2 minds was not enough to come up with a title for this post

Let’s see : [Image from lynette] Ok…..then how do we make this happen within our own organizations? Most of us involved with Web 2.0 tools have focused on their use with students while disregarding how powerful and important these same tools are for our organisations. As A.G.Lafley CEO of Proctor & Gamble points out on…

Let’s see :

2 minds are better than 1
20 minds are better than 2
200 minds are better than 20
2000 minds are better than 200
and so on

[Image from lynette]

Ok…..then how do we make this happen within our own organizations? Most of us involved with Web 2.0 tools have focused on their use with students while disregarding how powerful and important these same tools are for our organisations. As A.G.Lafley CEO of Proctor & Gamble points out on the front cover of Wikinomics mass collaboration is important because “No company today, no matter how large or how global, can innovate fast enough or big enough by itself”

WITHIN OUR ORGANISATIONS

Exchanging ideas, gaining/retaining knowledge and tapping into collective intelligence for innovation using f2f is not efficient and is an impossible task for larger, geographically dispersed workforces. Blogs, wikis, online forums etc located on the Intranet are a way of harassing the organisation’s collective intelligence (check out how they did this at the BBC).

OUTSIDE OUR ORGANISATIONS

Within our organsiation is really important…outside our organisation is even more important. Read the following 2 examples summarised from Wikinomics (Read the book!!)

Gold Mining using the Internet

Goldcorp, Toronto gold mining firm, took all their geology, data back to 1948, and shared it with the world . Why – their mine was facing closure and their in-house geologists were unable to provide accurate estimates of the location and value of gold deposits. They needed an innovative solution to provide the answers – the idea was to tap the collective intelligence of the global geologist community (more people=greater innovation) by releasing all their proprietary information and offering prize money ($575,000) to people who identified locations gold deposits in their mine. The process shaved years off their exploration time; and transformed Goldcorp into $9 billion company.

R & D on the Internet

Werner Mueller, retired chemist, stumbled on a scientific challenges on the InnoCentive’s web site, one of which was for a pharmaceutical. He came up with a solution to their problem, that the company had not considered. The company was now able to economically produce the pharmaceutical and he won $25,000.

PROBLEM

Most of our staff, especially our managers, would probably think we were aliens or speaking a foreign language…so how do we sell the concept? Any ideas?

[Image from Trev vG]

Sue Waters