Cambrian House
Encyclopedia
Cambrian House began as a crowdsourcing
community that pioneered the technology to tap crowds for the best software ideas. To power open innovation in other businesses, they developed a crowdsourcing platform Chaordix – the technology to harness a crowd for breakthrough ideas.
Weaknesses in the idea-community model included the challenge of convincing users to read and rate a rapidly growing pool of ideas, the relatively low quality of some ideas, the management complexity of distributed development, and the large number of duplicate submissions. These weaknesses have been successfully overcome by other companies including InnoCentive
, IStockphoto
, and t-shirt design company Threadless
.
http://mashable.com/2006/07/12/cambrian-house-digg-for-software-development/
Cambrian House is also the subject of an eponymous Harvard Business case (N9-607-089), which examines and discusses the concept of peer production
, the crowdsourcing
business model, and the possibility of using prediction market
s to estimate market demand for products.
The company has also gained a degree of notoriety for its unconventional promotional efforts, including feeding 1000 pizzas to Google unannounced http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=2611684613035575342&q=feeding+google, auctioning a celebrity endorsed laptop for charity http://www.followthewhitelaptop.com/, and weighing a goat http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-7680746727646474082&q=cambrian+house+goat
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
community that pioneered the technology to tap crowds for the best software ideas. To power open innovation in other businesses, they developed a crowdsourcing platform Chaordix – the technology to harness a crowd for breakthrough ideas.
Results
Launched in 2006, the original Cambrian House community attracted 50,000+ members and more than 7000 ideas from the crowd.Weaknesses in the idea-community model included the challenge of convincing users to read and rate a rapidly growing pool of ideas, the relatively low quality of some ideas, the management complexity of distributed development, and the large number of duplicate submissions. These weaknesses have been successfully overcome by other companies including InnoCentive
InnoCentive
InnoCentive is an "open innovation" company that takes research and development problems in a broad range of domains such as engineering, computer science, math, chemistry, life sciences, physical sciences and business and frames them as "challenge problems" for anyone to solve them...
, IStockphoto
IStockphoto
iStockphoto is an online, royalty free, international microstock photography provider operating with the micropayment business model. Images cost between 1 and 150 credits, depending on size and image collection .- History :The company was founded by Bruce Livingstone in May, 2000...
, and t-shirt design company Threadless
Threadless
Threadless is an online community of artists and an e-commerce website based in Chicago, Illinois since 2000. Co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart started the company with $1,000 in seed money after entering an Internet t-shirt design contest....
.
In the news
Cambrian House has been discussed, primarily in relation to crowdsourcing in a variety of media including: CBC Radio's - The Current http://video.google.ca/videosearch?q=cambrian+house, The Financial Timeshttps://registration.ft.com/registration/barrier?referer=http://www.ft.com/companies/it&location=http%3A//www.ft.com/cms/s/cec39da4-a04e-11db-9059-0000779e2340.html and Economist Intelligence Unit http://www.viewswire.com/index.asp?layout=EBArticleVW3&article_id=101756795&channel_id=&category_id=&refm=ebCh&page_title=Latest, in addition to new media such as TechDigest http://techdigest.tv/2006/09/wednesday_inter_4.html and MashableMashable
Mashable is an American news website and Internet news blog founded by Pete Cashmore. The website's primary focus is social media news, but also covers news and developments in mobile, entertainment, online video, business, web development, technology, memes and gadgets...
http://mashable.com/2006/07/12/cambrian-house-digg-for-software-development/
Cambrian House is also the subject of an eponymous Harvard Business case (N9-607-089), which examines and discusses the concept of peer production
Peer production
Peer production is a way of producing goods and services that relies on self-organizing communities of individuals who come together to produce a shared outcome. The production of content by the general public rather than by paid professionals and experts in the field...
, the crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
business model, and the possibility of using prediction market
Prediction market
Prediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions...
s to estimate market demand for products.
The company has also gained a degree of notoriety for its unconventional promotional efforts, including feeding 1000 pizzas to Google unannounced http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=2611684613035575342&q=feeding+google, auctioning a celebrity endorsed laptop for charity http://www.followthewhitelaptop.com/, and weighing a goat http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-7680746727646474082&q=cambrian+house+goat
Launched Businesses
- RobinHoodFund (later sold as Greedy or Needy)- a cyberbegging website dominated by scammers
- Prezzle- a virtual wrapper for online gift certificates
- Gwabs- PC based P2P desktop combat game
- [ FilmRiot]- online community-based service that allows independent producers of media to seek out support and funding from the public
- Mob4Hire- Crowdsourcing the testing of mobile phone applications