## 2 What is Crowdsourcing?
### Indicative Platforms for Crowdsourcing Applications  
As the idea of \"online collaborative problem solving\" through the adoption of crowdsourcing gains ground, several types of web platforms have been developed, facilitating the online publication of a problem and offering the potential of participants to be invited and contribute to the problem solving process. With the support of such a kind of platform, participants communicate and publish their opinions or proposed solutions for the problem under study. In a nutshell, crowdsourcing platforms enable and support the whole process, as they form the \"space\" where the whole action takes place. In the following, some of the most common crowdsourcing platforms are presented [10]:  
* Research and Development (R&D) Platforms: These are platforms allowing the integration of external knowledge to the internal knowledge base and methods that a company utilizes during the production process. Any company that seeks the solution to a problem relating to the R&D sector, may upload it on the website of any of these platforms in order to involve the public or experts and get as a response solutions to this specific \"call for proposal\". In such cases, the crowd imagines, designs and proposes several ideas or products that the company can produce and promote in the market. The basic goal is the exploitation of the most innovative ideas. * Marketing, Design and Idea Platforms: These are platforms relating to the design of products, the promotion of marketing issues and the exploitation of ideas concerning corresponding issues. They are similar to the \"R&D platforms\" and strongly related to market research, consumers' vision and the generation of new designs and ideas. * Collective Intelligence and Prediction Platforms: These are platforms dealing with the solution of problems concerning forecasting, data mining and forecasts about the tension of the global market through the acquisition of knowledge and judgment from the public. \"Lumenogic\", concerning the prediction of the market, and \"Kaggle\", concerning data mining and forecasting, are two representative platforms belonging to this category. * Open Innovation Software Platforms: These are platforms dealing with software development after clients' requests. Such a platform enables the generation of innovative software solutions for an extended spectrum of applications. Among the most popular are \"Imaginatik\" and \"Napkin Labs\". * Creative Co-creation Platforms: These are platforms relating to the design and sale of several products, such as clothes, presents, _etc._ \"Spreadshirt\" asks participants to create their \"own shirt\". \"Threadless\" gives participants the opportunity to create and also sell their T-shirts. \"Artistshare\" calls fans for funding new artists, while \"Mookum\" is about co-creating lifestyles and interior products. * Corporative Platforms (Product Ideas): These are platforms dealing with the design of products, such as mobile phones, cars, _etc._ In these cases, cooperation with companies that produce such products can take place. It is remarkable that \"Fiat Mio\" is a platform inviting people to design cars, while \"Betavine\" is Vodafone's mobile app community, where people have access to documentation and tools in order to design their own apps. * Public Crowdsourcing Platforms: These are platforms dealing with innovation in universities, such as medical innovation, _etc._, but also platforms adopted to facilitate the public to express opinions and ideas on environmental issues. Such platforms of this kind are \"iBridge Network\", focused onuniversity innovation, \"Picnic Green Challenge\", asking for ideas to save the planet, and \"Galaxy Zoo\", an open platform serving the discovery of the universe through the contribution of the crowd.