Kluster
Erick Schonfeld
Crowdsourcing may work for Wikipedia, but few commercial companies have figured out how to make it work for them. The basic concept is to get outsiders, preferably customers, to swarm together to design a product or complete some other project. Crowdsourcing is quickly becoming a crowded field—there’s Innocentive, Cambrian House, the soon-to-launch CrowdSpirit, and Ideablob, to name a few sites. But Ben Kaufman, the CEO of a startup from Burlington, Vermont called Kluster, thinks that what is missing are market-like incentives to motivate contributors and push the best ideas forward.
Kluster, which is supposed to launch later today in a public beta and will be used by attendees at next week’s TED conference, is designed so that companies can offer cash rewards for each phase of a project. Participants who back the winning idea get to share the reward. Projects can range from creating logos and marketing campaigns to designing a product.
Crowdsourcing may work for Wikipedia, but few commercial companies have figured out how to make it work for them. The basic concept is to get outsiders, preferably customers, to swarm together to design a product or complete some other project. Crowdsourcing is quickly becoming a crowded field—there’s Innocentive, Cambrian House, the soon-to-launch CrowdSpirit, and Ideablob, to name a few sites. But Ben Kaufman, the CEO of a startup from Burlington, Vermont called Kluster, thinks that what is missing are market-like incentives to motivate contributors and push the best ideas forward.
Kluster, which is supposed to launch later today in a public beta and will be used by attendees at next week’s TED conference, is designed so that companies can offer cash rewards for each phase of a project. Participants who back the winning idea get to share the reward. Projects can range from creating logos and marketing campaigns to designing a product.
GeryW - 19. Feb, 13:55
