Crowdsourcing: is there a workable business model behind it?

The marvellous Brand E, a media and events firm concerned with innovations in brand engagement, ran a splendid session yesterday about Crowdsourcing. We heard about wonderful ways in which organisations indulged in this activity.

The highlights were Zoopa and Sccopshot, both of whom had great tales about the ways in which organisation had used their crowd-sourcing services, the former using creatives and the latter, photographers. And alongside them were Microsoft and a digital agency telling equally wonderful stories.

Except I didn’t hear one presenter talk about the commercial value of crowd-sourcing in hard, monetary terms. No one mentioned P&G ‘s long-standing strategic aims for the way they do R&D and no-one talked about the value they accrue from this, I’m guessing because neither they nor an agency would or could profit from P&G’s strategy.

Which was shame really as there is clearly a big conceptual idea behind crowd-sourcing but perhaps it doesn’t translate into an enduring commercial business model for external companies?

Or will it?

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