"Big Board" Mentality

"To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. "
Soren Kierkegaard

As I travel and meet people who are interested in expertsourcing & crowdsourcing there is one often asked question, while understandable, still leaves me shaking my head.

"How can I crowdsource, we are a public company." or "Our secrets will be lost if we involve outside experts."

The best way to answer this question is with a clip from Stanley Kubrick's movie "Dr. Strangelove." There is a scene in the movie where the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff are in the war room discussing wether or not to allow the Russian ambassador access to the room. George C. Scott plays a U.S. general who is concerned such access will lead to a "security breach" with the Russians gaining secrets on his "big board." (at end of clip).

The scene is silly but it brings up a good point that is relevant in business. Most companies suffer not as victims of corporate espionage (the "big board" scenario) but under the weight of their own secrecy. If a business never takes a chance and engages its: experts, customers, shareholders, or any other constituency, mediocrity is almost certain. In Short, "You can't win if you don't play."

It is a natural human trait to be proud of our achievements. The general's big board represents his value chain, tanks, planes, all things he is proud of and afraid to share with his enemy. It is the unwillingness to share that prevents him from achieving the goal of meeting with his adversary and preventing WWIII. Value chain analysis is critical in a hyper-connected "flat" world:

• The secrets most businesses think are safe, probably are not.
• A competitor, dumb enough to steal and replicate a business process will likely screw up the execution and end up helping the originator (Microsoft Zune).
• The effort expended in developing a value chain such as: a call center, subscription knowledge bank or, digital rights management system may end up handicapping the value chain owner as less expensive, disruptive technologies emerge.

Many public companies such as P&G, Merck, Kimberly - Clark, and The New York Times realized the threat secrecy represented in the form of protected value chains and disposed of them. P&G takes a chance every time it allows an outsider to develop a product, but not developing the next killer product is an even greater risk.

Tim Gilchrist, Microengagement Co-founder

PM Network Crowdsourcing Article

This month I have an article relating to the core business process of Microengagement in "PM Network" The magazine of the Project Management Institute. It circulates to the world-wide membership of this fantastic organization. I am am member so please understand my bias. So many aspects of business can be improved through the rigorous application of objective and consistent processes, this was one of my big learnings via PMI, they have much more to offer. www.pmi.org

I will be speaking to the Southern New England Chapter of PMI on June 20th

Full text below:

On the Edge

Crowdsourcing gone mainstream yet, but it could prove to be helpful for project managers.

by Tim Gilchrist, PMP

Crowdsourcing is a new term that describes the process of gathering groups of people together and using their spare time to create something of value. Google is probably the best-known user, but the method has attracted everyone from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration to Procter & Gamble. All of these projects leverage talent pools outside of the sponsor organization to deliver value in the form of revolutionary improvements in speed, economy and breadth.
The rapid decentralization of expertise with the growth of business and social networks across the Internet represents an opportunity for project managers.
With crowdsourcing, companies can attract thousands of talented people to work for them and achieve goals not possible with a fixed staff.
Here are some examples of projects using crowdsourcing techniques:

Product Development: Procter & Gamble, Electrolux and Philips Electronics all use varying styles of crowdsourcing to aid product development. All of these companies experienced customer demand at a rate that exceeded their ability to develop products in-house. Simply having a fixed product-development staff was not enough. To keep up with market demand, each company formed networks external to traditional product development and either used them in an advisory role or as a means to execute project work directly. Proctor & Gamble posts sub-tasks directly to a public website including the price they will pay for the project to be completed. Members of P&G’s extended development team respond with proposals, and the work is awarded to the best solution. According to Larry Houston P&G’s VP of innovation and knowledge, P&G now counts 1.5 million people in its extended network.

Programming: NASA uses crowdsourcing to handle massive amounts of data streaming back from space probes. “Clickworkers” are volunteers who perform various tasks involving image analysis. 85,000 clickworkers mapped craters on the Martin surface and did so with a degree of accuracy equal to that of an experienced geologist according to a NASA study “Clickworkers results: Crater Marking activity” July 2001. The clickworker program reduces the image-analysis process cycle by months and frees up valuable researcher time.

Google is most likely the largest crowdsourcing endeavor in the world, with millions of web-page owners working together to create value. In a radical departure from other Internet search engines, Google interprets links on web pages as votes. The more links that point to a page, the more likely it is that page contains what you are searching for.

Forecasting: Crowdsourcing can be applied to forecasting various metrics of project outcomes by combining the input of many individuals to arrive at a probable outcome. This is called a decision market. Hewlett-Packard predicts printer sales by forming a group of employees from all around the company and financially incentivising them to make accurate predictions. In the 2004 book “The Wisdom of Crowds” author James Surowiecki profiled decision markets at HP outperforming traditional sales predictions six out of eight times during experimental trials. Drug marker Eli Lilly used the same strategy to successfully predict clinical trial outcomes. Google also uses decision markets to predict how new products will perform in the market.

What does all this mean? Is the future mob rule? No. These phenomena are all linked together. Crowdsourcing takes advantage of the changing environment via the collective knowledge of many thousands of talented, networked people. They can be called upon at a moment’s notice to provide project teams with valuable expertise to meet virtually any challenge. Project management can be greatly improved through the adoption of more flexible, crowdsourced models, such as the software and consumer media verticals already benefit from.
[bio] Tim Gilchrist is a partner in the management consulting firm, Microengagement based in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Microengagement uses crowdsourcing techniques to get to the simple truth behind organizational challenges.

Further reading:
The Rise of Crowdsourcing. Wired Magazine issue 14.06, June 2006
http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/documents/crater-marking.pdf
Google’s page rank technology explained http://www.google.com/technology/
Surowiecki, James. (2004) The Wisdom of Crowds, New York: Anchor Books