3. Crowdsourcing as a Competitive Advantage for New Business Models

The current organizational environment is characterized by the evolution and transformation of information and communication technologies, the eruption of social networks, and, with it, the growing importance of the participation of customers and other contributors in the behavior of these firms. Participating customers are increasingly influencing the development of marketing initiatives in the production process of firms, while the development of social networks and online communities has engendered new business or strategic models where diverse participants in social networks are becoming the crucial element for success. Taking into account these facts, this chapter focuses on the importance of this participation through the development of “crowdsourcing”. The chapter defines the concept, analyzes its possible uses for the improvement of different organizational areas, and finally explains the crowdsourcing implementation process via a series of steps. The study is important as it opens up new areas of research in the literature and also provides some practical analysis and examples of its use by organizations.