Crowd funding/sourcing is creating new models in the industrial market.
Collective intelligence meets state of the art technologies to create a new era of creative economy. It all began with the ‘Maker Movement’ in 2005. It refers to the whole process of developing methods of making and sharing them freely with other people, developing the shared methods in the course.
According to Mark Hatch, CEO of Techshop, which popularized the maker movement, ‘maker’ is the ‘new manufacturing population that leads making.’ In the past, making things were only for a certain group of people like inventors, craftsmen, technicians, etc. But now, thanks to the development of technologies, everyone can access the world of making something of great quality. With a personal 3D printer, you can create a figure of a celebrity you like and give it to him/her as a present; since the launch of a commercial video editing program, we are now living in the era of ‘YouTubers with million subscribers.’
With time, the maker movement has become something ordinary, not something extraordinary. It went further to create new models in the industrial market, which are Crowd Funding and Crowd Sourcing.
Crowd Funding; Participating with Capital
There are more and more cases of making products through crowd funding thanks to the development of network and financial technology.
A dictionary definition of crowd funding is ‘a method of gathering investment fund from individuals through social network services or the Internet.’ In other words, a provider releases the blueprint of a product or service in the idea stage to the public and announces the amount he/she needs for production. Those who relate to the need for it will invest the amount suggested by the provider, and when the goal amount is reached, the provider will produce/develop the said product or service and send it over to the investors. This is possible thanks to the development of network and financial technology.
In the past, in order to come up with business funds, you needed to reach out to investment corporations or investors. The process was complicated, difficult, and many interested parties were involved, which meant many limitations and limited opportunities. But when the concept of ‘investment’ became popularized, to the point where it’s close to the concept of ‘support,’ thanks to crowd funding, creative products and services are pouring out. The threshold of creating something has become low enough to allow individuals to bring out the sparkling ideas that only existed inside their heads into the world.
There’s even a book that became known to the world and a best-seller through crowd funding (photography source. Tumblbug homepage)
The book that took over 2018, ‘I want to die, but I still want to have Tteokbokki,’ would be a good example. It’s an essay written by Baek Se-hee, who wrote about her process of overcoming depression; it was published in paperback after getting 20,000,000 KRW on the crowd funding platform Tumblbug and went straight to the best-seller list. If it replied on a publisher only, this great writer’s great book might have gone unnoticed; it was discovered through the public’s capital.
Crowd Sourcing, Made Together
Crowd sourcing makes use of the public’s knowledge, technology, etc., to complete projects
Whereas crowd funding involves ‘investment’ in the production, crowd sourcing is more direct than that. It is ‘a method that involves consumers or general public in the manufacturing and service process to get ideas and make use of them in business activities.’ Unspecified masses make use of their own knowledge, information, technology, etc., to complete projects.
Wikipedia would be a leading example. Wikipedia, which first appeared in 2001, is an online encyclopedia where anyone can register, correct, and complement knowledge and information. Anyone can participate ？ there are no regulations ？ and that’s why Wikipedia’s information is regarded as always up to date, various and accurate.
There’s also a case that specified an idea from the public to launch a product (photography source. Lego official homepage)
Recently, many private corporations have been selecting crowd sourcing as an innovation model, one of which is LEGO. Lego, a Danish toy company, uses the platform ‘LEGO Ideas’ to gather product ideas from the brand manias. Commercialization takes place after a vote and an evaluation process; those whose ideas are chosen are given 1% of sales as reward. The LEGO® Ideas 21315 Pop-Up Book, which took the world by surprise in 2018 with its outstanding creativity, is the very result of those Lego ideas.
Hyundai Motor Company × UNDP, Collective Intelligence for the Mankind
Hyundai Motors is carrying out an open innovation platform ‘for Tomorrow’ campaign with UNDP
Hyundai Motor Company is using crowd sourcing in a more altruistic way. With UNDP (UN Development Programme), they have been operating the open innovation platform ‘for Tomorrow’ since September 2020. It is a campaign that collects solutions for problems a global society faces these days such as transportation, housing, and environment and realizes them. Anyone from all around the world can suggest a solution via online homepage anytime and can add opinions to ideas they like.
▶ Go to ‘for Tomorrow’ campaign homepage
In May, solutions that were proposed to the ‘for Tomorrow’ platform were disclosed to the public.
So far, around 50 various solutions from around 30 countries have been suggested to the homepage with the purpose of creating a sustainable future. The ‘solution to support Nigerian people to install solar power streetlights themselves,’ the ‘fintech platform solution to apply high-efficiency battery to Nepal’s outdated mini electric buses,’ etc.; other realistic, hands-on solutions that can directly be utilized in real life as well as data-based digital innovation solutions were gathered for various local communities.
Hyundai Motor Company and UNDP plan to choose some of the solutions suggested via homepage and work with experts from many areas including the environment activist David De Rothschild to support accelerating through the ‘UNDP Accelerator Labs’ and ‘Hyundai CRADLE.’
We have passed the time where everyone could make things; we are now living in the era where we are making things together. Rather than severe competition, time calls for flexible collaboration. The world will evolve positively only when we support valuable ideas.