When considering open innovation models, enterprise 2.0, open science and other similar concepts, we’re faced with the difficulty of explaining why should people and organisations open up to external collaboration. What should he/she gain from being open and giving free access to own ideas? What are the incentives to collaboration?
Yet from personal experience we know how positive it is to share knowledge. It leads to progress, better discussion, meeting interesting people, and visibility gains. I blog because I like it and it helps me to share early ideas with others, but then it turns out this is also a great way to gain a reputation.
Interestingly, this is the reverse of Adam Smith invisible hand, which states that “individual ambition benefits society, even if the ambitious have no benevolent intentions” (from Wikipedia). We could say that “collaboration benefits the individual, even if the collaborative person has no personal gain intentions.”
Dear David,
actually, I’m not sure whether this is reversing the “invisible hand” logic, or simply a way to restate it.
What Smith wrote in 1776 was: “By pursuing his own interest [the individual] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”
It seems to me that this describes quite well your bloging experience: you do it because you like it, it helps you to share and improve your ideas, and this helps to sustain your reputation. And… well, maybe unintentionally, you are creating benefits for others and somehow for society as a whole, as you are pushing for changes that, at the end, are benefiting many others and yourself.
I would say that “Web 2.0″ does not as much “reverse” Smith’s and Mandeville’s laws, but “square” it in a biased way. Web 2.0 is making the invisible hand much more powerful when it relates to “collaborative” endeavors.
Personal interests can be pursued in more egoistic or more altruistic ways. Smith showed us how both of them tend, in many cases, to benefit society in the end.
Well, what Web collaboration is making… is that the “altruistic” ways of pursuing individual interest, bear now incredibly higher fruits than in the past. They somehow are no longer added together… but multiplied!!
Smith couldn’t have imagined such a situation, where the invisible hand is not simply making the best of “self-interest”, but actively favouring our more generous instincts over the purely egoist.