Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digital platforms to attract and divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. Crowdsourcing is not limited to online activity, however, and there are various historical examples of crowdsourcing. The word crowdsourcing is a portmanteau of "crowd" and "outsourcing". In contrast to outsourcing, crowdsourcing usually involves less specific and more public groups of participants.

Outsourcing is the act of a company relying on an external provider for a business process that otherwise would be internal. Generally, it involves an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise would be carried out internally, a.k.a. in-house,