Keith Jackson
Charles Leadbeater’s book We-Think: the Power of Mass Creativity (to be published in February) argues that the collaborative model pioneered by Wikipedia, and now seen in many projects such as YouTube, has enormous potential for transforming the way we organise schools, hospitals, cities and corporations.
The book was written collaboratively. Leadbeater put the draft on his website and readers suggested ideas and edited the text, contributions acknowledged in footnotes. Leadbeater writes: “The power of communities like Wikipedia is the sliding scale of contribution. Traditional companies do not have good ways for people to make occasional contributions when they feel like it.” He contends that new methods of organisation pose a challenge for traditional business, forcing it to adopt more collaborative and less hierarchical working methods. He cites examples like Google, where innovation is driven by a laissez-faire management style and employees can spend 20% of their time on their own projects.
But Leadbeater has his opponents. Dr Norman Lewis, chief strategy officer of Wireless Grids Corporation, is sceptical about the possibility of major changes in business structure: “The problem I see with the evangelists of mass collaboration is their confusion of the potential of this collaboration with its actual deployment. This is merely a new variant of the age-old hype surrounding the web, which, essentially, is simple technological determinism.”
Lewis believes mass collaboration must be evaluated in the context of “today’s short-termist and risk-averse business culture. In this context, mass collaboration or grassroots innovation can represent its opposite: namely, the loss of confidence of the enterprise in its ability to shape markets while institutionalising a culture of short-term pragmatism and lowered expectations.”
It’s a view supported by Andrew Keen, a self-described failed dotcom entrepreneur and the bête noire of Web 2.0 thanks to his book The Cult of the Amateur, in which he argues that community sites such as Wikipedia and YouTube are killing culture and assaulting our economy. Keen argues that without the old hierarchy we lose our ability to identify quality. The old gatekeepers knew what they were doing. Worse, the free labour of bloggers and other online community members is threatening the survival of traditional businesses.
But, Keen and Lewis seem to be out of synch when it comes to mass collaboration. The trend is spreading. Leadbeater says: “The web and mobile phones are providing the basis for mass mobilisation of people. In Spain, the Philippines and South Korea this has already tipped elections…. The industrial media, newspapers and television, have provided the information backbone for democratic life. They tend to be mass and one-way. The Web provides a different kind of democratic space, in principle.”
Leadbeater identifies these requirements for mass collaboration:
1. There should be an initial concept that encourages people to join the community.
2. There must be goals and values that motivate people to keep coming back.
3. A meeting place is needed. The internet makes these virtual spaces easy to create.
4. There must be self-distribution of labour. The community is a meritocracy, so as members successfully tackle small tasks they earn responsibility for larger tasks.
5. It’s vital to encourage people to build on your ideas.
6. All the pieces must fit together. Teams work on small projects knowing they will eventually fit seamlessly into the whole.
7. Communities need conversational leaders rather than heroic leaders.
8. The new model itself takes established tools and techniques and refocuses them on to collaboration.
Source: ‘Critical Mass’ by Shane Richmond, RSA eJournal, December 2007
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