How can crowdsourcing help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic? An explorative overview of innovative collaborative practices

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented public health and economic crises. As a response to face the current emergency, science and innovation communities are realizing a fundamental contribution to tackle the crisis. During the past few months, we have witnessed an impressive number of initiatives to encourage networking opportunities, to foster interactions between the different stakeholders involved (health care, industry, governments, academics, ordinary people), and to develop innovative solutions and collaborative infrastructures in support of the health sector. Adopting an open and collaborative approach and joining forces is essential in the fight against the COVID-19 crisis. Also, the involvement of crowds as innovation partners can be of great support. Therefore, our work aims to review and classify those initiatives, based on the crowdsourcing model, that have been put into place to face the emergency generated by the novel coronavirus pandemic. We illustrate the 16 crowdsourcing initiatives devoted to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak that we identified, detailing their development and implementation. Then, we propose a classification of them, along two dimensions: type of crowdsourcing configuration and kind of tasks, being able to find a relationship between these two aspects. Evidence from the analyzed projects suggests that across disparate domains, crowdsourcing can be an effective strategy in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To conclude, we suggest some important implications for innovation best practices and lessons that can be learned for the future: crowdsourcing, harnessing the power of crowds and online communities, can help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, by providing original, actionable, quick, and low-cost solutions to the challenges of the current health and economic crisis.