Crowdsourcing is the use of the internet to collect information, opinions or work from a
large group of people across the world. Daren Brabham in his book published in 2013
Crowdsourcing, defined crowdsourcing as online distribution of problem-solving and production
model functions (Babham, 2013). Crowdsourcing was introduced in the year 2005 by Jeff Howe
and Mark Robinson (Pradhan et al., 2019). It has in the recent past gained huge
momentum and has been used by many companies for either ideation or problem-solving.
Although crowdsourcing has been successful in some organizations such as Local Motors, Coca-
Cola, and Intel, it has failed in others like NASA, Henkel, and Durex. This paper aims at
discussing opportunities as well as the challenges of the different forms of crowdsourcing
contests basing the discussion on an organization. What is Crowdsourcing
The opportunities and challenges of crowdsourcing are addressed by Henry Chesbrough
in his book Open Innovation. Chesbrough acknowledges that firms should use internal and
external ideas as well as internal and external market paths as they look to advance their
technology (Chesbrough, 2003). Organizations should not heavily rely on their research in a
world where ideas are widely distributed but instead, invite ideas from other individuals or
companies a process called inbound open innovation. Similarly, the ideas not used in an
organization should be distributed to others who might need them in a process called outbound
open innovation. What is Crowdsourcing
One of the opportunities of it is that it reduces the cost which could have
otherwise incurred to conduct research and development (Strivastava & Mostafavi, 2018).
Crowdsourcing avails a wide range of information that could have cost an organization a fortune
to collect through the research and development function. Additionally, the use of the internet to
collect information and opinion enhances digital transformation. An organization that utilizes the crowdsourcing technique can transform its processes, business models, competencies, and also
organizational activities (Strivastava & Mostafavi, 2018). Besides, crowdsourcing is an
opportunity for organizations to market (Khare et al., 2016). Through crowdsourcing,
organizations can increase sales of products through online messages. The online messages are
spread by both individuals and competitors of an organization. Lastly, crowdsourcing is seen as a
way of incorporating customers to the development process early enough (Lorenzo-Romero &
Constantinides, 2019). Read more 
The major challenge of crowdsourcing is that an organization can end up revealing
information that should not have been shared with the public. Some information is private to an
organization and should not by any means be accessed by the public. Such information includes
the records of an organization that might cause the organization to lose its competitive edge. The
information obtained from crowdsourcing makes an organization’s innovation projects to be
complex. The information and opinions forwarded by people make an organization’s projects
complex as they are many. Overreliance on external contributions also limits the contributions of
internal research and development function in an organization. What is Crowdsourcing

In conclusion, although crowdsourcing has been successful in some organizations it has
failed in others like. It is the use of the internet to collect information from internet
users. The opportunities of crowdsourcing include; eliminating the cost that would have been
incurred in conducting research and development, it enhances digital transformation, it is an
opportunity for an organization to market, and it is seen as an early way of incorporating
customers to the development process. The challenges include; it brings about complexity, it
might reveal private information to the public, and causes overreliance on external ideas which
makes the internal ideas useless.