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Crowdsourcing is a concept that encourages organizations to access ideas and expertise from an untapped knowledge base that often includes customers. The survey was conducted among MENG members in December of 2007 in order to gauge the opinions and experiences of its members regarding this topic. The majority of the members who responded to the survey were Chief Marketing Officers and VPs of Marketing.

Of particular interest is the way that these marketing executives view the effectiveness of crowdsourcing relative to internal R&D staffs for new product and service development. Sixty-two percent of executives surveyed rated crowdsourcing and consumer collaboration as an effective or highly effective approach to new product and service development, while only 11 percent more rated an internal R&D staff this way. This is a stunning development in the way executives consider approaching R&D. Additionally, 63 percent rated employee ideas and contributions as effective or highly effective, while 60 percent did the same for sourcing ideas from functional experts accessible from business and knowledge networks. Rated lowest was the use of traditional consulting and professional services firms (54 percent).

This blurring of business and consumer focused applications is called “consumerization” by technology research firms such as Gartner and executives at companies such as Microsoft. Consumerization posits that consumer technologies — including social networking tools, user generated content and wikis (web-based software that allows people to create content collaboratively) — are being increasingly adopted by corporate America

Experts at Wharton agree that consumer technology has been going corporate in recent years. Underlying this emerging trend are young and tech-savvy workers — called “digital natives”

conundrum to the traditional corporate technology department. Previously, companies dictated what software and hardware were used for work purposes. Today, choosing technology is becoming increasingly democratic as workers get more of a say