Directions of Application of Crowd-Technologies in the Activities of Enterprises

With the development of technologies, the urgent problem of finding modern progressive tools for the efficient operation of the enterprise and the management of all its processes. For this purpose, the directions of application of crowd-technologies in the activities of enterprise have been considered. In the process of research, such general and specific scientific methods of investigation were used: a systematic approach, methods of logical generalization and comparison, scientific abstraction, methods of synthesis and analogies. The methodological base of the research was made by scientific works of national and foreign scientists, analytical materials on the research problem. This article provides a theoretical justification of the essence of crowd-technology as an economic category. It has been proved that crowdtechnology is associated with the organization and use of the results of communities, as well as other unstructured groups on the Internet, based on the social interaction of the participants in these communities. As a result of the research, the main directions of application of crowd-technologies in the activity of enterprises have been determined, in particular crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, crowd-marketing, crowd-working, crowd-recruiting and others. The crowdsourcing is a modern, effective management tool, which enables the use of knowledge employees, customers and partners to solve current business problems. The crowdfunding as collective funding means the collaboration of people, who voluntarily combine their money or other resources together. The crowdmarketing involves managing online communities on the Internet. The crowdworking is the implementation of paid, short-term tasks conveyed via Internet platforms or smartphone apps. The crowd-recruiting is the technology of personnel search in social networks. On the base of summarizing of literary sources and a valid practice the advantages and disadvantages of their use both for large industrial enterprises and for medium and small businesses, as well as for the participants in the crowdsourcing project themselves have been substantiated. This study expands the knowledge about the essence, value and preferences of crowd-technologies in industrial enterprises in order to increase competitiveness and optimize their functioning. This article may be useful for managers of various levels, who are involved in crowd-technologies implementation in the activity of enterprises, as a modern management tools in the context of “open innovation”.