Micro-consulting versus crowd sourcing
Jarred Myers dreams up a micro consulting scenario:
Let me indulge you with a role play, factory owner Jimmy is debating replacing his aging machinery, he has 4 options, rent, buy, finance or push it till it breaks, what does he do? This may look like an exam question, which it indeed could be, but it’s a real problem that a competent management accountant has the tools to address.
Jimmy posts his dilemma with a list of documentation available for decision making, he states the price range he’s prepared to pay for the service and awaits proposals.
Young smart underemployed management accountant Andrew, looks at this post and says “hey, I can do that, and I could use the cash” Andrew submits his proposal, Jimmy likes his approach, they agree on payment terms and deliverables and a management tool is born.
Jimmy benefits by not needing to employ a full time management accountant but still has the expertise available and Andrew spent a few nights after work earning some extra cash for his weekend getaway.
…so is this a potential new management tool? Could businesses outsource operational decisions? There’s a long list of advantages and disadvantages to a model like this but I believe the niche exists, at the risk of bastardizing another prefix; we could be looking at a new field called micro-consulting or for those who prefer processing information graphically, the long tail of management accounting.
This is the direction I’d like to go with what we started over at WP Questions. If that site does well, I’d like to do other, similar sites, expanding into every niche where small scale, remote consulting can work. However, Myers seems to think this is a species of crowd sourcing. I do not. Either a site focuses on the power of crowds, or it focuses on the power of experts. I do not think it can do both. I realize the difference is subtle, and in some cases there is no practical difference, but over the long term, I imagine these will be seen as distinct categories. The thing about consulting and experts is the degree of trust. Our very understanding of expertise is bound up with a sense of trust. Experts have reputations. Experts are mini-celebrities. A site trying to facilitate the skills, and the wisdom, of experts needs to proceed along different lines than a crowd sourcing site.
December 29th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Interesting post.
I agree that there is key differences between crowd sourcing knowledge and expert knowledge – the challenge as a provider is reaching the critical mass that will give you the ‘expert’ label as opposed to just being one of the crowd.
I think micro consulting will become more and more prevalent as social communication platforms grow as this model of service relies heavily on fast, simple interactions that generate a personalised knowledge base – Google Wave might be onto something here…
December 29th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Thanks, Luke. Myself and Darren Hoyt hope to figure out this model for business over the next few months. We are investing a lot of time into WP Questions, in the hopes that we can figure out how to unlock the potential that we assume is there. Clearly, there are some experts out there willing to offer their expertise:
http://www.wpquestions.com/user/winners/order/desc/
The fact that we’ve had some questions suggests that there is at least some market demand. At this point I think our main challenge is to figure out the marketing.