What is crowdsourcing? What benefits does crowdsourcing provide companies? What are the risks/concerns associated with crowdsourcing? Suppose you want to start your own business, would you consider crowdsourcing (why or why not)? Suppose you are the CEO of a large business, would you consider crowdsourcing (why or why not)?

When an organization outsources a task to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call Benefits:
Cheaper and quicker problem resolution
Tap a wider range of talent
Gain insight into customer desires
Rapid design process Risks:
Experts only?
Accuracy
Up-to-date and relevant?
Too many ideas (most may be worthless but still need to evaluate)
Intellectual property (copyrights)
Quality Small versus large depends - small may be prone to use it because it is cheap and won't have a large workforce to develop ideas but could lose the idea (intellectual property); large may want to use it to get customer buy-in but have the resources to do it in-house if they want