BENVGGP4: Unilever & Crowdsourcing for Global Problem Solving

This presentation analyzes Unilever's use of crowdsourcing as a problem-solving technique for global prosperity, particularly within their Sustainable Living program. Crowdsourcing is defined as leveraging public input to address organizational challenges, ranging from internal staff issues to customer service improvements. While alternatives like Participatory Research and Design Thinking exist, crowdsourcing offers a versatile approach for various applications, including R&D, logo design, and fundraising. The process involves broadcasting a problem online and incorporating audience suggestions into the core team's strategies, as demonstrated by Unilever's successful implementation within rural communities. The presentation references various sources to support its analysis of crowdsourcing and Unilever's approach.

The collective decision making and
problem solving technique has gained
importance in the recent years as it has
become increasingly convenient for the
different organizations to gain the
perspective of the people with the
Internet medium (Djelassi and
Decoopman 2013). The given poster,
will be discussing the problem solving
technique named crowd sourcing
which can be described as a technique
whereby the different companies use
the public medium to understand
whether thee selected problem has a
well defined solution or not. The
company chosen is Unilever and the
Sustainability case study has been
considered for the same.
The umbrella of crowdsourcing is very large in nature and can be done for various
purposes like research and development, Logo designs, project fundraising and other
related mediums. There are a large number of platforms available for the same. The
procedure of crowdsourcing is very simple in nature. For instance, in the case of the
Unilever organization, the company broadcasted the problem online and received the
solutions given b the audience, the suggestions were passed to the core team and was
thereby applied in their Sustainability living program for the benefit of the rural
communities (Affect.media.mit.edu 2018).
PROBLEM SOLVING
FOR GLOBAL PROSPERITY
Crowdsourcing can be used in various
other segments or various dimensions of
the organization as well (Unilever global
company website. 2018). These include
segments like solving internal staff
problems, operational issues, issues
regarding the procurement, issues with
respect to packaging as well as customer
service can be easily solved with the
help of crowdsourcing. However, it can
be noted that thee are several other
techniques like Participatory research
and Design thinking and Decolonizing
methods can be used in cases the use of
the Crowdsourcing cannot be made
because of its unreliable nature
(Crawford et al. 2014).
References:
Affect.media.mit.edu. ,2018. [online] Available at:
https://affect.media.mit.edu/pdfs/14.Morris-McDuff.pdf [Accessed 9 Aug. 2018].
Crawford, B., Soto, R., Cuesta, R. and Paredes, F., 2014. Application of the artificial
bee colony algorithm for solving the set covering problem. The Scientific World
Journal, 2014.
Djelassi, S. and Decoopman, I., 2013. Customers' participation in product
development through crowdsourcing: Issues and implications. Industrial Marketing
Management, 42(5), pp.683-692.
Steffensen, S.V., 2013. Human interactivity: problem-solving, solution-probing and
verbal patterns in the wild. In Cognition beyond the brain (pp. 195-221). Springer,
London.
Unilever global company website. ,2018. Sustainable Living. [online] Available at:
https://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/ [Accessed 9 Aug. 2018].
Unilever UK & Ireland. ,2018. Home. [online] Available at:
https://www.unilever.co.uk/ [Accessed 9 Aug. 2018].
(Source: Steffensen 2013.)
Source :
(Unilever UK &
Ireland 2018).