Implementing collaborative crowdsourcing in different design problems
Year: 2013
Editor: Udo Lindemann, Srinivasan V, Yong Se Kim, Sang Won Lee, John Clarkson, Gaetano Cascini
Author: Gabelloni, Donata; Montelisciani, Gabriele; Fantoni, Gualtiero
Series: ICED
Institution: Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, University of Pisa, Italy
Page(s): 345-354
ISBN: 978-1-904670-52-0
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
The new product development process increasingly involves multidisciplinary teams, that frequently do not belong to the same institution. Innovation often comes from external actors, as suppliers, end-users etc., according to the paradigm of Open Innovation. Crowdsourcing is one of the new trends in the Open Innovation philosophy. The main aim of this study is to present how and for which design activities crowdsourcing is useful for the new product design. After a brief definition of benefits and limitations of collaborative crowdsourcing, the paper presents a new web platform that allows the collaborative design of new products. The main features of the platform are tools suitable to overcome some of the presented criticalities of crowdsourcing, such as an IPR tracking system. These tests have been used to evaluate the developed tools, as well as to identify the typologies of product design problems that can be advantageously solved through crowdsourcing. For each class of problems some guidelines to manage the problem solving sessions are provided.
Keywords: Crowdsourcing, open innovation, collaborative design, new product development