When Grammy-award winning composer Eric Whitacre publicly proposed his idea of a virtual choir for anybody from anywhere all over the globe to audition for and participate in, he never expected the response he received. One woman from the Alaskan bush — living 400 miles away from the nearest city — welcomed the opportunity to let her beautiful voice be heard long-distance. A legally blind man unable to see a live conductor was able to get close enough to his computer screen to see Whitacre perform and participate, too. And finally, one talented film editor volunteered his skills toward the project, saying he had waited his entire lifetime for such a project.
The result was his first Virtual Choir YouTube video presenting an awe-inspiring choir comprised of over 185 singers from 12 countries. The video received over three million views. Since then, Whitacre’s virtual choir concept has grown, his April 2012 release “Water Night” featuring 3,746 singers and representing over 73 countries.
The Power
In his 2012 TED talk on the power of crowd-sourced creativity, Whitacre emphasized the unique power and combination of large collaboration and community that enabled this project. And enriching the project even further was the lasting connection he and the hundreds of choir members made with each other, inspiring multiple lifetimes of creativity.
Like Eric Whitacre, others are also discovering the power of crowds in working towards a goal. For example, when you use Google’s Captcha and enter your interpretation of blurry letters to prove you’re real, you’re actually part of a crowd-sourcing project helping Google translate old documents. Other business leaders use crowds to generate new ideas, retire old ones, and to benefit from multiple types of creativity rather than the in-house only types. The most frequently used forms of crowd-sourcing are outsourcing tasks, survey generation, viral marketing, and project funding. As the science of crowds grows, even more ways are on the horizon.
Crowd Making
In the movie, The Field of Dreams, farmer Ray Kinsella builds a baseball diamond on his farm and sure enough, crowds came to relive their youthful pastime with a game of ball.
Next time you hear an announcement for a “free knife set” at Wal-Mart, sure enough, you can watch the crowds come to listen to the spiel in exchange for a shiny new kitchen tool.
And go to this year’s Comic-Con and you’ll see a range of people eager to connect over their shared appreciation for super-heroes and surreal story lines.
Crowds naturally form for several reasons, but usually to satisfy curiosity, to connect with similar-minded individuals, to support a cause or for working towards a goal for personal gain.
Take Action
To make the most of crowd-sourcing for your business, keep three things in mind.
1. Set your goals. What do you hope to accomplish from crowd-sourcing — is it new product ideas, fund-raising, or target audience discovery? List the possibilities and rank them in order of priority.
2. Build a platform. Your crowd-sourcing platform can be as simple as a call for YouTube videos or as complicated as building your own open marketplace. No matter its size, once you get started, the crowd will lead your response and spur your creativity.
3. Trust the crowd. When the crowd reveals an answer you weren’t expecting or even one that goes against your internal surveys, go with it anyway. Remember it’s easy for our own bias to deceive us.