The Best Application of Crowdsourcing You Didn't Know About

Occasionally—just occasionally—I gloat. Shortly after writing the original Wired article on crowdsourcing, I predicted that the GPS navigation systems like those produced by TomTom and Garmin would eventually put their own customers to work improving their maps. This bit of prognostication didn't make it into my book, but I was happy to discover a TomTom executive attending a workshop on crowdsourcing I gave in Rotterdam a few months ago. Earlier this year the company launched a feature it calls MapShare, in which the TomTom user community collectively acts to provide updates and fixes to the map.

Today, a trademag covering the "sat-nav" industry ( a lovely British locution, that) notes that users have now made 5 million corrections. “To put this five million milestone in perspective: a one-hour trip made anywhere in Europe or North America will be influenced by twenty to thirty Map Share corrections,” said Corinne Vigreux, managing director TomTom.

Below, a graph charting growth of the MapShare community vis a vis growth of TomTom's user base generally:

 

Comments

[Marco Lechner]

I'd prefer to mention the OpenStreetMap project. Much more sophisticated, because the crowd is not reduced to some users of devices for navigation.
See http://www.openstreetmap.org

[Jim Bennette - CEO of TheCrowd]

The real interesting thing about this move from TomTom is that they "trusted" the crowd to help influence their product while business is going well versus a desperate move to stay alive. I liken this example to Gold Corp who went to crowdsourcing as a last resort and it ended up paying off http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2007/id20070201_774736.htm
However if business was going well for Gold Corp I would guess that they would have been unlikely to turn to crowdsourcing as a foundation for growth.

From a market perspective this would appear to be the furtherance of a trend that crowdsourcing should be the cornerstone of growth for companies versus the last gasp of air. The problem that the world faces is that that companies must first move out of the "cone-of-silence" and trust the crowd to help grow their business.

TheCrowd is gathering......

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navigation systems like those produced by TomTom and Garmin would eventually put their own customers to work improving their

[Sandeep Arora]

Hi Jeff,

Nice example. We have created a Interactive Flash Animation on crowdsourcing http://vizedu.com/2009/01/crowdsource-your-business/ .

You Blog was a great reference for us and you have been profiled in the video. Just wanted to share that with you.

Awesome work. Will continue to come back and educate myself.
Thanks
Sandeep
www.VizEdu.com

[Nadim]

Jeff, I've read your blog articles with some interest and am really excited about recent crowdsourcing innovations, TomTom certainly being one of them. I've just written a blog piece about parallels between crowdsourcing and the Baha'i administrative system (bet you're like: "huh?!") Check it out!

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Jeff, just started reading your book this evening -- on page 20. Pretty dang good so far.

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