watched, listened and scribbled intensely as the 1st International Conference on Crowdsourcing, Communities and Co-creation got underway. The full agenda accommodated a line-up of crowdsourcing professionals who presented their business models, provided real-world examples and shared insights into the must-knows and the dos and don’ts of crowdsourcing.
The conference itself was the idea of Shaun Abrahamson and Marina Miranda from Mutopo when a few months ago, following calls for assistance and participation, Marina’s large network of connections in Brazil, the US and in Europe started to quickly produce: sponsors, a venue, speakers and then ticket sales.
Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding have been increasingly on the agenda in Brazil over the last twelve months and this was Brazil’s first chance to gather in one place to meet face-to-face to look for the answers to the one question that appeared to capture it all -- the central issue -- “what crazy things can you do in Brazil with the crowd?” As Shaun Abrahamson opened the conference he quote Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, “While the last five years have been about getting connected, the next 5 years are going to be about all the crazy things you can do now that all those people are connected”. There seems to be a lot of crazy things you can do, for sure!
A small gathering congregated in São Paulo this weekend, ahead of the first International Conference on Crowdsourcing, being hosted tomorrow at the offices of one of Brazil’s largest telcos, Vivo. Having not long returned from Europe, presenting at CrowdConvention in Berlin in June, Europe’s first ever Crowdsourcing event [link], the privilege once more be part of a small quorum of crowdsourcing evangelists sharing their insights and experience to another group of inquisitive on-lookers and practitioners alike, this time south of the equator, is one that is not overlooked.
Under the enthusiastic and tenacious leadership of Marina Miranda, Managing Director of mutopo, Latin America the event is sure to be a success. Based out of mutopo’s São Paulo Office, Miranda has secured contributions from enterprise sponsors Telefônica, vivo, Microsoft BizSpark, Tecnisa and Boa Vista and raised ticket sales of ~300, great for a first event in a new market. Miranda has also been able to secure a notable cast of speakers representing both local companies and the international market.
mutopo’s core business is social production with a mission to help organizations think through crowdsourcing applications and to support the implementation of initiatives often involving the introduction of other crowdsourcing tool providers to help
Brazil, having experienced a huge uptake over the last twelve months both in the use of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding and in terms of the number of new platforms launched, was ready and primed for its first event. The last twelve months have seen an increased adoption of crowdsourcing as a model to support open innovation, as a model for the production of creative works and for solutions requiring the crowd to collect and organize information.
The National Confederation of Industry of Brazil (Confederação Nacional da Indústria - CNI) reaffirmed the commitment of the private sector to invest in technological development and to recognize that innovation is a consumer demand and the imposition of a market. This position is expressed in the document Commitment to Innovation, released during the recent Brazilian Congress of Innovation Industry earlier this month.
In the document, CNI boil down the items that are considered strategic to the advancement of innovation in the country. Among the actions, it highlights the country's need to enroll a greater number of people in vocational and technical courses in engineering and also to create effective programs and sectoral innovation structuring projects supporting research and development.
To explore this issue, I interviewed Hans van Hellemondt, founder of Battle of Concepts Brazil, an organization that has been working with several global brands all of which have a presence in Brazil including names such as Whirlpool, Philips, Vopak and Akzo Nobel. Battle of Concepts is a tool, among many other things, that connects industry and students with a common objective: to develop open innovation. Being an easy to use platform, it is freely available to any college student or young professional below the age of 30 that hold university degrees.
The discrete landing of PopTent in Brazil last month was an indication of a long-term strategy to conquer the large South American market. From the clear and simple room located at the elegant area of Jardins, Sao Paulo, the two co-managing directors of PopTent Brazil, John deTar and Peter Lau, are planning investments in the region of $ 1 million over the next six months. A considerable amount for a company specializing in crowdsourced video production company, even for one whose client list boasts a string of Fortune 500 brands and top agencies. Poptent specialize in producing commercials and other video assets through a social network of more than 35,000 videographers in over 120 countries.
The decision to set-up shop in Brazil was a made in 2010, over a bottle of beer, during a meeting of Poptent’s board and has been almost one year in the planning. It’s not that Poptent takes big decisions lightly, in fact, the beer memorialized the fact that Poptent had enjoyed success with one of it’s large clients, Anheuser-Busch InBev, the leading global brewer well known for its popular American brand, Budweiser. After the huge success of the Dude campaign in United States, they decided to test the model in Brazil, where AB InBev owns the brand Skol, the leading beer in the Brazilian market and the world's third-best selling brand. This was the force behind the creation of Poptent Brazil.
The most important thing in regarding Fiat’s development of the Fiat Mio (translated: ‘My Fiat”), the world’s first ever open source car, is not the participation of the crowd itself, but the fact that, for the first time, the auto industry initiated the endeavor as an open source project and release it for everybody under the Creative Commons license.
Fiat’s choice resulted in an open forum and marked a move to an approach for automobile production that is normally dominated by a culture of secrecy. How revolutionary and subversive was the adoption of this approach? The specification of the Mio is now available for anyone to see -- an open work that challenges the traditions of automobile manufacture.
So when the customer experience begins with the design of a car and not just the ownership experience and the role of the manufacturer becomes the orchestrator amongst customers and engineering teams, what impact does that have on the value of the brand in a world of open source knowledge? Is the brand enhanced or devalued?
Brazilian crowdfunding and crowdsourcing platforms have had an explosion in growth in the first half of the year. But now, as we enter the second half, the major question is: can Brazil consolidate this growth?
There is no restriction to crowdsourcing in Brazil, according to the Secretary of the Federal Revenue of Brazil (the Brazilian equivalent to the US Internal Revenue Service). The information was released on Tuesday by Rafael Zatti, the founder and General Director of Ideias.me, a web platform that is responsible for implementing two crowdsourced projects for mobile company Vivo. The Secretary of the Federal Revenue stated that there is no legislation against crowdsourcing, giving a green light to existing and future projects.
Innovation is no guarantee for profit. But it motivates people inside and outside the company. It generates buzz and comments and improves the business image, said Busarello. “See the iPad's case, for example. Tecnisa was the first Brazilian company to adopt it as a marketing tool. One iPad for each salesperson. We didn't earn money with this action, but it generated satisfaction for the team”.
Poptent, a crowdsourced video production company for Fortune 500 brands and agencies, will launch on July 30 its first campaign for a Brazilian brand. For now, the name of the company is a secret. “I can say that is a great brand. But I can not reveal the name yet”, said John deTar, Poptent co-managing director in Brazil. I talked to him just a few hours after Poptent announced the opening of a new office in Sao Paulo.
Natalia Garcia had a dream to travel to 12 world cities to see how it would be possible to live in a place designed for people – and not for cars. Natalia is a journalist and cyclist from São Paulo, Brazil. And Sao Paulo, is a really terrible place for cyclists and pedestrians. So, she decided to turn her idea into reality, and left her job at Editora Abril to launch the project Cidades para Pessoas (Cities for People), a dream that materialized through crowdfunding.
How do you organize ideas and control the quality of what is produced by crowdsourcing? These were the main questions from the audience that followed a discussion at Social Media Brazil, which took place last week in São Paulo. A first for the industry, the social media event provided a forum this year for a good debate about crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. According to Rafael Zatti, creator of Ideias.me, when consumers work together to produce a new product they effectively take part of the process. And in this process the community itself becomes the quality control. “When a project is well structured, the community is self-regulating.”
As new crowdsourcing models continue to develop around the world with competitive platforms emerging and building momentum, the inevitable legal and fiscal challenges of a nascent industry are beginning to surface. After two months and two proposed crowdsourced projects in the works, the lack of laws that specifically govern how prize money awarded through crowdsourcing is categorized has forced mobile company Vivo and web platform Ideias.me to extend their project deadlines by one month, when at this point they hope to resolve how to legally pay R $150,000 ($ 95,271) for the best ideas.
Sururu na Roda, a samba group from Rio de Janeiro, will release the first Brazilian album produced entirely through crowdfunding! The campaign was developed over 90 days on the Movere.me platform. "It’s the first Brazilian CD produced through crowdfunding and our second successful project on Movere.me", said Vanesa Oliveira, a partner of the company, which launched in March of this year. "It brings confidence to the Brazilian crowdfunding market".
Crowdsourcing has propelled civic engagement to a level that is transforming societies and democratic processes throughout the world. In Brazil, an opportunity for change and reform is being offered through Cidade Democrática (Democratic City), a collaborative action platform that enables citizens, organisations and governmental institutions to report problems and propose solutions related to matters of concern in Brazilian cities.
After two years living abroad, the public relations expert Gustavo Carneiro returned to Brazil willing to create a relationship channel that eased the lives of journalists and their sources. So, in early 2010 he started the Ajude Um Repórter (Help A Reporter) project on Twitter that today has over 13,000 followers.
Founded in 2010, the industry website, Crowdsourcing.org, is a neutral organization dedicated solely to crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. As one of the most influential and credible authorities in the crowdsourcing space, Crowdsourcing.org is recognized worldwide for its intellectual capital, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding practice expertise and unbiased thought leadership.
