Crowdsourcing as a new driver of the digital economy and a tool for harmonizing the interests of participants

Abstract

This study develops and complements the theoretical provisions of the scientific direction in which crowdsourcing is considered as a “tool for solving complex problems” in terms of understanding the processes of community formation based on interests and values. The hypothesis of the study — understanding the nature of the processes of harmonization, complementarity and cooperation of individual interests with social values allows us to explain the forms and nature of the formation and development of communities and, accordingly, the specifics of crowdsourcing processes occurring in them. The object of the study is the peculiarities of the formation and development of communities in the digital economy. The subject is new relations and communications in the digital economy that arise among economic entities in the process of creating and evolving communities and crowdsourcing. The first section presents the evolution of the definition and content of the phenomenon of “crowdsourcing” in order to understand the nature of this new phenomenon and the most important components of its development; the second section analyzes the essential characteristics of the basic economic category “interest” as the basis for the emergence and development of crowdsourcing, which made it possible to cluster interests, understand how they combine (conflict), develop motivation and form values, determining the nature and form of crowdsourcing communication; in the third section, on the basis of synthesis, the author’s model of the process of harmonization of interests, value crystallization, community formation and the emergence of crowdsourcing is developed, which allows us to consider crowdsourcing through the management paradigm and propose approaches to optimize these processes; in the fourth section, conceptual recommendations for applying the proposed model in practice are presented. The scope of application of the results is the development of economic science and understanding of new tools for its evolution, increasing “inclusion” (“involvement”) in economic development through crowdsourcing, the implementation of key projects in public policy.