The Myth of Crowdsourcing - Crowds don't innovate--individuals do

The recent coverage of the $1 million Netflix prize was rightly heralded as a victory for crowdsourcing. The competition was designed to create a better algorithm for recommending films. But in the popular press, and in the minds of millions of people, the word crowdsourcing has created an illusion that there is a crowd that solves problems better than individuals. For the past 10 years, the buzz around open source has created a similar false impression. The notion of crowds creating solutions appeals to our desire to believe that working together we can do anything, but in terms of innovation it is just ridiculous.

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The Next Big Thing From Google - Waves

Crowdsourcing through Knowledge Marketplace

SAP recently decided to solicit ideas for business-friendly social networking applications from a crowdsourcing platform, Innocentive. SAP got 1,239 responses, which it is currently evaluating to find the best proposed solution. The experiment went so well that SAP submitted another idea to crowdsourcing, this time in search of a vendor-independent way to handle Web services errors, and got a viable solution by December. When SAP debuts its next social networking functionality or Web service error-handling capability, odds are some freelance developer far from Walldorf came up with some of the code. This marks a true revolution in the evolution of service delivery, which we visualize as follows:

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Opinion: Innovation and the 20% solution

As IT budgets threaten to follow the same trend lines as financial markets, it's a natural impulse for managers to circle the wagons, concentrate on core projects and put off innovation for another day. Natural, but wrong. For proof, look at what happened after the Internet bubble burst earlier this decade. Sure, that tech bust pales in comparison with the current worldwide credit crunch in terms of overall effect, but if you consider the Internet sector alone, the money drought and corporate failures were pretty stunning.

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Straight Talk about Key Technologies That Today's IT Talent Need to Master: Christina Hollingsworth, Corporate IT Director Genworth Financial

Some areas of the Financial Services Sectors are building in the current economy with knowledge on some of the benefits the IT sector can offer. Download this podcast for some insights from Christina Hollingsworth... Despite the downturn in the economy, some financial services companies are holding their own and hiring people, especially in areas such as IT. Genworth Financial is one of those companies. Genworth Financial has morethan $103 billion in assets and 15 million customers worldwide.Genworth has earned the highest company ratings in its industry. It is a leader in long-term care insurance and annuities. Christina Hollingsworth will be the first one to tell you that IT resides at the core of Genworth Financial's business operations.

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