ABSTRACT
Some of the most fascinating innovation stories of the 2000s were about crowdsourcing. In 2008, rather than have its own employees translate its site from English to different languages, or contract the task to what it believed were some of the best translators around, Facebook turned to its users-the public-for help. Anyone who wanted to translate could help. The website was translated to French in 24 hours and to Spanish in two weeks.1 By the end of 2010, the website had been translated from English to 70 different languages, helping the firm land one billion registered members. Just as remarkable is Goldcorp’s story. In the late 1990s, the company encountered difficulties pinpointing the location of Gold on its property in Red Lake, Ontario, Canada and decided to turn to the public for help.2 Against its geologists’ advice, Goldcorp made its exploration databases available online to the public and offered cash prizes to anyone who could tell it where on its property it could find the gold. From the solutions that it received, Goldcorp struck enough gold to improve its value from $100 million to over $9 billion in a few years.
