Crowdsourcing Links Feb. 23, 2011

A handful of links and commentary from around the net on our favorite topics.

1. Mashable – Three studies in crowdsourcing: Ben & Jerry’s let’s you build a flavor to promote fair trade agreements; Dunkin Donuts encourages fans to create a summer play list to promote “Coolatta Mixology” adds 300k FB fans; Coca cola (via subsidiary ) let’s fans build the next vitaminwater product. I gained 5lbs reading that article. via @clintonbon
2. Lifeboat.com – Talks about improvements in manufacturing and industry using the % of time spent producing food as a measuring stick (hint – as a country the US spends a lot less time producing food.) One point of contention – they project labor costs to remain high, but the manners we work and the way we procure labor services are dramatically shifting – crowdsourcing being one example – even though labor rates remain high, the effective cost of the outcome should be driven down. (This is part of why chasing a cheap man hour around the globe is fool’s gold.) via instapundit
3. TechCrunch – Profiles Threadless‘ launch of Threadless Atrium a platform for supporting causes. definitely has the potential to do good stuff. via @JasonSpector
4. NYT on The Patent Office’s troubles. Maybe they can figure out a way to crowdsource this effort? Any ideas? via @Toffeemen68
5. GigaOM – Hiring decisions are moving towards quantitative assessments based on online rankings. (That’s why companies like Google, Facebook, etc. have long recruited highly ranked members from the TC member base, they are early adopters.) via @akuhn
6. The News Observer – This link is a bit old, but Raleigh, NC is not crowdsourcing governance. A Citizen activist gets in trouble for producing deliverables of too high a quality. (Don’t worry, we have yet to fail a submission for that!)
7. The Crowdsourcing & Innovation Daily via @mmartoccia