In months prior, I have written about the ease at which new platforms are launched and the diversity of crowdfunding models and how they are accepted in Europe and the US. Reading those articles, you will probably know that I am sceptical about the booming development platforms and how they all consider themselves to be the financial infrastructures of the future.

For crowdsourcing purists, who sleep with copies of The Wisdom of Crowds under their pillows, the rise of the 'contest' model of crowdsourcing has been like watching an American remake of your favorite TV show: the characters may have the same names, but what made it special has gone (and where did that wisecracking robot-butler come from?).

Crowdsourcing has historically been defined from a business standpoint as little more than a series of one-off projects. Fortunately for all of us, there is an exciting sea-change underway for the crowdsourcing industry and we all need to be ready to embrace it!

Does microtasking have something to teach us about innovation?  David Alan Grier thinks so, and, in this month's video podcast, eloquently tells us exactly how.  Watch the video to learn how gold standard qualification tests & other crowdsourcing methodologies can improve how we innovate & understand how to predict the success of innovation.

By now you have probably heard the story of Karen Klein from Greece, New York. Karen is a bus monitor at the local middle school. On a recent trip, Karen was bullied by the children that she is hired to monitor. As happens so often in the age of Youtube, the entire episode was caught on a camera phone, uploaded to the Internet, and instantly went viral (8m views and 130k comments since June 19^th).

"We're a platform." Said the third platform founder I spoke with that day. Try it. Ask any new internet entrepreneur what their business is and 4 out of 5 will tell you they are a platform.

Who is your customer? Is it the crowd or is it the end customer of your service? One of the challenges facing many successful crowdsourcing businesses is the two-face messaging problem: on one hand your website and public persona needs to be engaging for your crowd of users while on the other hand you must attract customers to purchase the final product.

I had an interesting conversation with my team recently about which brands we thought would be great candidates to harness the power of crowdsourcing. You can imagine the emerging list was long, aspirational, and varied! We see crowdsourcing techniques and community engagement gaining more acceptance every day as a useful approach to building predictive insight capacity and brand loyalty, and we asked ourselves, "What brands do we think would be a great fit for crowdsourcing?"

Crowdfunding projects online have multiple pledge levels. That's the whole idea right? You participate in whatever way you can. Even the little guy can get involved.

Over the last year, crowdfunding has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. Sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have become a viable source of funding for both artistic and commercial projects. Crowdfunding has helped find backing for everything from Double Fine's latest adventure game to an incredibly versatile $20 iPhone tripod mount (plus a surprisingly moving documentary on Angolan Death Metal).