Seems to me that the above paraphrased quote about Wikipedia describes most of my research work on distributed innovation. I came across this quote while reading an article in the New York Times describing how the Wikipedia community self-organized to create the most current and updated information page on the web on the Virginia Tech massacre. The article outlines how over 2000 people participated in creating the page on Wikipedia – without any formal prior coordination or task assignment. Eric von Hippel and I are in the midst of finishing up a paper that outlines the basics of a micro-distributed innovation system using example from Open Source – but we think it will equally apply to this setting as well. Stay tuned….
Hi Karim – really looking forward to meeting at NESTA on Friday. Please excuse the promo, but I though you might be interested in the open source bidding and development process a group of us have been engaged in at http://www.innovationexchange.net/
Briefly, we have put together openly and collaboratively a tender proposal for a £1.2 million Government contract for a nonprofit innovation exchange.
We were shortlisted as one of four out of 21, and interviewed today. Decision on Monday.
[...] In his post titled "Works in Practice – But Not in Theory" Karim refers to a (subscription) NYT article which described how over 2000 people participated in creating a page on Wikipedia about the Virginia Tech Massacre. This communal act to record a piece of history is as powerful a single indication of what is possible as I have read about yet. [...]
Hi Karim – looks like this post is from quite a while ago, so not sure if you and Eric are still working on this problem. If so, I might have some ideas that can help.
A project I have been working on for a while is to create an open methodology – kind a blend of the model on wikipedia and open source software development. The approach has been applied to challenges in managing information at http://www.openmethodology.org and then to sustainability at http://www.open-sustainability.org.
Hopefully you will find in interesting and always appreciate any feedback!
Sean