Abstract
Entrepreneurs are looking for effective ways to internationalize their business ideas. Online crowdsourcing platforms enable them to access vast resources held by geographically scattered individuals with different backgrounds who are outside an organization's boundaries. Entrepreneurs leverage knowledge and services from a crowd (an undefined group of web users) through an open online call for solution. Presented analysis will help to understand better the relationship between crowdsourcing business model and global entrepreneurship. Crowdsourcing process goes beyond achieving an efficiency-driven economy stage. The new venture reflects better competitiveness and economic-development performance.
TopThe relation between Society and Information can be seen from a triple perspective. Of the three terms (Information Society, Knowledge Society, and Informational Society) emerged in the economic literature focused on this issue, the first term, created by the American sociologist Daniel Bell in 1973, was Information Society. Bell (1973) emphasizes the strong relation between the IS and some economic factors, and especially the impact of technological innovations on global companies through the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), as a distinct characteristic of the post-industrial society which we are immersed. A post-industrial society characterized, as in Bell (1973), by [1] the substitution of industry and manufacturing by services; [2] a division of labor exclusively based on productivity, and [3] an increasingly importance of skilled labor services. The Information Society, with emphasis on economic elements, has been widely used by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank Group, and this term has been incorporated into the agendas of the G7 (later G8 or G7 plus Russia), and into the World Summit of the United Nations (UN).
As shown in Área-Moreira (2008: 36), the Information Society is mainly determined by [1] changes in the sphere of private life resulting from both the use of ICTs and the new use of labor; [2] a new combination between the use of working and leisure time resulting from the use of a “dialectical and symbiotic interaction” (Area-Moreira, 2008: 37) between ICT and the social, cultural and economic context in which they are used; [3] the commercialization of culture and leisure thanks to the advancement of economic neoliberalism, as the dominant theoretical School of thought in the most economically advanced countries of the world; and [4] the existing accelerated scientific and technological progress in the G-8, a process accelerated by the economic globalization through the use of ICTs. In short, the Information Society has shifted the traditional work process characterized by the intensive use of labor, to a more productive and effective type of work defined by the use of new technologies (Lash, 2005).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Persuasion: A symbolic process that involves an attempt to influence in the transmission of a message.
Integral Values: Set of morality-based characteristics allowing a harmonious development of the individual, as well it permits to achieving its mental, emotional, and even spiritual balance. This balance has a positive influence on corporations.
EFQM Model: European self-assessment model based on a detailed analysis of the functioning of the management system in organizations, using as a guide the criteria approved in the model.
Conversational Competencies: Capacity for convincing others in a long-term perspective, so ideas and features remain in time.
Informational Competencies: Set of competencies, generally linked to labor, acquired thanks to the availability of large flows of information through the use of new technologies.
Knowledge Society: Developed society based on the access to knowledge.
Digital Illiteracy: Digital gap emerged in certain social groups that have been left out of this technological process derived from their maladjustment to new technological developments.