Crowdsourcing as an Element of Expertise

This paper focuses on the analysis of the design and expertise of humanitarian and social innovations. The author concludes that in the above-mentioned processes experts face a number of unforeseen difficulties. These difficulties are caused by quite a peculiar “epistemological barrier,” which is associated with the fact that humanitarian and social innovations are commonly closely related to certain local contexts, while experts assess them basing on some common formalized knowledge, which is not necessarily referred to the local contexts. The discussion ends with the implication that to overcome this “barrier” it is necessary to use the informal knowledge and experience of ordinary people for whom local contexts form their everyday life background. The crowdsourcing technology serves the case, which becomes a part of the project expertise.