Crowd Engineering: Breaking Traditional Silos

According to CrowdSourcing Week 2016's white paper on Collaborative Society, "silos as such are not a problem. Departments, task forces and project teams enable organisations to be efficient and to foster know-how, expertise and experience. However, the walls surrounding the silos and the lack of porosity between different entities and groups are problematic. They lead to - whether actual or perceived - impoverishment, frustration and fear of the unknown, impacting negatively the agility and effectiveness of any organisation. The issues at stake are absolutely essential. For institutions and organisations, it is a matter of adapting to change in a fast moving environment". Regarding engineering, there are three traditional silos that constrict and slow down the expansion of businesess: especialized providers and geographical and industry limitations. Nevertheless, by implementing crowd engineering it is possible to easily and finally break down these barriers for good. Traditionally, companies outsource some processes and services to providers that deliver the solutions they are familiar with - and nothing else. However, the contributions from the crowd are innovative and unique, since they are tailor made solutions for whatever engineering challenge a company might need to face. Using crowd engineering, said solutions can come from nearly anybody: a freelance engineer, a small company, an engineer that wants to learn and explore in other industries... Another frequently discussed issue is how to overcome geographical limitations in engineering. Companies have teams that can certainly be trusted but, sometimes, the talent and creativity needed for a specific task might be somewhere out there. Through crowdsourcing engineering challenges online, these companies are able to obtain solutions from engineers working remotely all over the world. Last but not least is the benefits that come from working with a cross-industry approach. Luckily, when crowdsourcing solutions for a specific industry, it is fairly possible to find an engineer from a completely different field who might have already solved a similar issue. Modifying and adapting solutions that already exist for other industries is absolutely feasible and it saves time and money. If you liked this topic, Enrique Ramírez, ennomotive CEO, will participate in CrowdSourcing Week 2016 giving a talk on how to use crowdsourcing to improve energy efficiency on Thursday 24th November. Stay tuned on our Twitter account and Facebook page. Are you interested in working on remote engineering projects that fit your area of expertise (or in completely unrelated ones, a real challenge)? Join us to help leading companies go to the next level