Clay Shirky @ TED on Mass Collaboration

This is my favourite video on mass collaboration. Clay effortlessly digs into the theoretical concepts of social computing using practical examples that we can all relate too. He makes a strong argument for the superior benefits of building co-operation into the infrastructure compared to the traditional hierarchical institutional approach to collaboration. The old paradigm states "focus on the 20% effort and get 80% of the benefit". The new paradigm states, "Why would you leave behind 20% of benefit?"

Although this video was only released last month, the presentation was actually done in 2005 at TED. As you watch it, it may remind you Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams' Wikinomics book or of the work done by Ronald Coase who won a Nobel Prize in Economics (1991) on his work detailed in 1937, The Nature of the Firm. Enjoy...



(link to original TED video)

ID-ah! and The Groundswell

One of my proudest social computing accomplishments is the creation of ID-ah!(tm), a Bell Canada internal social innovation platform we started in 2005. ID-ah! was featured in the Groundswell book by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff. Ever since Groundswell, I've had people ask me for more details.

I am happy to share more details thanks to the folks at Business Digest that have allowed me to post this interview I did with them last month.

A 2008 Business Digest document. Business Digest is a European publisher of contents on management and strategy (http://www.business-digest.eu/)

I have to also mention the passionate core team of evangelsits that were right beside me as we made this happen: Carol Ferguson, Kelly Gillis, Melanie Jodouin, Fred Leung, Rishi Luthra, Nicole Marshall, Bob Mersereau, Olimpiu Metiu, Kathleen O'Grady, Michel Sabourin

Lessons on Innovation, Collaboration & Leadership from Steve Jobs

Fortune put out excerpts from an interview with Steve Jobs earlier this month. Jobs makes some very candid, and direct points. The whole interview is quite insightful and helps to disprove some of the common misconceptions around what collaboration is all about.


Misconception 1: Collaboration means "wisdom of crowds" is better than "experts".

I am not sure why there seems to be an argument in many forums about whether "wisdom of crowds" is better than "experts". Optimal collaboration taps into the masses, but is refined through the experts. It's not one or the other, it's the intelligent collaboration of both.

So you can't go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There's a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, 'If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me "A faster horse." '

In reference to the debates over embedding a sophisticates OS X in a cell phone Jobs states, "I had to adjudicate it and just say, 'We're going to do it. Let's try.' The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let's give them a shot. And they did."

Misconception 2: Innovation is the result of an individual genius.

There have been several noted authors that have proven this to be usually wrong. Read Andrew Hargadon's work on, "How Breakthroughs Really Happen". For example, the light bulb (the symbol for innovation) wasn't actually created by Edison.

In discussing people, Jobs talks to the need for passion in addition to smarts. "They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself."

To be the best requires individuals to understand broadly and not just their area. "So the way to do that is to have them know everything, not just in their part of the business, but in every part of the business. "


Misconception 3: Who cares if it's not perfect. Get your product out and then iterate.


There is much to be said about focus and getting it right the first time. I've often heard folks argue that, "Shoot first then aim later. Who cares if the bullets are cheap"... I guess the problem with that approach is that you can kill the wrong thing, and you can't "un-kill" if you made a mistake.

"Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we've got less than 30 major products. I don't know if that's ever been done before.... People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are."

"At Pixar when we were making Toy Story, there came a time when we were forced to admit that the story wasn't great. It just wasn't great. We stopped production for five months.... And if they hadn't had the courage to stop, there would have never been a Toy Story the way it is, and there probably would have never been a Pixar.we never expected to have another one. But you know what? There's been one on every film. It's been that way with [almost] every major project at Apple, too.... Take the iPhone. We had a different enclosure design for this iPhone until way too close to the introduction to ever change it. And I came in one Monday morning, I said, 'I just don't love this. I can't convince myself to fall in love with this. And this is the most important product we've ever done.' "And we pushed the reset button. "

The article has many more insights and worth the read.

Holism: The Real Enterprise 2.0 Opportunity! - Part 1

The BIGGEST opportunity for a company that applies web 2.0 internally (aka Enterprise 2.0) is to create a holistic understanding and achieve holistic execution.

What is it worth to have a complete unified end-to-end understanding of your company, products/services, processes and customers!? Using that knowledge to truly create a holistic strategy for your corporation and then able to execute and track it holistically! Imagine being able to have all the benefits of being big (economies of scale & scope, stable infrastructure, reliability, credibility, financial strength, etc...) combined with the benefits of being small (agility, innovation, intimate knowledge, flexibility, etc...)!

This is part 1 of a multi-part blog that explores the achievement of holism in a company, why it fails today and how Enterprise 2.0 technologies, processes and philosophy (yes there is a philosophy behind this) COULD allow large companies to achieve impressive achievements. Like all things, there is no "magic bullet" but there is opportunity for those that are willing to invest, be patient, nurture and commit to an Enterprise 2.0 strategy.

Most of what you will see today on applying web 2.0 in a company (aka Enterprise 2.0), revolves around achieving similar benefits internally that have been proven successful out in the Internet. For example, people talk about Wikipedia and say... "Now what if we made a Wikipedia but just for our company? Could we create a Companyipedia that allows employees to document terms we use in our company? We could achieve the same results Wikipedia has done...". This kind of "replicating" value internally could be stated about most of the web 2.0 type technologies (RSS, Tagging, Social Networks, blogging, etc...)

There is nothing wrong with this, but it is only a small part of the story. Sure, you will be able to gain value from the technology, but it's the ability to integrate thoughts, knowledge and ideas that smash through silos & bureaucracy for a unified corporate vision that should excite smart companies. As companies grow in response to growing demand for their products/services, or to improve their offering or to achieve economies of scale & scope, they often unknowingly sacrifice agility, innovation & flexibility.

Growth leads to specialization in different areas which ultimately adds overall complexity to the organization. This complexity ends up destroying our ability to achieve a complete holistic (end-to-end) understanding of the company, the products/services, and it's customers. How exactly does this happen? Well, it's complicated but can basically be grouped into 3 areas.

1. People/Organizational Complexity


2. Process/Competency Complexity


3. Technical Complexity

The next series of blogs will focus on each of these 3 areas and how Enterprise 2.0 can start to address these areas to re-gain holism for a large company. Although I am speaking primarily to large corporate entities, the same could be applied to other large organizations. For smaller organizations, they can also reap the benefits however theirs is not the same challenge. In a small company, the ability to know everyone and what they do and how it affects everyone else is easier. Until Enterprise 2.0 however, there was arguably no real way to achieve mass collaboration.

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Considerations before jumping on the E2.0 Bandwagon.

Here is a recent post I did on the Wikinomics group on Facebook. I thought I'd share it here for those readers that are not on that discussion group. This post was part of a discussion around good & bad experiences with social networking. Regular readers of this blog will see the first point a recount of the Mesh07 session on Digital Blinders.

Aug 6, 2007

Here are a couple of my thoughts related to the the conversation. Let me start by saying, I am convinced about the positive power of mass collaboration but so much is written on this, that I didn't think I would add to it here. Instead I picked a couple of thoughts that hopefully are a bit different.

1. In theory, could social networks of self-organizing individuals actually pull people further apart? The concept is that people often band with those that have similar thoughts and ideas rather than thoughts that have ideas that go counter to theirs. For example, if I was active in politics I might join a community that caters to and reinforces my political beliefs further driving in my beliefs and "dismissing" others beliefs. I saw a news show that talked about some disturbing organizations that held beliefs that were downright scary (and illegal) but apparently members banned together to reinforce that their beliefs were "justified" and everyone else is "wrong". I spoke to an editor of Wikipedia at a recent conference around some apparent concerns that Wikipedia, was "slanted to the scientific" beliefs and not accurately providing "creationism" a fair chance, so a separate encyclopedia for "creationism" perspectives has been created. What is good though, is that at least one of the ingredients is there to improve upon understanding and that is availability. An individual can choose to open their minds to alternate concepts or not. If however they choose not, they can likely find ways to reinforce their beliefs and dismiss others. I was introduced to this concept at a recent Mesh conference. Here is my blog on it if you're interested:

http://rexsthoughtspot.blogspot.com/2007/05/mesh07-digital-blinders-are-we-inch.html

2. The "whisper" and "smear" topics made me think about the reality of speed and the potential negative impact if we're wrong. Recently in Ontario, a government official made a derogatory remark referring to a citizen as a "ghetto dude". They didn't realize that they had sent the e-mail back to the citizen and when news broke, groups started popping up in several spots (including facebook), many of which publicly showed the picture of the person and demanded their resignation. The concern here was that some of these sites actually put the wrong picture up! Same name, wrong person. I listened to the mother of the falsely accused girl on the radio tell her story,(I suppose the girl herself was too distraught to tell her story directly) about how people accepted these pop-up groups as truth and immediately started harassing the girl and her family. Yes, they got the picture removed eventually but it seems much damage had already been inflicted. Here's the Toronto Star article on this:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t576946.html

I guess a common thread here is that each individual has the opportunity to seek multiple perspectives and sources of information through the Internet and social networks. But do they? Do they REALLY seek to understand those different beliefs? Are we sometimes victim to the zero-sum game concept? That there can only be 1 right answer? I don't know the answers but would recommend enterprise 2.0 practioners consider these concepts when building their overall strategy.

Swarm Theory & Social Computing

As a father, I've watched the movie "A Bug's Life" several times. In the movie, there is a scene where the locust (the bad guys) are laughing about how they can boss around the wee little ants (the good guys), until the head locust illustrates to the other locust that as individual ants, they are puny, but if they were to organize themselves they would be over-powering mass force. Yes, I realize I am referring to a kids cartoon, however, the power of self-organization by insects and animals to overcome huge challenges is the topic of this months National Geographic. The article is called Swarm Theory and it has interesting applications to social computing and mass collaboration concepts.

The article has several very interesting examples of how ants, bees, fish and other animals can do seemingly complex tasks even though individually these creatures really aren't all that intelligent. For example an experiment on bees shows how scout bees select the best new home through a democratic process based on individual assessments. Read the article, it's fascinating. The ability to do this isn't dictated through some genius bee nor is it a simple group think. Instead it is individual analysis where some bees select one home and others select another home. "Voting" by the bees is used to make the final decision for the colony on the "best" location.

"One key to an ant colony, for example, is that no one's in charge. No generals command ant warriors. No managers boss ant workers. The queen plays no role except to lay eggs. Even with half a million ants, a colony functions just fine with no management at all—at least none that we would recognize. It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing."

For a company looking to enter in the social computing domain, there are lessons we can learn from nature. The ability to harness social computing and mass collaboration requires opportunity but also individual assessment. If we let people loose to "self-organize" but they don't have enough expertise to make a "valid" decision or they get lazy and go with the most popular we lose the benefit from mass collaboration. When rules and laws are well understood mass collaboration is powerful. Simple rules lend itself to large groups but complex rules, if understood well, can also be addressed through collaboration.

"an important truth about collective intelligence: Crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions. A group won't be smart if its members imitate one another, slavishly follow fads, or wait for someone to tell them what to do. "

Before you expect great things from social computing in your organization, consider whether or not your employees are equipped to act responsible and empowered to make their own decisions. Thank-You Vanessa for pointing out this article.

Jumping the Innovation Curve

Denise recently sent me a video of Guy Kawasaki's Top Ten on Innovation. One of the items he discusses is the concept of "Jumping the Curve". Basically, according to Guy, innovation is really about "disruptive" innovation versus "incremental" innovation (i.e. 10X Better not 10% Better). Guy also explains that "real" innovation is emotive and will divide people. If you attempt to be all things to all people with your innovation, you will result is mediocrity and fail.



If his arguments are correct, what does this mean to those attempting to harness the power of the masses for innovation? Wouldn't Guy basically be saying, don't listen to the masses move to the radical and evangelize even if nobody else understands it (yet). Doesn't that sound a little counter to mass collaboration?

Not necessarily. Mass collaboration isn't for everything. The optimal decision making capability is based on a symbiotic relationship between the visionaries and the masses. Providing opportunity for millions in a way that channels their creative force is good. It helps identify the visionaries. Assuming that those same millions of people will push the "best" concepts forward will not always yield the optimal answer. Perhaps over time, the crowd would be able to select the best innovative concepts but by then it may be too late.

In any regards, if your serious about innovation, I suggest you watch Guy's video.

Kindergarten Creativity: How to break out of the box!

A group of concerned executives of a large firm gathered together to address a pressing issue that could literally destroy their company. They needed to collaborate.

"How many of you are, artists?" asked the facilitator

2 of the 30 put up their hands.

"If I had asked that same question to a group of Kindergarten kids, all of them would have raised their hands." responded the facilitator.

Over time, we incorrectly "grow out of" being artists and transform ourselves into professionals. As if these two things need to be separate. This chips away at our ability to be creative.

We learn from experience, how to get things done, and we validate it every time we apply a proven process to resolve a problem. We become experts in our fields of choice. The more success we have, the more confident we are in our capabilities and skills.

As creatures of habit, we apply mental shortcuts without even knowing it. We identify common patterns and resolve problems as we always have. We see what we want to see, and dismiss those things that don't fit into our paradigm. This is usually a good thing, since most of the problems we'll face are variations of problems we already solved so we are thinking efficiently without having to "re-invent the wheel" every time.

A challenge occurs though when we're suddenly faced with a problem that our mental shortcuts can't resolve. The rules, and logic we've built over time will not allow us to resolve the problem. We are unable to be "creative."

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." - Einstein

It's in these situations that we most need to gain new perspectives, some of them radically different then our own.

But how does one "change their thinking"?

One of the most effective ways is to concede that it will be extremely difficult for you to truly change your thinking. You are a product of your experiences. So instead of struggling, reach out to others who have different experiences and perspectives. Collaborate!

The Gold Corp story that Tapscott references, illustrates this. Through mass collaboration, radical ideas and concepts ultimately saved Gold Corp from bankruptcy. These solutions did not come from their expert geologists but from groups of people who may never have spent a day in the mining industry but were experts in all-together different disciplines with completely different ways of thinking.

It doesn't have to be mass collaboration either. In several situations, mass collaboration is completely in-appropriate. Collaboration in any size can produce creative breakthroughs. The challenge in any type of collaboration is how to ensure people are capable of understanding the perspectives of others, especially when they run counter to ones own paradigm.

A technique that's been used for several years is graphic facilitation. The use of images and graphics, often allows us overcome the limitations of language as we each try to articulate our concepts. You might be surprised by what happens when 2 people are arguing over a point and you ask them to draw their point. They often gain a completely different level of understanding and retention. Sometimes they realize they were actually arguing the same point.

As the 2.0 world grows, so does the opportunity to achieve creative breakthroughs as long as we're willing to accept that there are "multiple versions of the truth".

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." - Einstein again...

Thanks to Lisa, Disa and Caroline for the inspiration for this post.

Thoughts on "The Ignorance of Crowds"

One of the best "web 2.0" type articles that I've read recently has got to be Nicholas Carr's article "The Ignorance of Crowds". It's a balanced view of the potential of peer production and mass collaboration. With so much hype around Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Peer Production, Mass Collaboration, it's refreshing to see such a grounded article. As Nick writes...

"The bottom line is that peer production has valuable but limited applications. It can be a powerful tool, but it is no panacea. It’s a great way to find and fix problems, to collect and categorize information, or to perform any other time-consuming task that can be sped up by having lots of people with diverse perspectives working in parallel. It can also have the important added benefit of engaging customers in your innovation process, which not only allows their insights to be harnessed but also may increase their loyalty to your company."

Through a series of examples such as the limitations of Wikipedia, the governance model for Linux, and an overall reference to the paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar” written by Eric Raymond, Nick argues his points and cautions the reader about thinking peer production is a panacea.

Although Nick's focus isn't directly on the corporation, there are implications I believe that will allow companies to reap greater benefits of mass collaboration, peer production and social computing. For example, you would be wise to think of 3 layers at work and tailor your corporate program to all 3 layers.

1. The Individual

Acknowledge that the breakthrough ideas tend to be product of a single individual. Numerous examples abound on this. Steve Job's on his IPod Design. Even the open source example of Linux is the brainchildren of Linus Torvald. What web 2.0 & enterprise 2.0 allows for is the opportunity for those individuals and their ideas to be found. This is an example of tapping into the long tail to reduce the degrees of separation. This really isn't truly "collaboration" yet... It's discovery.

2. The Mass Collaborators

Mass collaboration has proven effective in tasks that are "parallelizable". The analogy Nick uses in discussing Linux bug fixes is an Easter egg hunt in which if you have 2 kids trying to find a 100 eggs, it will take a lot longer than have 200 kids trying to find a 100 eggs. Parallelism is achievable in "narrowly defined or routine tasks.". Massively parallel activity can provide rapid advancement but tends to lack refinement since refinement often requires high levels of coordination and larger masses actually slow down the process or simply fail.

3. The Governors & Coordinators

Having found the right concepts or ideas, and accelerated the incremental advancement of the ideas or concepts, the final piece is about refining it. Specialists in an area, dedicated experts, can mold that idea into a finished deliverable. Linux for example is considered an extremely stable, high quality system versus Wikipedia, which acknowledges discrepancies within it's articles. A core difference is that Linux is still centrally governed whereas Wikipedia is loosely governed.

The challenge to the governance and coordination is knowing at what point to bring this group in. Too early, and this group will slow down the process as they try to refine something that could have been done by a much larger parallel group. Too late, and this group will be challenged with higher quality issues that could have been avoided. Nupedia is an example of governance too soon and Wikipedia is an example of governance coming in late to try and improve the quality.

I think Nick sums it up very nicely...

"So if you’re looking to bolster your company’s creativity, you should by all means look for opportunities to harness the power of the crowd. Just don’t expect the masses to take the place of the lone wizard or the band of mages. The greatest breakthroughs will always begin, to quote Eric Raymond once more, with “one good idea in one person’s head,” and the greatest products will always reach perfection through the concerted efforts of a highly skilled team."