Research On Components And Operational Mechanism Of Crowdsourcing Business Model

With the rapid development of Internet technology, network technology in Web2.0 era provides the Internet users with abilities to view, copy, modify the Web content, changing them from the initial, passive recipients of information to the current Web content creators. Moreover, Internet users are experiencing variations from the "digital immigrants" to "digital natives". "Digital natives" are growing in the digital age from birth. They own amazing talent to master digital tools and communication methods. Besides, in the real world, both education and community pay unprecedented attention to professional degree, and job satisfaction is deteriorating from day to day. In stark contrast, internet users participate in the virtual world to create in the areas of interest, and generously contribute their wisdom, capacity and idle material resources with the unprecedented enthusiasm. It is just to meet the urgent needs of a large number of businesses to integrate external resources and capabilities. Crowdsourcing and crowdsourcing business model based on the conception came into being.There is no accepted theoretical basis for the phenomenon of crowdsourcing at present. But it can be explained from different perspectives through the traditional management theories-Maslow's hierarchy of needs which summarizes the public motivation of participation and creation; The resource-base view which finds the ways for businesses to obtain the resources; Value chain theory which reveals how companies select appropriate parts to implement crowdsourcing.Crowdsourcing can not only integrate both internal and external resources to form the overall solution with the sustainable profitability, and create new business models, but also can be used as a module to embed in and optimize the original business model. Currently, crowdsourcing business model includes wiki model involving in the public content creation and the value chain model re-structuring the course of traditional products and services in accordance with crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing module optimizing the traditional business model includes the value chain module, artificial intelligence module, idle resources module, community information module. Both crowdsourcing business model and crowdsourcing module of traditional business are under the constant evolution, supplement and improvement. Crowdsourcing module can be developed into a complete crowdsourcing business model when it reaches maturity.Crowdsourcing business model contains four basic elements of value proposition, organizational arrangements, relationship interface and financial arrangements. They can be further subdivided into ten sub-elements, such as customer value, the public value, value orientation, resource and capability, platform channel, the public relation, customer relation, partnership, revenue model and cost structure. Elements are interconnected, eventually forming the overall framework of crowdsourcing business model. From the dynamic point of view, in order to ensure the business model to achieve the set targets under the motive and push power, it needs basic mechanism and support mechanism. The former includes value creation mechanism, benefit distribution mechanism, integration mechanism of information involving value flow, capital flow, information flow, logistics, and other aspects. The latter includes support mechanism such as systems, culture, law, technical support and others. They coordinate and cooperate with each other in the overall operational mechanism.The paper aims to collect, sort and compare a large number of cases to dig up the nature of crowdsourcing from the phenomenon. On the one hand, explore the practical application of crowdsourcing business model and its module on the perspective of the companies or organizations; On the other hand, put the public into the business model, and provide new solutions for companies to utilize external resources and capacities and exploit new profit flow.