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White Paper Excerpt

Much has been made of savvy marketers using “crowdsourcing” to connect their brands with customers, and plenty of pixels have been published on the success of crowdsourced programs like Dell’s IdeaStorm, Starbucks’ MyStarbucksIdea, The Netflix Prize and Lego’s invite-only community. But quite recently a much different discussion has emerged, as crowdsourcing is starting to change the very way we think about creativity, both online and off.

Crowdsourcing is relatively straightforward: It’s the online distribution of certain tasks to crowds of experts and enthusiasts. But the effect of crowdsourcing on agencies as well as on the creative process itself is just starting to be felt.

We typically think of “creativity” as a singular effort with the Steve Jobs or Lee Clows of the world—the solitary individual known as much for their personality as their work—at the helm. But creativity has always been a social activity. Today’s creative agencies are supposed to be hothouses of ideas with charismatic leaders and collaborative teams. Fostering a creative culture counts—after all, Warhol’s factory wasn’t just a live/work loft. But what happens when the technology behind crowdsourcing makes creativity a social activity that knows no geographic bounds? Where does the creative produced by the collective take us? Do we visit wild new frontiers or does a herd mentality take hold?

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colourlovers, crowdsourcing, crowdspring, ffffound, patterntap