When it comes to utilizing the crowd, it's not always for just typing up documents or asking for design ideas. Significant strides have been made towards improving medical science and making the process more efficient and transparent, all thanks to a concerned and connected global community.

Huge potential exists to harness the power of crowdsourcing for the study of society and human behaviors - the range of disciplines we call 'social science' that ranges from anthropology to sociology, politics to psychology.  But, so far, the crowd is failing to employ their power to these issues.

I peruse a lot of crowdfunding campaigns in the course of a single day. Some of them catch my attention immediately. Not only that, but they hold onto it and occasionally make me reach into my pocket, pull out my debit card, and tap in the 16 digits it takes to become a proud contributor.

Crowdsourcing changes the locus of control. It changes the point where we control processes, organizations, and businesses. To demonstrate how this works, I'll compare crowdsourcing to music.

If you’re a teacher, been a teacher, know a teacher, or had a teacher, you know they’re the kind of person that gets nothing but gives everything. More often than not, the students in their continually bulging classrooms mean the world to them.

We all did our part. I, like many others, was in New York during Hurricane Sandy. Wow! I've been in New York for many years. I saw the blackout, the winter of 2010, the blizzard of '96. None of those came close to what Sandy brought to this city. Luckily everyone I know was safe (though some displaced), and though Lucky Ant offices did not have power for a week and our servers went down, we can't help but count our blessings.

At the University of Texas in Austin, a conventional business plan competition platform has evolved into a venue for students everywhere to improve the world. Based on crowdsourcing principles, the competition platform allows university students from around the world to take their ideas beyond conception & winning competitions to improving lives.

In an interview with Research Scientist, Manuel Cebrian, from the winning team of the DARPA Red Baloon Callenge & the Tag Challenge, he revealed an ominous prediction. He predicted that crowdsourcing, like other high-profile technologies (nuclear, genetic-engineering, etc.), is due for an event, a bad event, a catastrophe, no less.

People are jumping into crowdsourcing assignments with a delightfully increased regularity, which is great for all of us in the crowdsourcing business. But not everyone on the client side is doing a great job of executing on these projects or assignments. Here are five tips for marketers, agencies, or other clients to use to successfully execute crowdsourcing assignments more effectively, and with greater results. I call them my Five C's!

A growing number of global brands have embraced crowdsourcing in many aspects of marketing and innovation practice. Businesses understand how the power of social groups and technologies can help them connect meaningfully with people and develop strong bonds of loyalty, yielding both insight and action. Increasingly, the public sector is following suit − the same processes and technologies can connect consumers with a brand and citizens with their governments.