Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing, a modern business term coined in 2005, is defined by Merriam-Webster as the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers; a portmanteau of "crowd" and "outsourcing," its more specific definitions are yet heavily debated. This mode of sourcing is often used to divide tedious work between participants, and has a history of success prior to the digital age—"offline," see the linked and examples appearing below. By definition, crowdsourcing combines the efforts of numerous self-identified volunteers or part-time workers, where each contributor, acting on their own initiative, adds a small contribution that combines with those of others to achieve a greater result; hence, it is distinguished from outsourcing in that the work comes from an undefined public, rather than being commissioned from a specific, named group. Regarding the most significant advantages of using crowdsourcing the literature generally discussed costs, speed, quality, flexibility, scalability, and diversity.