'''Crowd computingComputing''' IsEric Brown, co-author of "The Effective CIO", coined the term "crowd computing" in 2009.<ref>Brown, Eric J. and William A. Yarberry, Jr. (2009). The Effective CIO. Boca Raton: [[Taylor and Francis|Taylor & Francis]].</ref> It is an overarching term which defines the myriad of tools that enable idea sharing, non-hierarchical decision making and the full utilization of the world’s massive "[[cognitive surplus]]”-the ability of the world’s population to collaborate on large, sometimes global projects. <ref>Shirky, Clay. TED Talk June 2010 http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.html</ref> Crowd computing brings together the strengths of [[crowdsourcing]], [[automation]] and [[machine learning]].
Prof. Rob Miller of MIT further defines crowd computing as “harnessing the power of people out in the web to do tasks that are hard for individual users or computers to do alone. Like cloud computing, crowd computing offers elastic, on-demand human resources that can drive new applications and new ways of thinking about technology.” <ref>Miller, Rob. Microsoft research talk, June 19, 2013; http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=194501</ref>
