Crowdcasting is the combination of
broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution (business), distribution of sound, audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio ...
and
crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
. The process of crowdcasting uses a combination of push and pull strategies first to engage an audience and build a network of participants and then harness the network for new insights. Those insights are then used to shape broadcast programming. These insights and concepts can include new product ideas, new service ideas, new branding messages, or even scientific breakthroughs. These insights are extracted from participants' submissions.
Push
The 'push' aspects of crowdcasting involve a public announcement of a prize for a particular innovation, invention, achievement, or accomplishment (such as the announcement of the
Ansari X-Prize in 1996). This stage of crowdcasting serves to engage a ''specific target audience'' using compelling offerings or incentives as a call to action.
Pull
The 'pull' aspects of crowdcasting involve building and ''harnessing'' a community of passionate participants. Crowdcasting competitions have a viral effect, as interested participants refer others to the event. Once the community is built, it can be harnessed to provide fresh perspectives, ideas, insights, prototypes, or radical breakthrough innovations.
InnoCentive is an example; its challenges tap into a community of over 100,000 scientists who might provide that unexpected innovation.
Openpitch.com an upstart, has embraced the concept of crowdcasting to form a virtual advertising agency. The fundamental concept of crowdcasting—harnessing a specific, often expert, community of participants—separates OpenPitch from user-generated content (UGC) sites. Much like Innocentive, OpenPitch does not share or post submissions to the overall community during development. Instead, the sites keep user submissions confidential, protecting the intellectual property rights of both the posting company and the solutions provider. What is lost by not following a more open
crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
model is gained by a policy that, arguably, attracts a more professional, dedicated user base.
Crowdcasting in action
Aside from the advertising space, the merger of crowdsourcing with broadcast programming has been largely unexplored. One of the first to launch a "crowdcasting" application allowing listeners to take control of a radio station is LDR / "Listener Driven Radio". "Listener Driven Radio" is a software application that allows listeners to go online, or to their mobile phone, and offer their input into what plays next on the radio station. The program constantly absorbs listener input, song votes, and comments on music and automatically adapts radio station programming in real-time. Clear Channel Communications, Cox Media Group, CBS, Cumulus, Harvard Broadcasting, and many major broadcasters in the USA, Canada, and Europe are using Listener Driven Radio's technology to give audiences the ability to influence on-air programming.
Internet-based crowdcasting
Crowdcasting is also no longer confined to traditional broadcasting platforms due to current technological advances. For instance, there is the case of the Internet-based platforms, which feature convenient and automated capabilities for collecting, storing, and analyzing data. This is demonstrated in the platform created by
Salesforce
Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...
for
Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain.
As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 c ...
, the crowdsourcing solution enables the coffee chain to source ideas from its customers through suggestions for improvements in their outlets.
The same strategy has been employed by companies like
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
,
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
,
LG, and
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
when they use
CrowdSpring
Crowdspring (written "crowdSPRING", legally crowdSPRING, LLC) is an online marketplace for crowdsourced creative services.
Overview
Crowdspring was co-founded in May 2007 by Ross Kimbarovsky and Michael Samson. Crowdspring launched its online ma ...
to search for new creative ideas.
Startups like
Elance
Upwork Global Inc., formerly Elance-oDesk, is an American freelancing platform headquartered in Santa Clara and San Francisco, California. The company was formed in 2013 as Elance-oDesk, after the merger of Elance Inc. and oDesk Corp. The merg ...
also integrate crowdcasting into their operations as a value-added service.
The
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
is another example of an Internet-based crowdcasting platform. This can be the case once an organization taps it to enable stakeholders to self-organize as a crowd so that content about the organization can be produced and disseminated.
Here, the 'push' and 'pull' strategies are employed when engaging a community of stakeholders and building a network of participants ('push'), which is then harnessed to gain insights ('pull').
Differences
John Seely-Brown and John Hagel III discuss the transition from 'push' to 'pull' innovation this way: "Rather than treating producers as passive consumers whose needs can be anticipated and shaped by centralized decision-makers, pull models treat people as networked creators even when they actually are customers purchasing goods and services.
Pull platform
Pull may refer to:
Sports
*In baseball, a pull hitter is a batter who usually hits the ball to the side of the field from which he bats
* Pull shot, a batting stroke in cricket
* A phase of a swim stroke
* A throw-off in the sport of ultimate ...
s harness their participants’ passion, commitment, and desire to learn, thereby creating communities that can improvise and innovate rapidly."
[''McKinsey Quarterly 2005'', #3 "From push to pull: The next frontier of innovation"]
See also
*
Broadcasting
Broadcasting is the distribution (business), distribution of sound, audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio ...
*
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
*
Narrowcasting
Narrowcasting is the dissemination of information (usually via Internet, radio, newspaper, or television) to a narrow audience, rather than to the broader public at-large. Related to niche marketing or target marketing, narrowcasting involves aim ...
*
Open Innovation
Open innovation is a term used to promote an information age mindset toward innovation that runs counter to the secrecy and silo mentality of traditional corporate research labs. The benefits and driving forces behind increased openness have bee ...
References
{{Reflist
*Tuning into Crowdcasting: Business 2.0 - November 2006 Volume 7; Issue 10, page 66
Broadcasting