E-collaboration in crowdsourcing

In the age of the digital information society forms of communication have changed. This information society is characterised by a multitude of technical advances that enable innovative products and services for end users. However many innovation projects do not sufficiently take actual customer needs into account. Customers are assigned a purely passive role in the innovation process with no rights of co-determination. It would be interesting to redefine the traditional view of the customer. Customers should no longer assume the usual role of recipients but should instead be an integral part of the innovation process by being able to participate in this process themselves. In this paper this was analysed in more detail in the context of business. The company Local Motors was used as an example of this application.