Seven Tips for Successful Mindhive Crowdsourcing

How to get users to your discussion and keeo them engaged.

Be clear on your goals, timing and resources commitment. Why are you
crowdsourcing? Are you looking to add to existing in-house capability or
seeking new and external expertise? Positioning yourself as thought leader,
or potentially the combination thereof? Knowing where you want to go is a
great way to start the journey.

Finalise your publishing schedule and stick to it.

2. Keep it simple, short and punchy - this is Internet! Write in clear active voice,
first person, minimal conditional mode.

Use this: Follow the guiding questions when launching your Challenge. They
will help flesh out the essence of your project.

3. Own it like you mean it. Sustaining your crowd is essential. Dedicate
appropriate time and resources to the project. Crowdsourcing can
dramatically reduce the time normally required to produce expertise, but
without leadership your project will quickly be lost in the forgotten corners of
the Internet.

4.Pick the right crowd and nurture it. For public challenges, broaden the pool of
experts – you don’t know who will solve your problem!

Use this: MindHive Contributors Search, External search, Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn

Our most counter-intuitive finding was the positive and significant impact of
the self-assessed distance between the problem and the solver’s field of
expertise on the probability of creating a winning solution.... We reason that
the significance of this effect may be due to the ability of ‘‘outsiders’’ from
relatively distant fields to see problems with fresh eyes and apply solutions
that are novel to the problem domain but well known and understood by
them. Lakhani (2007)

5. Incentivise and engage. Crowdsourcing is not outsourcing. Contributions must
be acknowledged and rewarded proportionally to their significance. Met a
particularly bright contributor? Offer them a secondment or an exchange.
Advertise a collaboration workshop. Host a networking event for your group.

Use this: Tag people using @ function to nudge for contribution or to thank
for input. Push your Challenge out via Social Media channels to gain initial
traction.

6. The crowd is always right. If you are doing everything right but not getting
any interest, you must be doing it wrong. Revisit points 1 to 5.

7. Give Back. What can you do for the crowd? Why should a well-sought expert
spend time on your issues? Make it worthwhile. Is the issue topical and high-profile, making participation rewarding in itself? Will it create visibility, networking opportunities or development prospects for participants? Pay it forward by contributing to other issues.

References and more reading:
Seltzer E., Mahmoudi D., Citizen Participation, Open Innovation, and Crowdsourcing:
Challenges and Opportunities for Planning, Journal of Planning Literature 28(1) 3-18,
2012
Lakhani, Karim, Jeppesen L.B., Lohse P., and Panetta J.. 2007. ‘‘The Value of
Openness in Scientific Problem Solving.’’ Working Paper 07-050, Harvard Business
School.

NOTE TO DESIGNER: “Use this” section is supposed to be a visual help guide. Please
use the images of actual MH buttons, where possible.