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Editor's letter: Give the people what they want

Our editor ponders the phenomenon of "crowdsourcing"

November 2, 2008

Earlier this summer, the Pepsi beverage company engaged in a little bit of "crowdsourcing" with the launch of DEWmocracy.com, a site that invited consumers to select the next flavor of Mountain Dew. The term crowdsourcing, by the way, was coined in June 2006 in Wired magazine and refers to any project that leans on the intelligence (or lack thereof ) of a large group of people in the place of a single decision-maker.

It's a neat social and business experiment, made slightly less interesting in the case of DEWmocracy by the fact that users could choose from only three possible flavors. How much more interesting might it have been if (a) it were open to all possibilities, and (b) the company was committed to taking the advice of the crowd.

After all, Pepsi Ice Cucumber is an actual flavor in Japan. Yes, cucumber-flavored soda. Who's to say such a beast might not be the next taste sensation to hit the Americas ? Stranger things have taken hold here. (I'm looking at you, Jimmy Dean Chocolate Chip Pancakes & Sausage On A Stick.)

As companies scramble to find ways to fit Web 2.0 and social media into their existing business plans - which, most likely, are diametrically opposed to the manner in which these new open-ended tools

Yet, you have the wildly successful T-shirt company Threadless, which lets its customers vote on which 10 designs will be printed and sold each week. The company was founded in 2000 by two friends with pocket money; last year, it raked in about $30 million in revenue. Score one for the crowd.

Working with the intelligence of crowds requires a great deal of discipline, of course, and it also assumes that the crowd in question possesses some intelligence to start with.

On the other hand, though, the "old way" of innovating produces some atrocities of its own. It is hard to imagine what kind of crowd would demand chocolate-chip-pancake-wrapped sausage on a stick.