Open-source problem-solving has become a fringe sensation in the corporate world – but one that will likely become more mainstream, with implications for the workplace.
The computer operating system LINUX is perhaps the most famous example of a small company building an innovative product through inviting any programmer to contribute.
But other companies have also found ways to build innovation and increase productivity through sharing the company’s previously proprietary information and inviting ideas from outsiders. Red Lake Mine is a good example. As detailed in Don Tapscott’s book Wikinomics and summarized by Preston Manning in an intriguing Globe and Mail article this week:
Mr. McEwen [Owner of Red Lake] offered $575,000 in prize money to participants with the best proposals for developing his mining property. To the horror of his company’s old guard, he posted all the proprietary geological data on the Red Lake property on the Internet, inviting analysis from geologists and other experts all over the world. Responses flooded in identifying target sites for development, only half of which had been identified by the company. To make a long story short, the open-source collaborative process aided Red Lake in finding and extracting more than eight million ounces of gold and in re-establishing the mine on a more prosperous footing than it had ever enjoyed before.
What interests me is how open-sourced problem-solving – or the wiki approach – might change some workplaces. Here are three ideas, please add more.
1. Some roles will involve building and reinforcing global “virtual” networks of key potential contributors.
2. Corporations will have to be less secretive; more employees will be involved in sharing the company’s story as well as day-to-day activities with customers, clients, and potential contributors.
3. Therefore, for an individual to succeed in a wiki-corporation or wiki-organization it will increasingly require being more than an engineer, programmer, economist, or accountant. It will also require the “soft skills” to do media relations or “wiki” relations, interacting daily with a range of customers and outside contributors, as well as collaborating with others in the company.
What else will change, or is changing, for workplaces in a wiki world?
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
The experts give their expertise for free. This undercuts the established “paid” experts. Is this sustainable?
Someone must be paying the “free” experts. The same with LINUX. Or have we discovered a “free lunch”?
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I think you’ve hit on a key issue in the wiki-world: how do people get paid. The mining example above had prize money. Linux probably offered young, creative programers experience, which they could subsequently market.
It seems to me it could work as an honour system with ratings, something like eBay has for buyers and sellers (sellers that take forever to ship receive lousy feedback ratings). Through an eBay like portal, companies put forth their wiki problems to solicit wiki-world solutions with potential compensation detailed.
Wiki-respondants would also have a profile (their credibility, experience, etc.) so you could decide as a company which responses to review. And of those you review, you pay the best one(s) and give brief feedback to the others as to why you dismissed their content.