Business model of crowdsourcing: Review paper

Crowdsourcing is a new wave of outsourcing which has become a new society paradigm that might change the outsourcing landscape in the future. Crowdsourcing offers substantial benefits to the involved parties. For crowdworkers, crowdsourcing offers flexibility in terms of time, locations and durations of doing tasks given to them and the most important is crowdsourcing will give them additional income to complement existing income that will help them to uplift their lifestyle. To organizations, crowdsourcing offers access to pool of talents or skills from all over the world which would not be economically feasible to maintain in-house or acquire out of house. In addition, faster execution as the tasks can be completed without having to hire or/ and train new employees. Since crowdsourcing is considered as a new business concept which involves different integrations of crowd worker, job provider and crowdsourcing web based platform, proper crowdsourcing initiatives need to be strategically planned and evaluated. Hence, this study will look into one of crowdsourcing important part which is crowdsourcing business model. Business models are very crucial as it will explain a plan for the successful operation of a business, identifying sources of revenue, the intended customer base, products, and details of financing. This paper reviews the existing business model of crowdsourcing and critical analysis for each business model.