Means and Roles of Crowdsourcing Vis-À-Vis CrowdFunding for the Creation of Stakeholders Collective Benefits

This work aims at assessing characteristics and roles of Crowdsourced activities vis-à-vis online CrowdFunding platforms, assessing potential collective benefits for stakeholders that arise from social media individual activities and investment decisions of users-investors. CrowdFunding platforms in fact leverage crowds and undefined pools of potential investors to screen, select and spread each CrowdFunding initiative in a detailed and thorough way – hence allowing users to perform several tasks that are traditionally carried out throughout IT models and static criteria. We identify 5 key roles played by Crowdsourcing Systems (CS) and we develop a potential model aimed at screening positive outcomes that benefit the collectivity (stakeholders). The model evaluates Crowdsourced activities as indicators for the creation of sustainable value for the enterprise and therefore for the collectivity of stakeholders. In order to test the model, we are currently deploying an Equity CrowdFunding platform embedding strong Crowdsourced tasks. In conclusion, we classify opportunities, limits and potential for a successful deployment of Crowdsourced tasks in CrowdFunding.