Crowdsourcing: Toward innovation of project management and mass customization

This paper explores how mass customization process and delivery is improved through crowdsourcing firms’ innovative project practices and processes. Five firm-based case studies were conducted in Australia and the United States of America of firms which operationalised crowdsourcing projects. This included 31 firm executive and crowd participant interviews. Findings suggest that crowdsourcing injects dynamism, huge crowd size, up-down scaling of resources, earlier customer involvement and participation as well as improved delivery speed in project management (PM) practices and mass customization processes. Crowdsourcing brings mass resources at low cost and applies the crowd in a fluid manner for agile and speedy delivery results in PM and mass customization. This study challenges conventional processes and practices concerning project management and mass customization and provides a new and enhanced understanding via crowdsourcing mechanisms. Crowdsourcing firms and characteristics that are important to PM practices and delivery of mass customized outcomes are explored as a way to achieve cost efficiency, scale, flexibility, and risk reduction.