Combining crowdsourcing and Porter’s value chain

Abstract

Porter’s value chain consists of operations which are required to provide a product or service to the customer. Customers, possible customers, and other individuals can be a part of Porter’s value chain in several ways. Crowdsourcing is a task taking place inside or outside the normal organizational setup in an undefined crowd. This paper introduces the application of crowdsourcing to Porter’s value chain which consists of primary and support activities. The research is a multi-case study and includes 18 organizations from a wide range of industry sectors. The organizations are micro, small, medium, and large size corporations.