Where Does Crowdsourced Consulting Go From Here?

My name is Matthew Penn, and I have worked for the crowdsourced consulting firm Wikistrat for the last five years. I joined Wikistrat as an analyst, was promoted to a recruiter position, and am currently a project manager.

What is crowdsourced consulting? Crowdsourced consulting is a consulting model that brings together experts from all over the world to participate in projects through an online platform. In addition to crowdsourcing, Wikistrat also uses a gamification system that rewards analysts for their work with points. Analysts earn points by writing posts on the project forum and commenting on other analysts’ ideas. Wikistrat’s managers use those discussions to produce reports for the project’s clients. Analysts can also earn points by finding new clients and selling reports. By accumulating these points, analysts earn promotions and increase their chances of being selected for future projects.

While gamified-crowdsourced consulting has serious potential, it takes time for any new technology to be developed to its full potential. Wikistrat was the first crowdsourced consulting firm, but the Big Four accounting firms and other consultancies are developing their own crowdsourced consulting services. With so many firms implementing it, where does crowdsourced consulting go from here?

Role-playing: Defining the Classes

Management should not micromanage tasks, like analysis or sales, that could be delegated to members of the crowd. The crowd should be involved at every step of the production process to maximize production and initiative, but managers need to clearly define the roles that crowd members will play. I like to think of these different roles as classes, like in role-playing games. Each class will complete specific tasks for the firm, and firms can use this class system to place crowd members in roles that play to their strengths and interests.

A Slight Language Barrier

Modern technology has enabled instantaneous communication across the planet, which has led to an increasing demand for translation services. Crowdsourced consulting firms need advanced auto-translation programs more than ever. Analysts will have different language skills, so firms that can successfully implement auto-translation programs to ensure clear communication on project forums will have a huge advantage over firms that cannot. Firms that only conduct business in English will cut themselves off from a huge pool of professionals to recruit and from potential clients.

As Facebook’s recent controversy in Myanmar has demonstrated, language translation still requires a human element, and translation is another task that could be delegated to crowd members, the translator class. Auto-translation programs could quickly translate analysts’ forum posts into any major language, and human translators could correct any errors or unclear translations flagged by analysts or managers.

A Database of Experts

Crowdsourced consulting firms have two options to recruit analysts. The first option is to use their own in-house recruiters to find people for their projects. The second option is to outsource recruitment to a staffing firm. From my own experience, I would highly recommend using in-house recruiters rather than outsourcing recruitment. Governments and many corporations have strict security policies that limit, or at least discourage, using subcontractors for sensitive projects. Besides, how much can you trust an outside firm to protect your data? Recruitment is another task that can be delegated to crowd members, the recruiter class.

In addition to using their own recruiters, crowdsourced consulting firms should also develop databases of experts. The potential of web scraping technology was recently demonstrated when 1,600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had their personal information collected from LinkedIn and transferred into a database. Through web scraping, recruiters could gather biographical information on potential recruits from university webpages, academic search engines (like JSTOR and WorldCat), company websites, and other sources. Experts’ data would be categorized and tagged according to field, education, work experience, publications, contact information, and other factors. Recruiters could use such a database to find and contact candidates for projects en masse rather than piecemeal.

Gamification: How to Level Up Properly

Wikistrat had the right idea combining crowdsourcing with gamification. Gamification incentivizes crowd members to increase the quality and quantity of their participation in projects. Gamification systems should do four things: (1) fairly and transparently evaluate work, (2) give people real-time feedback on their performance, (3) properly reward people for completing tasks, and (4) incentivize people to complete more difficult tasks by progressively increasing the rewards.

As a video gamer, it is always frustrating when a game fails to reward a player in a meaningful way. In poorly designed games, the gamification system gives very small rewards for completing unchallenging, monotonous tasks, which makes progress painfully slow. Video gamers call this grinding. I am also frustrated when it is not clear how players are rewarded, what the rewards even are, and how progress is made. The rules for gamification systems should be clear, consistent, and rewards should be meaningful and fairly distributed.

For the points and rewards to mean something to the participants, their compensation should be determined by the gamification system. For example, a participant’s compensation could be determined by their percentage of all points earned for the project or all points earned within a certain class. The sales, translator, recruiter, and analyst classes should all receive rewards from the gamification system to encourage initiative at all stages of the production process.  

The New Model for Crowdsourced Consulting

?Human civilization has been one long story of specialization and integration. The most successful civilizations could find people with the best skills and motivate them to participate in society with maximum efficiency for maximum benefit. To find and motivate the best experts, the most successful crowdsourced consulting firms will use large expert databases, clearly defined classes, properly designed gamification systems, and advanced auto-translation programs combined with human translators. This is the new model for crowdsourced consulting.