Un(der)paid Innovators: The Commercial Utiliza- tion of Consumer Work through Crowdsourcing

This paper investigates the phenomena of "crowdsourcing", or the outsourcing of tasks to the general internet public. This phenomenon was made possible by tech-nological innovations associated with "Web 2.0 " but is evidence of historically sig-nificant change in the relations between firms and their customers. We are witness-ing the emergence of a new consumer type: the "working consumer". In the con-ventional role, consumers were passive “kings ” to be waited upon. Consumers now are becoming more like co-workers who take over specific parts of a production process, whereby this process ultimately remains under the control of a commercial enterprise. This article seeks a more precise definition of crowdsourcing, catalogues some of its forms, and differentiates them from peripherally related phenomena. It ends with a discussion regarding potential consequences (negative and positive) of crowdsourcing for the future organization of work. * The authors wish to thank Christian Papsdorf for research assistance and an initial typol-ogy of crowdsourcing and similar phenomena