Interesting texts

This is the first book written about crowdsourcing, and it’s written by the man who coined the term: Jeff Howe. Although it’s written fairly recently, the truth is that the concept of crowdsourcing evolves very fast and there are aspects of the book that are a little behind. However, it is an indispensable book for anyone who wants to enter the world of crowdsourcing: gives an overview of the subject and allows to get in touch with all the areas where crowdsourcing is applicable.

This is a book written by a great number of professionals dedicated to crowdsourcing and open innovation (edited by Paul Sloan). It explains what is crowdsourcing and its relation with open innovation, how to manage teams and co-create with people from outside of the company, etc. It also addresses the issue of start using open innovation within a company, with special attention to legal issues and issues related with intellectual property. All these explanations are accompanied by examples and best practices.

The book is quite recent and gives an overview of current applications of collective intelligence in different areas. Written by various authors of various specialties, the book deals with the application of collective intelligence from the point of view of biology, economics, business, etc.

Highly recommended.

The term Wikikomics, Wikinomía in spanish, refers to the new art and science of collaboration. This book focuses on the benefits and conditions that exist in the work carried out by crowds. About its relationship with crowdsourcing, there are several direct relationships. The most notable is the one called ideagoras: “markets” that allows ideas, inventions and knowledge to be accessible to companies eager for innovation (such as InnoCentive).

This book focuses on the fact that the wisdom of the crowd is usually better than the wisdom of a man, however intelligent he may be. Although this book does not deal directly with crowdsourcing (in the first edition the term even existed) it treats related topics. On the other hand, the Wisdom of Crowds is used in different types of crowdsourcing innitiatives.

This book is a compendium of some of the articles that  wrote Claudio Ciborra (1951 – February 13, 2005). Apart from the name he gives to each of the chapters and their meaning (Krisis, Bricolage, Kairos and Affectio, etc..), The focus given to the issue of development of information systems and their characteristics is very interesting. On the other hand, this was the starting point in my study on the techno-social approach (or socio-technical, up to the author) of information systems.