Building connections between individuals in wired crowds to learn from each other or forming crowd teams can enable smart crowds to solve problems of increasing scope and complexity. The best type of population depends on the scope and complexity of the problem you are trying to solve. Our smart crowd framework proposes three different types of crowdsourcing Job Function Email List search crowds, wired crowds, and crowd teams suitable for different types of problems. (See Intelligent Crowd Framework.) Intelligent Crowd Framework Contrasting Search Crowds, Wired Crowds, and Crowd Teams Search Crowds: Define the Tasks and Rewards for Efficient Search Search crowds are most effective in finding solutions to well-defined problems of relatively small scope.

The problem itself may be quite complex, for example, addressing climate change but the answer you seek may be a simple one-pager outlining an idea. When the best skill or technical approach to solving a problem is not obvious, the search community works to its advantage. About the author is a visiting scholar at Yale University and associate professor of information systems at Northeastern University, where he is a joint professor in the Damore McGinn School of Business and School of Computer Science. is an associate professor at Babson College.