Five principles of successful mass collaboration
I continue to publish the translation of Charles Leadbeter's article from linux.com about the role of the community in creating products.
Five principles of successful mass cooperation, part 2.
Original article www.linux.com/feature/130024
By Charles Leadbeater www.wethinkthebook.net/home.aspx
(Comments of the translator, written as an explanation of the author's text are in brackets)
The successful We-Think project (We-Think) is based on five key principles that are collectively present in the Linux project. Yesterday I talked about the Basis and Cooperation. Today we will talk about the connection.
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This article is an extract from the recently published book We We Think: The Power of Mass Creativity. Www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/asin/1861978928/vasoft-20
Compound
At the exhibition fair St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 ice cream sold in cups. Once on the stand, where they sold ice cream ended cups. Nearby, the owner of the waffle stand began rolling waffles in the shape of a cone (so that ice cream could be put there). There was nothing new about this component, but the combination of ice cream and waffles created something completely new and unusual.
The more combinations that a community can create, the more innovation there will be. Cities are creative when they make these combinations possible. This is obvious for the project We-Think.
Diversity is not important if the various ideas that hover around cannot be brought together for “cross-pollination.” A community is diverse, but divided (disintegrated) cannot be creative. People with different ideas should find a way to collaborate and communicate with each other. When they work and are on the right path - the results of the work are not long in coming.
James Watson and Francis Crick deciphered the structure of DNA due to the fact that they found a way to combine their very different approaches to the “problem”.
Crick's good training in physics, biology, and chemistry, on the one hand, and Watson, who studied zoology well, but was fascinated by DNA after studying viruses, on the other. They combined their ideas through an installation intensive conversation to which their competitors were incapable. The cooperation of Watson and Crick is the argument that in the field of cooperation one plus one (maybe) be equal to twelve.
The larger the group and the more diverse the opportunities involved in the project, the greater the benefits of combining them. Take, for example, five people with different skills. This gives ten possible skill combinations. Add a sixth person with a special skill. This will not create 12 pairs, but the other five possible combinations from 1 to 115 of all possible. The group, which has at its disposal 20 different instruments, has 190 possible pairs of instruments and more than 1000 combinations of three instruments. A group that has 13 different instruments has almost as many instruments, i.e. 87 percent of the amount as the group with 15 instruments. The difference is small. But if the task requires the combination of four tools, then this is a completely different story.
A group with 15 instruments has 1365 possible combinations of four instruments, while a group with 13 instruments has 715 such combinations, or about 52 percent.
Moreover, groups with large sets of various tools and skills are in advantage if they can come together effectively to solve complex problems.
Service is not the best way for people with different skills to connect and collaborate. The service can provide a way for everyone with a problem to find someone else who could have a solution: if you have a plug, you will see an outlet. This is the Innocentive model (the InnoCentive Center is a new unique virtual portal that brings together leading scientists and leading companies from all over the world who are confronted with solving complex R & D problems), a scientific (problem solving) community that originated from the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilli. Companies can publish their scientific problems on the Innicentive site to subsequently see a solution found by someone, if only they could be solved by one of those 100,000 scientists subscribed to this service. But services of this type have inherent limitations: they only work with specific problems that require an exact and correct, individual solution. They cannot provide a basis for supporting creativity and innovation for researching complex tasks.
This is a kind of problems whose solutions, which come only as a result of intensive interaction. In the worm project, researchers began with a meeting at a coffee shop that was located in the Brenner laboratory. In the project We-Think, crowds need meeting places, a neutral space for creative conversation, where the free flight of ideas is allowed. This is why ... these projects have open discussion forums and wikis, bulletin boards and community advice or simple magazines such as Lean's Engine Reporter and The Worm Breeder's Gazette, so all these people can come together and take the path that turns our proof theorem: one plus one equals twelve.
In the project We-Think, the task of combining ideas becomes simpler, because products are usually also connected like Lego cubes: they are made of many connecting modules. The idea of ​​modularity is not new; this was the future of computer development, at least since the 1960s, when IBM developed its System / 360 computer. Frederick Brooks, the person in charge, wanted every developer involved in the project to have an idea of ​​what his colleagues were doing at the same time.
Daily program change records were shared among all. Soon, people began daily to begin their work with a careful study of the records of these changes. The price of communication and project coordination changes in a spiral. Communication problems (within the team) and misunderstanding grew. The increase in the number of people in the project did not solve the problem: it was necessary to perform more work, but due to serious misunderstanding within the team, all this led to an increase in the number of errors in the project. When the quantity
Brooks decided to split the S / 360 project into discrete modules so that you can work on the project in parts. The core team began working on the design rules of the system that modules (systems) needed (to work in it) and how they should work all together at the same time. The idea is that the creators of the modules should concentrate on their patches (patch), while the core of the development team should take care of the architecture of the entire system as a whole. New and better modules should be assembled in the system without the need to redesign (reassemble) the entire system from source (from scratch).
Modularity really brings dividends when it is connected to an open development path — this allows different development teams to conduct a mass of experiments in parallel, working on the same modules and offering different solutions. This combination shows how (due to what) such great opportunities get Open Source developers: here it is all present together. Often, Lego cubes cause dizziness from a variety of colors, shapes and the same size, but they all have a common system of connections. Like the Lego cubes connection system, the We-Think Project also has rules governing the creation of connections that usually occur from the command core (to the periphery). This is what allows the mass of independent, but interconnected innovations to exist. Mass computer games, collective blogs, open source programs and a project to decipher the human genome are all part of the future: it is all a whole.
However, the structure of Lego cubes alone is not enough to ensure the work of the project We-Think. Groups also need to create solutions. Different investors (employees) will be able to combine their own and other people's ideas only if they can agree to cooperate together. Any free community will decline if it does not effectively self-regulate. But this is much easier said than done.
Five principles of successful mass cooperation, part 2.
Original article www.linux.com/feature/130024
By Charles Leadbeater www.wethinkthebook.net/home.aspx
(Comments of the translator, written as an explanation of the author's text are in brackets)
The successful We-Think project (We-Think) is based on five key principles that are collectively present in the Linux project. Yesterday I talked about the Basis and Cooperation. Today we will talk about the connection.
')
This article is an extract from the recently published book We We Think: The Power of Mass Creativity. Www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/asin/1861978928/vasoft-20
Compound
At the exhibition fair St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 ice cream sold in cups. Once on the stand, where they sold ice cream ended cups. Nearby, the owner of the waffle stand began rolling waffles in the shape of a cone (so that ice cream could be put there). There was nothing new about this component, but the combination of ice cream and waffles created something completely new and unusual.
The more combinations that a community can create, the more innovation there will be. Cities are creative when they make these combinations possible. This is obvious for the project We-Think.
Diversity is not important if the various ideas that hover around cannot be brought together for “cross-pollination.” A community is diverse, but divided (disintegrated) cannot be creative. People with different ideas should find a way to collaborate and communicate with each other. When they work and are on the right path - the results of the work are not long in coming.
James Watson and Francis Crick deciphered the structure of DNA due to the fact that they found a way to combine their very different approaches to the “problem”.
Crick's good training in physics, biology, and chemistry, on the one hand, and Watson, who studied zoology well, but was fascinated by DNA after studying viruses, on the other. They combined their ideas through an installation intensive conversation to which their competitors were incapable. The cooperation of Watson and Crick is the argument that in the field of cooperation one plus one (maybe) be equal to twelve.
The larger the group and the more diverse the opportunities involved in the project, the greater the benefits of combining them. Take, for example, five people with different skills. This gives ten possible skill combinations. Add a sixth person with a special skill. This will not create 12 pairs, but the other five possible combinations from 1 to 115 of all possible. The group, which has at its disposal 20 different instruments, has 190 possible pairs of instruments and more than 1000 combinations of three instruments. A group that has 13 different instruments has almost as many instruments, i.e. 87 percent of the amount as the group with 15 instruments. The difference is small. But if the task requires the combination of four tools, then this is a completely different story.
A group with 15 instruments has 1365 possible combinations of four instruments, while a group with 13 instruments has 715 such combinations, or about 52 percent.
Moreover, groups with large sets of various tools and skills are in advantage if they can come together effectively to solve complex problems.
Service is not the best way for people with different skills to connect and collaborate. The service can provide a way for everyone with a problem to find someone else who could have a solution: if you have a plug, you will see an outlet. This is the Innocentive model (the InnoCentive Center is a new unique virtual portal that brings together leading scientists and leading companies from all over the world who are confronted with solving complex R & D problems), a scientific (problem solving) community that originated from the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilli. Companies can publish their scientific problems on the Innicentive site to subsequently see a solution found by someone, if only they could be solved by one of those 100,000 scientists subscribed to this service. But services of this type have inherent limitations: they only work with specific problems that require an exact and correct, individual solution. They cannot provide a basis for supporting creativity and innovation for researching complex tasks.
This is a kind of problems whose solutions, which come only as a result of intensive interaction. In the worm project, researchers began with a meeting at a coffee shop that was located in the Brenner laboratory. In the project We-Think, crowds need meeting places, a neutral space for creative conversation, where the free flight of ideas is allowed. This is why ... these projects have open discussion forums and wikis, bulletin boards and community advice or simple magazines such as Lean's Engine Reporter and The Worm Breeder's Gazette, so all these people can come together and take the path that turns our proof theorem: one plus one equals twelve.
In the project We-Think, the task of combining ideas becomes simpler, because products are usually also connected like Lego cubes: they are made of many connecting modules. The idea of ​​modularity is not new; this was the future of computer development, at least since the 1960s, when IBM developed its System / 360 computer. Frederick Brooks, the person in charge, wanted every developer involved in the project to have an idea of ​​what his colleagues were doing at the same time.
Daily program change records were shared among all. Soon, people began daily to begin their work with a careful study of the records of these changes. The price of communication and project coordination changes in a spiral. Communication problems (within the team) and misunderstanding grew. The increase in the number of people in the project did not solve the problem: it was necessary to perform more work, but due to serious misunderstanding within the team, all this led to an increase in the number of errors in the project. When the quantity
Brooks decided to split the S / 360 project into discrete modules so that you can work on the project in parts. The core team began working on the design rules of the system that modules (systems) needed (to work in it) and how they should work all together at the same time. The idea is that the creators of the modules should concentrate on their patches (patch), while the core of the development team should take care of the architecture of the entire system as a whole. New and better modules should be assembled in the system without the need to redesign (reassemble) the entire system from source (from scratch).
Modularity really brings dividends when it is connected to an open development path — this allows different development teams to conduct a mass of experiments in parallel, working on the same modules and offering different solutions. This combination shows how (due to what) such great opportunities get Open Source developers: here it is all present together. Often, Lego cubes cause dizziness from a variety of colors, shapes and the same size, but they all have a common system of connections. Like the Lego cubes connection system, the We-Think Project also has rules governing the creation of connections that usually occur from the command core (to the periphery). This is what allows the mass of independent, but interconnected innovations to exist. Mass computer games, collective blogs, open source programs and a project to decipher the human genome are all part of the future: it is all a whole.
However, the structure of Lego cubes alone is not enough to ensure the work of the project We-Think. Groups also need to create solutions. Different investors (employees) will be able to combine their own and other people's ideas only if they can agree to cooperate together. Any free community will decline if it does not effectively self-regulate. But this is much easier said than done.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/31577/
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