Sami Viitamaki emailed me this model for crowdsourcing. He calls it the FLIRT model. I like this -- it offers a useful way of viewing many crowdsourcing efforts.
I think what would be fascinating would be some kind of meta-view of crowdsourcing in general. In the main it's not new. And some of the "old" methods have their places, still. And some of the old methods have undergone and will continue to undergo change. For example, marketing research is an "old" method that is scoffed at by many today, but it has its uses even in the crowdsourced world.
And crowdsourcing brokers, as Sami quite rightly calls Innocentive, are serving yet another purpose. I don't think there's any one way that's best for companies to open themselves to customer communities, but discovering all the ways to do this and all the ways Web 2.0 is changing this landscape is immensely helpful.
By Renee Hopkins Callahan