The Motivation for Working Really Hard For Free
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
Peer production or the development of valuable products and content by users over the Internet for free is not a fad. Web-based “mass collaboration” is producing quality encyclopedias, production-level software products, authoritative books, professional-quality citizen journalism (news photos, stories and even shows), stock picks that beat the market and even assisting in the search for extraterrestrial life.
Talented people are working hard, really hard, and regularly for free (no direct economic compensation). Collaborating, innovating and problem-solving like mad – all thing we have tried to make happen on the other side of the fire wall using knowledge management with little real success for the last 20 years.
Why are they doing this and how can we harness it inside the firewall? Asked another way, what is the cognition that drives peer production (user generated content) and how can we apply it in the workplace? This is a timely question because corporations are starting to invest in employee applications of Web 2.0 technologies in the hope of stimulating productivity and innovation. Results might be disappointing if we don’t understand the motivation and cognition that is driving the behavior. Fortunately, there has been a little research.
McKinsey has published several papers on Web 2.0 and how corporations can make the most of user generated content. (You need to sign up for a guest pass to access the article.) One key finding:
“We observed that users cite a variety of reasons for posting content online—chief among them, a hunger for fame, the urge to have fun, and a desire to share experiences with friends.”
Recognition, fun and sharing with friends is good but it is really powerful when it is driven by the modifiers “hunger”, “urge” and “desire”. More fundamental psychology than what we normally see in the workplace. And I don’t think they are getting that because of the functionality of the tool or even the topic that is being worked on. It is more the law of large numbers. Because the task is cast over the Internet it is possible for those few people that are really highly motivated to “self select” and participate in a robust way. You will likely not be able to duplicate that effect in corporations, even very large corporations.
That does not mean that blogs, wikis, social networking and the like won’t improve communication in corporations. They will. What it does mean is that Web 2.0 technologies should not be viewed as a knowledge management silver bullet. Instead we should see them as another tool that needs to be considered very carefully from a cognitive design standpoint.
