or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
26 used & new from £6.58
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business (Hardcover)

by Jeff Howe (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £17.99
Price: £11.58 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £6.41 (36%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Only 4 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Want guaranteed delivery by Wednesday, November 11? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
17 new from £6.99 9 used from £6.58

Frequently Bought Together

Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business + We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production + Wikinomics
Price For All Three: £23.43

Show availability and shipping details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production

We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production

by Charles Leadbeater
3.9 out of 5 stars (8)  £6.48
Free: The Future of a Radical Price: The Economics of Abundance and Why Zero Pricing Is Changing the Face of Business

Free: The Future of a Radical Price: The Economics of Abundance and Why Zero Pricing Is Changing the Face of Business

by Chris Anderson
3.8 out of 5 stars (10)  £12.29
Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World

Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World

by Don Tapscott
3.4 out of 5 stars (67)  £10.96
Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together

Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together

by Clay Shirky
3.5 out of 5 stars (4)  £5.98
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

by Charlene Li
4.5 out of 5 stars (12)  £14.69
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Random House Books (4 Sep 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1905211112
  • ISBN-13: 978-1905211111
  • Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 298,223 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Product Description

How were a bunch of part-time dabblers in finance able to help an investment company consistently beat the market? Why does pharmaceutical giant Proctor and Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStock and Threadless employ just a handful of people and yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year? The answer is that they all draw on the power of Crowdsourcing. First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in an article in "Wired" in June 2006, Crowdsourcing describes the process by which the power of the many can be harnessed together on the internet to build and to innovate.Now, in his eagerly awaited book, he shows precisely how this has become possible - how complex social, technological and economic developments have fused together to make Crowdsourcing an increasingly powerful force in more and more areas of our daily lives. And in the course of showing how Crowdsourcing is going from strength to strength, he investigates why it is that Crowdsourcing communities are so smart - why intuition rather than deep knowledge can lead to major breakthroughs, why a collection of dilettantes often seem to know more than lone experts, and why Crowdsourcing causes ideas to snowball and yield astonishing results. Crowdsourcing is now a part of our lives, whether we're aware of it or not. If we're to benefit from what it can achieve, we need to understand where it's come from and how it works - and where it's taking us.


From the Inside Flap

How were a bunch of part-time dabblers in finance able to help an investment company consistently beat the market? Why does pharmaceutical giant Proctor & Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStock and Threadless employ just a handful of people and yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year?

The answer is that they all draw on the power of Crowdsourcing. First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in an article in Wired in June 2006, Crowdsourcing describes the process by which the power of the many can be harnessed together on the internet to build and to innovate. Now, in his eagerly awaited book, he shows precisely how this has become possible – how complex social, technological and economic developments have fused together to make Crowdsourcing an increasingly powerful force in more and more areas of our daily lives. And in the course of showing how Crowdsourcing is going from strength to strength, he investigates why it is that Crowdsourcing communities are so smart – why intuition rather than deep knowledge can lead to major breakthroughs, why a collection of dilettantes often seem to know more than lone experts, and why Crowdsourcing causes ideas to snowball and yield astonishing results.

Crowdsourcing is now a part of our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not. If we’re to benefit from what it can achieve, we need to understand where it’s come from and how it works – and where it’s taking us to.

See all Product Description

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
See all 7 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business
61% buy the item featured on this page:
Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business 3.0 out of 5 stars (3)
£11.58
Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business
18% buy
Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business
£5.73
We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production
11% buy
We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production 3.9 out of 5 stars (8)
£6.48
Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together
6% buy
Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together 3.5 out of 5 stars (4)
£5.98
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star:    (0)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A Survey of Crowdsourcing Activities, Sociological Evaluations, and a Few Prescriptions for Business, 23 Oct 2008
By Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)      

If you have been paying close attention to the subject of crowd sourcing, this book will contain few surprises. But you just might pick up an insight or two that will make the book of much value. That was my experience.

While much of the book covered things I know in more detail than Jeff Howe describes, I began to see connections between how one aspect of crowd sourcing could be combined with other aspects to make more progress more rapidly. I intend to apply those insights into my global project for increasing the rate of global improvements by 20 times.

Ultimately, crowd sourcing's significance is determined in the battle between the tendency of crowds to contain wisdom and the average results of crowds to be lousy. If you use crowd sourcing to get lots of ideas, you also need to rely a lot on crowd sourcing to get rid of the junk.

Although Mr. Howe claims to be taking a journalist's approach to the subject, he comes across as more of an advocate than an observer. In particular, he fails to capture the ways that prolific production of content can overwhelm the accuracy of crowd sourcing votes. Highly ranked contributions often reflect popularity and the crowd's agreement with the conclusions more than the quality of the production. As a result, you can often end up with something that looks like what a lot of undisciplined teenagers would produce.

Yet, even that problem can be solved by adding a layer of expert evaluation to the more popular entries. He mentions that point in passing, but misses its significance.

For a book that aims to describe the fundamentals of how crowd sourcing will be used by business, the conclusion section is pretty limited and abstract. If that's why you want to read the book, borrow the book at the library (or read it standing up at a book store) because you'll finish that section faster than a cup of coffee.

To me, the biggest economic impact will be on problem solving. There's plenty in the book on that point, but Mr. Howe fails to explain why so few companies are using crowds for that purpose.

I conducted a worldwide contest two and a half years ago to gain answers, ran the contest for essentially no money, and was astonished at the quality of the results. But I started with no community, built no community, and don't plan to aim the findings back to establish a new community later. As a result, I seriously question his conclusion that crowd sourcing can only be done by people who get benefits from a community. I would argue, by comparison, that participants need to get some benefits . . . but they don't have to be community-based ones.

I suspect that a better book on this subject would emerge from a crowd sourced methodology rather than relying on typical "professional" journalism methods.

Want some good answers? Ask the world.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful if one sided review of global network phenomena, 25 Sep 2008
By Martin Turner "Martin Turner" (Marlcliff, Warwickshire, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)      
Wired Magazine established itself early as the journal of the Digirati, and contributing editor Jeff Howe builds on his seminal 2006 article to produce a book which, in many ways, is a summary of the magazine's manifesto. His thesis is that the informal, intelligent networks which have grown up among knowledge workers and other internetters provide a powerful and effective model of doing things better in the new world.

At its heart, Crowdsourcing is about the way that a very large number of amateurs, all working in small ways on part of a problem, can produce better solutions, faster, than dedicated teams of experts. He points to this in the areas of science, engineering, culture and journalism, with numerous examples including Digg, iStock, and Amazon reviews like this one. Howe's argument is that, although this is enabled by the internet, it is not a purely internet phenomenon. He points to early examples, such as the longitude competition and the Royal Society. However, it's fair to say that 99% of what Howe has to say is about things that happen at least partly online.

This book has a great first chapter (largely based on the original article), and a very good final chapter, with ten key principles for harnessing crowdsourcing (or group intelligence, if you prefer the term) in the real world. Most of the stuff in the chapters between, though, is illustrative, and could be deduced from the beginning or from the end.

And herein is the book's great weakness. Howe's fundamental thesis is logical and compelling, but his 'proof by example' begs the question of all the counter-examples that he is not mentioning. Hacker-networks, harnessing 'zombie-computers' to send out terabytes of spam, are intrinsically as much an example of dark crowdsourcing as some of the positive examples Howe highlights. However, throughout, he never mentions the dark side, and presents crowdsourcing as a purely positive thing. This does not detract from Howe's underlying point, but it does mean that this is a book is at best a one-sided affair.

The other issue I have with Crowdsourcing is Howe's suggestion that it can function just as well off-line as on-line. This may well be true, but almost all of his examples are from the online world, and he does not explain how crowdsourcing might work in the modern world without an effectively instant and free network to support it.

Nonetheless, this is an important book, and, if you missed the original article, presents a key stage in the history of today's ideas.

Recommended.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
1.0 out of 5 stars Crowdsourcing more like utter tedium, 27 Oct 2008
Oh dear, i started reading this book with such high expectations and by the end i was speed reading through it. This book was ALL OVER THE PLACE. Lack of real structure, insight or anything of any use, except cliche, waffle and more tedious case studies. My advice to the authors- GET TO THE POINT.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject









i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.