From English Crowd (crowd) and sourcing (food).
Practice by which an organization thrives on collective work, taking advantage of the potential to outsource the work offered by Web 2.0. For a company it represents the possibility of replacing its R&D departments with a network of anonymous collaborators who voluntarily contribute their technical knowledge. Whether they do it for free or in exchange for remuneration, it is a very profitable tactic because it saves on specific staff training, and reduces the hiring of experienced professionals.
The InnoCentive portal, for example, is a platform from which large companies anonymously post challenges, offering rewards to outside users who solve their problems. Another example would be Wikipedia, which is founded on this type of activity for the collective creation of knowledge: its entries take shape thanks to the contributions, corrections, revisions and massive improvements of thousands of disinterested users.
Other denominations:
Mass outsourcing