Russell Perkins‘s recent post a few weeks ago got me to thinking about new product development once again. I knew most of IEI’s clients when their products were in their embryonic stages and we continue to help innovators by keeping their upfront costs low so they can spend those precious
Often, a company has had one of two experiences with crowdsourcing on their own. They have either been frustrated by poor data generated by an unwieldy crowd or they have simply been unable to gather consistent results. When those companies go to an expert in managed crowdsourcing, they typically start
Scalable bandwidth and burstable work pools are both terms used to describe crowdsourcing. Both of these terms, however, imply that workers are anonymous ID numbers performing tasks remotely and this can be dehumanizing to them. Because of this aspect of crowdsourcing, manager interaction with crowd workers is critical and improves
One of the corollaries to the big data meme is that the world is woefully short of data science professionals. This observation requires some context, however, because the definition of what a data scientist _is_ is a matter of some debate. Some define data science as statistical analysis while others
Getting the right workers is critically important for most managed crowdsourcing projects. Success depends on a pool of workers who understand and can do the tasks involved. So, while it’s certainly possible to open a project up to the entire crowd and then start blocking poor performers along the way,
Back in 1986 I was fortunate to be exposed to a network of publishing professionals eager to share their knowledge with their fellow colleagues via what was then called The Newsletter Association. A few decades later this same group (now called the Specialized Information Providers Association) carries on this important
Data publishers love structure. Very granular fielded data allows their customers to locate very specific things — for example, all investment banks in Boston that invested in green energy start-ups — instantly. Fielded data allows quick apples-to-apples comparisons, lets you know more about your prospective customers, and makes data analysis
All businesses struggle with seasonality or variability in their labor requirements, in one way or another. Resort hotels are busy in summer and much slower in winter. Tax preparation firms are swamped during the April crunch. Alaskan seafood operations work around the clock in summer and then stop completely in
Those of us in the information business are usually too busy working with our customers and refining our business models and production processes to think about the basic question of “What is information?” but let’s stop for a moment to consider it. Information is not a self-contained “thing” but rather
We received such a positive response to our February Crowdsourcing 102 post that we decided to follow it up with some of the questions we fielded about it, all answered by our resident managed crowdsourcing expert, Kevin Dodds. Q. Have you considered using known answers (KAs) throughout production in addition
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