Using creative new ideas: Crowdsourcing

I've written before about the concept of crowdsourcing. For those of us who are boomers, it can be an interesting challenge to keep up with the new concepts, technologies and online options. This one I find intriguing for Knowledge Management.

British Director Alex Jovy is using the concept of crowdsourcing to not only draw publicity to his in-production movie, but also to allow the audience to participate in the entire project.

You can upload your online audition (which is reviewed by a seasoned group of movie types), review scripts, provide creative input, become an investor and so forth. A very interesting concept.

How does this apply to managing knowledge?

What if your organization has 30-40-50 years of research or other history and no way to bring it forward. Why would you want to? To ensure future decisions are informed by past experience and mistakes are not needlessly repeated as one example.

Would crowdsourcing(with a bit of expert review), not be an excellent way to pull various viewpoints, experiences, areas of expertise, innovative ideas not used, forward by using an interesting vehicle the younger generations of workers would view? It might sound outlandish but I think it has possibilities.

The organization would not have to create a movie, but could create other crowdsourced experiences to share contextual yet critical knowledge.

We are moving fast into social networking technologies and we need to be prepared to use and embrace those technologies as we transfer knowledge between generations. And, we have little time to do the actual knowledge transfer. This can be one way to address the knowledge transfer challenges.

I am not saying this is the silver bullet for KM-- there is NO such thing. However, open minds will find ways to use new concepts to meet current and future needs. I think this is worth a quick review. If nothing else, you could become a star!