مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Since Howe introduced the concept of crowdsourcing to academic literature in 2006, scholars and practitioners have become increasingly interested in the phenomenon. Howe’s (2006) definition of crowdsourcing has since been updated to refer to ‘‘the use of IT to outsource any organizational function to a strategically defined population of human and non-human actors in the form of an open call’’ (Kietzmann, 2017, p. 3). This practice can be successful in business contexts largely because tapping into a crowd allows organizationsto benefitfrom a large number of people who bring diversity in ideas, knowledge, and experience, which is leveraged to the benefit of the organization (Erickson, Petrick, & Trauth, 2012). Examples of successful crowdsourcing initiatives abound, including Glassdoor (Dabirian, Kietzmann, & Diba, 2017), Pebble, Firstbuild, and Shock Top (Brown, Boon, & Pitt, 2017). The idea behind crowdsourcing is not new; in fact, it dates back to 4th century B.C. when Aristotle discussed the benefits of turning to ‘the wisdom of the many’ when solving complex problems (Lord, 2013). Today, new terms have been developed to describe the value that emerges from large groups in a crowdsourcing context, including ‘collective intelligence’ (Le´vy, 1997) and ‘crowd capital’ (Prpic´, Shukla, Kietzmann, & McCarthy, 2015). Indeed, crowdsourcing has tremendous promise in business applications, many of which have already emerged or are beginning to emerge in both practice and scholarly research.

ing campaigns, crowdsourcing is not a silver bullet. Consider the recent Name Our Ship campaign launched by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in the U.K. The group’s newlycommissioned $290 million research vessel is set to sail on a prestigious scientific mission in 2019, during which it will collect data from some of the most remote regions of the world in hopes of securing Britain as a world leader in marine and climate change science. To help instill pride in the new ship, the NERC reached out to all Brits by asking them to contribute name ideas in the form of ‘RSS [Name].’ In its initial press release, NERC included criteria for the type of name it was looking for and commenced voting by suggesting a few regal names, such as Falcon and Endeavour. However, the four most popular names in terms of user votes were: (1) RRS Boaty McBoatface, (2) RRS Henry Worsley, (3) RRS David Attenborough, and (4) RRS It’s Bloody Cold Here.1 In fact, the suggestion RRS Boaty McBoatface received 10 times more votes than the next-closest name and was the runaway winner when the monthlong campaign finished. The name also inspired other humorous suggestions, including RRS Big Metal Floaty Thingy-Thing and RRS I Like Big Boats and I Cannot Lie.

The popularity of the name suggestion RRS Boaty McBoatface generated so much international buzz that the NERC voting website was temporarily shut down due to unexpectedly high traffic. During the campaign, NERC announced that the poll was intended to solicit suggestions and that the final decision lay with the council. They have since announced that the selected name of the vessel is the RRS Sir David Attenborough, and ‘‘the name Boaty McBoatface will live on as the name of the ship’s high-tech remotely operated sub-sea vehicle.’’۱