Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly accepted term with examples bandied about such as Google using the analysis of Web links to crowdsource their search engine, Wikipedia crowdsourcing the planet to build the largest encyclopedia and Threadless crowdsourcing approaching a million people to design t-shirts. But what is the future of crowdsourcing? Well, we think it’s the power of small. We believe that small, niche, highly managed crowds organized in the right way will become virtual organizations. Why not build a marketing agency solely by crowdsourcing and remotely managing marketing professionals/consultants. Why not crowdsource writers and editors to build a next generation publishing company, artists to develop a new generation art market.

The key, we believe, is small, targeted, niche crowds attacking niche issues head on and repeatedly. There will always be a place for big crowds tackling one or two big problems – but this needs to be complemented with specialist crowds attacking specialist issues one after the other much as any agency, research centre or organization does today. The benefit of doing it with a managed crowd instead of legions of full time employees is lower cost, greater flexibility, a more international approach and the greater, larger collective intelligence. Indeed, it may be that the most successful, best managed, niche crowds will become the organization of tomorrow.