Digital Tools and Mass Participation

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Contents

Introduction        2

Literature review        2

What is the foresight process        2

Crowdsourcing        3

Types of Crowdsourcing        4

The Digital Tools Being Used        6

Challenges Of Crowdsourcing        7

Conclusion        9

References        10

Introduction

Knowledge management (KM) is playing an important role in society and is quickly becoming a compelling issue within organisations. Knowledge management according (Usman & Ahmad 2012, p 22) “is the management of information and knowledge and their usage in organizational business processes within the organisation.”  The main focus of knowledge management as oultined by Usman & Ahmad (2012) is steering strategy and, identifying and communication the various types of knowledge that reside in within the organizational resources  in order to support integration to improve productitvity and efficiency.  

One of the steering strategies within organization is the use of strategic foresight. Strategic foresight according to Consultancy (2013) is ability to create and sustain a variety of high quality forward views and to apply the emerging insights in organizationally useful ways. Mass participation is currently being used as means of knowledge acquisition and management which is an integral part of the strategic foresight process. According to Papadopoulou & Giaoutzi (2014) “Crowdsourcing is a form of mass participation where the focus is on knowledge acquisition for problem solving through the collection and sysnthesis of distributed knowledge.”

Information technology is playing a key role in knowledge management and effective  knowledge management as outlined by Mahapatra & Sarkar (2000), requires approapriate use of organizational strategies as well as information technology(IT). Mahapatra  and Sarkar refer to IT as an essential enabler of organizational KM and believes  that the degree of reliance of (KM) initiative on IT is a contingent on the KM strategy adopted by the organization.

With main reference being made to an article written  by Elina Hilttunen entitled “Crowdsourcing the Future: The Foresight process at Finpro”, along with other relevant literature on the topic, this paper will critically evaluate the capacity of mass participation and the use of digital tools in addressing knowledge management and learning challenges.

Literature review

What is the foresight process

According to Consultancy (2013), Averil Horton defined the foresight process as having three distinctive phases. These phases are input, foresight and output. Each phase creates greater value of the previous one. As the outputs move up, the information value chain from information through knowledge to understanding and eventually to wisdom. This value is however realized when the process has ended and this frequently after a significant time lag. This process is time consuming as each phase is more difficult and abstract and less easy to measure than the preceding one. Although the process is time consuming, a successful foresight process will result in decision and action being taken which would have been different if the process was not carried out.

Strategic foresight  according Consultancy (2013) is a set of methods, tools, technologies and actions, used to accurately describe both the current and future business environment of an organization. In order to minimize potential risk and to capitalise on opportunities, strategic foresight is used to predict possible changes in the environment. Strategic foresight combines technology and expert analysis to determine the factors which most likely have an impact on the business environment and development of the organisation. The process involves the examination of the information, its analysis, selection and diffusion to end users.

In his articule Hiltunen (2011), alluded to foresight becoming a serious asset when an orgainsational foresight process is linked to the strategy process. According to Hiltunen (2011), the advantage of this approach is the commitment and active participation of senior management to the organisation’s unifying and direction towards growth. Hiltunen (2011), highlighted a disadvantage of the foresight process  in which there is limited interest towards senior management, which can result in the process being undermined as the valuable information of the employees will be left out of the foresight process.

Hiltunen (2011) believes that the employees  who interface with clients are better at recognizing change than senior management, as senior management are often isolated from the activities on the ground. Hiltunen is of the opinion that the foresight activities should include everyone in the organisation and the proper channels for data collection should be easily available.

Crowdsourcing

In his article, Hiltunen (2011) made reference to the wisdoms of crowds as a concept made popular by best selling books “The Wisidom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki and Wikinomics and “How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. According to Hitunen the idea behind the wisdom of crowds is that a crowd of people, without knowing each other’s opinion, make better choices that selected experts. In is article (Howe, 2008, p.1 ) defined crowdsourcing as

“Crowdsourcing” is the act of taking a task traditionally performed by a designated agent (such as an employee or a contractor) and outsourcing it by making an open call to an undefined but large group of people. Crowdsourcing allows the power of the crowd to accomplish tasks that were once the province of just a specialized few. In other words, crowdsourcing is to take the principles which have worked for open source software projects and apply them right across the entire spectrum of the business world.”

Crowdsourcing according to Howe (2008) has the potential to correctly address an ever present conundrum as the vast amount of talent and knowledge that exist among the human race is beyond our capacity to harness the invaluable quantities. Howe believed that crowdsourcing is mechanism by which the need for talent and knowledge is matched by the availability of it.

 In his article, Hiltunen (2011) outlined a number of companies that has utilized crowdsourcing, companies such as Linus Torvalds, creators of the open source platform , Linux. Canadian Goldcorp Inc, a company that sourced gold through “open source” exploration and Procter & Gamble through their Connect and Development internet platform, targeted fifty percent of their new product and services ideas outside of the company.