I’m reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (which is co-authored by Don Tapscott, the man who coined the term “paradigm shift,” an act for which I have actually heard him apologize) before I go to sleep each night, which means I don’t remember very much of it. (I bet you do the same thing.) But I’m intrigued by the parts I do remember, and over the next few posts, we’ll survey Wikinomics insofar as I can recall it.
The book’s primary thesis is that we’re entering an age of mass collaboration in which organizations and individuals will cooperate to produce knowledge on a scale never before seen. His lead example–so I assume it sets the tone for much of the book–is Goldcorp.
So What?
Goldcorp, a Canadian mining company, had 400 megabytes of assay data (analyses of deep core samples) taken from a 55,000-acre tract of land. They knew from the samples that there was gold to be found–but not exactly where, and conventional exploration techniques would have cost the company two or three years that it didn’t have (it was nearly bankrupt). Their new CEO, a very savvy former mutual fund manager with little mining experience, persuaded his geologists (very much against their wills) to make the assay data public–and to offer a prize for whoever could use it to determine where new shafts should be dug.
It worked absurdly well. Analyses came in from some 1,000 contestants in 50 countries–geologists, applied mathematicians, computer graphics researchers and many others. Goldcorp used the submissions to work out locations for a new set of shafts, most of which became very productive indeed. In fact, the company’s market capitalization (the total value of its stock) went from $100,000,000 in 1993 to $9 billion today.
This is a terriffic story, no question about it. There’s only one tiny problem. Remember (of course, you don’t–you’re too young) those contests consumer goods companies used to run in which you were challenged to come up with a new slogan or jingle for one of their products and if you won you’d get a year’s supply of that product (room freshener, for example)? That’s effectively what Goldcorp did, and it was a huge success. But it wasn’t collaboration, mass or otherwise: It was an independent competition in which contestants cooperated neither with one another nor with Goldcorp. It wasn’t a peculiarly modern, Internet-enabled phenomenon: It was a situation as old as humanity (or, at any rate, as old as room freshener) itself.
Frankly, the example leaves me a bit fuzzy about the book’s thesis. It’ll be intriguing to see how Wikinomics plays out in subsequent chapters–I’ll be particularly interested in whether more clear-cut examples of mass collaboration are put forward. Based on its title, I think we can assume that the Wikipedia–probably the most successful example of mass collaboration in history–will make an appearance. Until then, sleep well.
