Crowdsourcing often gets negatively associated with competitive websites that utilize a crowd to submit ideas in order to select one winning entry, and less so with collaborative efforts like Linux and Wikipedia.

So, we present a little video to help explain that there’s a difference between competitive crowdsourcing, collaborative crowdsourcing, and purpose-driven collaborative crowdsourcing, especially when it comes to placemaking.

The video also communicates that crowdsourcing is not about design by committee/community, which is often uninspired, but with producing unexpected solutions by understanding the crowd’s most common values and allowing inspired design ideas by individuals.

See the video above for a quick overview. For more on the difference between competitive and collaborative crowdsourcing go here, learn more about crowdsourced placemaking here, and check out a great example here.

Notice that the ‘person icon’ is one of action, not just talk. That’s what purpose-driven collaborative crowdsourcing is all about.