In fields as diverse as technology entrepreneurship and the arts, crowds of interested stakeholders are increasingly responsible for deciding which innovations to fund, a privilege that was previously reserved for a few experts, such as venture capitalists and grant-making bodies. Despite the growing role of crowds in making decisions once left to experts, however, we know little about how crowds and experts may differ in their ability to judge projects, or even whether crowd decision-making is based on any rational criteria at all. Drawing on a panel of national experts and data from the crowd funding platform Kickstarter, this study offers the first detailed comparison of crowd and expert judgment. There are three main findings. First, on average, there is a remarkable degree of congruence between the realized funding decisions by crowds and the evaluation of those same projects by experts. Second, there seems to be an "art" to raising money from crowds, one that may be systematically different from that of raising money from experts. Third, crowd funded projects are equally likely to have delivered on budget, result in organizations that continue to operate, and be successful in other ways. Overall, crowd funding appears to allow projects the option to receive multiple evaluations and reach out to receptive communities that may not otherwise be represented by experts. Key concepts include:
- Crowds and experts make similar funding decisions.
- Where crowds and experts disagree, it is far more likely to be a case where the crowd is willing to fund projects that experts may not.
- Despite this, the findings show no quantitative or qualitative differences between projects funded by the crowd alone and those that were selected by both the crowd and experts.