Nathan Eagle, founder and CEO of mobile phone crowdsourcing company Jana, is nominated on Wired magazine’s Smart List 2012: 50 people who will change the world.

Each nominee was selected by a “top achiever in their field”, who were tasked with nominating “one fresh, exciting thinker who is influencing them, someone whose ideas or experience they feel are transformative.”

In Eagle’s case this was Esther Dyson, an investor and entrepreneur focused on breakthrough innovation across a number of diverse fields. She said: “Nathan Eagle is not just smart; he applies his intelligence to the real world, with both vision and a business model.”

Jana, which was founded as TxtEagle in 2009, recruits people to perform ‘microtasks’ by sending information by text message; incentivising them to participate by using free mobile airtime as a reward. As well as carrying out consumer surveys and advertising audits, the approach has been used to monitor hospital blood supplies and to populate GPS systems.

Dyson added: “His company, Jana, employs thousands and, ultimately, he employs millions of people in emerging markets as market researchers.”

You can read more about Eagle and his company in an interview we ran last year, and check out the full Wired list here.

Guest post by Bronwen Morgan