One of my passions is working with many people and finding ways by which the person who generally never contributes does. Watching a couple of Ted talks by Clay Shirky and Michael Nielsen. Here are some of my notes taken during those talks.
Michael Nielsen
Collaboration for contributions sake is not very effective. Some rare examples break this rule but many more projects fail in experimentation because the incentive to take part in something isn’t correct. Such as the incentive of something that will
There needs to be incentives for collaboration that bring out the hidden. People hoard data, ideas and resources that they have that have potential value to their own advancement. They are afraid to share because of someone else getting credit.
Clay Shirky
How do groups get anything done? It’s a coordination problem.
It is about: Coordination cost – The financial cost for producing a group output. Traditional view – Create an institution that coordinates the efforts of the group, an act of exclusion.
How do we lower the coordination cost?
One way this question has been answered is that we currently can communicate much cheaper, almost free, due to digital advancements. Another way to answer is that we could put the co-operation into the infrastructure. So that the output of the group is a bi-product of how the institution is structured. Crowdsourcing (eg. Ushahidi).
Power law distribution: Appears in unconstrained institutions where people can contribute how much or little as they like. This usually shows a long-tail distribution of the total contributions by person. Meaning that about 20% of the contributors will stand for 80% of the contributions and vice versa.
Using only the left 10% in a power-law distribution model (they account for about 30% of all the content) then you are essentially an institution that has coordinated (hired) those people to do it for you. The question is not one of how much you contribute but if the contribution given is one that you are interested in – quality of quantity.
Single contribution value is unattainable from an institution. Because hiring an engineer that only has one idea in 3 years is not a good hire. Very costly.
Dean Kamen
“You Get What You Celebrate”, let’s celebrate, advocate and incentivize the right things that we are looking for.