It opens up problems to entirely new answers that the asker would never have contemplated before.

NPR does a nice overview of one of our favorite topics, using the web for open collaboration, or "crowdsourcing" in a piece by Margot Adler called "Businesses Harness Power of the Crowd".

They talk about some cool projects like the design of a new NASA space glove, to Threadless, t-shirt design contests (grown to an 80,000 shirts a month business!)

They talk with with some smart people on the topic, like Clay Shirkey, who says crowdsourcing eliminates the need for a large organization and central management to solve problems - instead using the web to enable work by groups of dispersed individuals.

They also review Innocentive (see my previous post) - which pairs seekers with solvers. They say that Innocentive now has 120,000 registered researchers from 170 countries prizes. Prizes range from few $1,000s to $100,000s - even up to $1 million. They report that about 1/3 of challenges have been answered successfully.

Great quote from poverty-focused expert at the Rockefeller Foundation - Maria Blair - who said that crowdsourcing has no bias towards prior expertise and that it "opens up problems to entirely new answers that the asker would never have contemplated before."

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