Mass collaboration, a new form of value creation

Many people still think that collaboration is nothing more than a passing fad, a kind of game in which kids send each other messages on their mobile phones and songs through email in their free time. But, in reality, mass collaboration is a new and powerful form of value creation that acts on two levels: socio-cultural and economic. On the one hand, it creates new forms of talent, entertainment and collaboration; and, on the other, it generates economic value, building much more efficient markets and organizations

In their new book Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams refer to Crowdsourcing as an economy where millions of people collaborate through blogs, wikis, and chats in a new space for the flow of communication, knowledge, and ideas that we call the “blogosphere.” New work environments emerge in which, through collaborative wikis , workers can collaborate and innovate beyond the borders of their organizations. Consumers become “prosumers” and actively participate in the creation of goods and services, and value chains and business models become global, with partners networking as equals from anywhere in the world.

The case of Gold Corp

One of the stories mentioned by Don Tapscott in his book Wikinomics illustrates crowdsourcing well as a new form of value creation. This is the case of Gold Corp, a Canadian mining company that was facing growth problems because it could not find new gold deposits. Its team of geologists was aware that these deposits had to be somewhere on the huge property that the company owned in Canada, but they were not able to locate them. It was then that Rob McEwen, CEO of GoldCorp, decided to publish on the Internet all the geological information of the mining operation (no less than 225,000 km2) and, through a public tender, asked all the geologists in the world to help locate new deposits. Until that moment, the geological information of the land had remained locked in the safe: it was the company’s most precious secret.

Within weeks, more than 1,000 virtual gold prospectors from 50 different countries were participating in the search. Responses came in from people and institutions of all kinds: students, geologists, chemists, military, research departments, and hobbyists. With these new contributions, Gold Corp was able to find considerable amounts of gold, and its stock market valuation skyrocketed. McEwen had a small group of geologists on staff, and they were possibly very expert, but he realized that the minds best suited to finding new deposits were beyond the boundaries of his company.

The CEO of Gold Corp was able to realize that the minds most capable of finding new deposits were beyond the limits of his company.

This is just the beginning

The so-called Age of Collaboration is a growing phenomenon that has only just begun. There are more than 5,000 million people in the world and the level of Internet penetration in China, the most populous country, does not reach 10%. India, another of the world’s giants, has even lower penetration rates. In Latin America, Brazil, with its more than 180 million inhabitants, has not yet reached 15%. This means that the biggest is yet to come, and that the phenomenon of mass collaboration is unstoppable. In a not too long period of time, Internet users will be the majority in the most populated places. This gigantic contribution of talent and knowledge will change the configuration of the world as we know it today.

*You can see the content of this post summarized in the following presentation: