Tapping into the crowd is an undoubted phenomenon.  What is equally unquestionable however is how far some organisations have gone down that road compared to others.  Wikipedia are a classic example of an organisation that have evolved around the crowd, whilst the open source movement are another champion of the full immersion approach.

A new paper explores the various facets of what it calls the peer production movement.  It looks in particular at three areas of peer production:

1. How peer production is organised
2. What motivates participants
3. How quality is maintained

The paper provides a nice introduction to this concept for those that are unfamiliar with it, and whilst unlikely to do any more than that, is nevertheless useful for those without a background in the topic.

Check it out here.