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Crowdsourcing is the ultimate form of handing control back to the people. Indeed it is this type of Glasnost that some people believe will be the way business manage to continue operating in the future.

Here’s a cracking example which could save the motor industry. A new independent car company is rising from the ashes of the automotive giants of the 20th Century – Local Motors (www.local-motors.com).

What local motors have done is used a mass communications channel (in this case Twitter primarily) to aggregate information on what people most want from a vehicle. Instead of just a few designers sitting round a table they have opened up the process to the world – the end user – and approached the whole process in reverse/from bottom up.

The results are interesting. Take a look at the Rally Fighter below… is this the type of car you would have chosen to build, own and drive?!

It’s crowdsourcing taken to the extreme. There are obviously easier ways of us all doing similar activities on smaller scales. For example if you have a section of content you need to write for which it would be beneficial to call on the masses – perhaps those with more opinion, experience, or even knowledge – it has never been easier to do so.

Hand over control – it works!

Read more about Crowdsourcing in Jeff Howe’s book on the subject; Forrester Research call it Groundswell – more here; Audi have a Facebook group on their own crowdsourcing project here; and Fiat are doing something similar here.