As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m a big fan of crowdsourcing as a method of attracting a wide and diverse range of talent towards a project.  As the saying goes, “whoever you work for, the smartest people work for someone else”.

Which is great, and there have been some fantastic examples of successful innovation derived from the crowd rather than in-house experts.  That isn’t to say the process can’t be improved however.

Many crowdsourced challenges operate on a winner takes all system whereby either the first entrant to meet the criteria, or the best entry (as chosen by the judges) is given the lions share of any prize fund.

Not only does this ensure that all of the other entrants go unrewarded financially, but it also often results in their intellectual contributions going to waste as well.  That level of wastage is not a direct cost to the sponsoring organization, so it isn’t generally regarded as an issue, but it’s far from either ideal or indeed fair.

A new Dutch platform believe they have a fairer approach to things.  Mobbr is a crowdpayments platform that claim to facilitate the fair and equitable distribution of money based upon the contributions each person makes to the project.

For instance, if an organization wishes to have some software developed, they can launch a project on Github, and Mobbr will split the funding for the project according to the contributions of each developer to the project.

The process is as easy as one or two clicks, with the aim being to further support the development of a more equitable online economy than is perhaps the case at the moment.

“Mobbr is going to radically change how people work and earn money. Mobbr allows businesses to pay ‘social salary’ to the crowd, based on the actual value that each individual had contributed,” founder Ernesto Spruyt said to me this week at TechCrunch Disrupt.

The social web has undoubtedly made it easier to tap into knowledge and insights from around the world.  The rise of platforms to enable this kind of work has led many to bemoan the impact it will have on the incomes and livelihoods of people around the world.

It’s possible that payment platforms such as Mobbr may redress the balance a little.  It’s a very nice concept and one that makes managing payments to multiple participants very easy and straightforward.

Suffice to say, the process is easiest when the output of each participant is clearly defined, so it may come up against limits on the kind of tasks it is applicable to, but it will be fascinating to see how the platform evolves over the next year or so.

Check out the video below for more information about the concept.