1. TopCoder : Developing Software through Crowdsourcing
Karim R. Lakhani, David A. Garvin, Eric Lonstein
Harvard Business School
31 May 2012
Yalçın YENİGÜN November 2013

2. Managing TopCoder The Supply Side :
George Tsipolitis (Vice President) : «When you are managing a community, you are no longer managing indivituals. We can’t control individuals, we can only control the process of their participation.»
Risk: The community could be unforgiven

3. Managing TopCoder Attraction:
TopCoder needed to have access to a critical mass of talent and coding capacity.
Solutions:
Algorithm contests
Paying for Google keyword searches using terms such as «design contests»
Member development days at international universities

4. Managing TopCoder Norms:
TopCoder had to maintain the highest standarts of contest integrity, fairness, transparency and quality.
Ex: No tolerance to cheating
Using unauthorized code = eliminating from contest
Contest transparency: Storing all contests and statistics in a dataware house

5. Managing TopCoder Governance:
TopCoder executives are responsible for final decisions
Executives got feedback from community by forums
Disagreement between contestant & reviewer: TopCoder employee and contestant investigated

6. Managing TopCoder Resource allocation:
Controlling contest participation
Run contests concurrently
Not to act like a community boss
Hughes : «We don’t own this community. We want people to be here when they want to be here.»

7. Managing TopCoder Retention:
TopCoder supply community members with consistent work streams and prize money
Get feedback for contests
Flexible working hours
Members can also develop TopCoder’s internal systems

8. Managing TopCoder The Demand Side : Platform Managers:
Provide project status updates to clients
Make suggestions for contest prize amounts
Define contest requirements
Support role after delivery
High Cost ($ for year)

9. Managing TopCoder The Demand Side : TopCoder Direct:
Client used the company’s platform with little or no intervention (self-service)
Platform managers: educate clients to use platform
Platform managers: co-pilot
Reduce platform manager cost

10. Future 2010 : revenue doubled Competitions increased 30%
members
Contract with NASA
TopCoder Direct : driving 2010’s success
2011 : more than members
Experienced copilots

11. Future RentACoder, Elance, oDesk: buy talent approach
Offering more money would increase participation
What would happen if TopCoder clients expanded?
What would happen if a company like Accenture started to develop software in the same way as TopCoder?
Would the TopCoder community remain intact?