The Power of Collaboration

I was thinking of how many people have a voice these days? It’s pretty amazing when anyone who is anyone can have their voice heard across the world using the internet. Have any of you heard of Web 2.0? I imagine that some of you have. I have been reading up on it these days and its pretty cool stuff. However, for the most part it is beyond me. That is exactly why I’m trying to read up on it as much as I can.

For those of you who aren’t up to speed on the web 2.0, I’ll give my interpretation of what it’s all about. From what I can see the new web will be all about collaboration. A classic example of where the web is going is Wikipedia. I’m pretty sure anyone who is reading this is aware of what Wikipedia is. Can you imagine all the poor encyclopedia sales people without jobs now? Who in their right mind would buy a collection of encyclopedias in this day in age? Wikipedia is available in many different languages and is updated real time. No need for anything else really.

Massive collaboration spawns infinite creativity. The internet allows individuals who may not normally speak out, to have their voices heard. By eliminating the conventional boundaries of most enterprises in the corporate world and allowing the “voice” of the people to be heard, amazing things can happen.

An example of this is Goldcorp Inc. Former CEO Rob McEwen was facing some tough times with dwindling gold deposits and falling share prices. Instead of hiring more highly priced “experts” to help him find more gold, he went against all conventional wisdom. He published all of the company’s secret geographic data online in hopes to find more gold. With a prize pool of $570,000 he received over 100 submissions. 80% of which were accurate. He turned Goldcorp Inc. from a 100 million company into a 10 billion dollar company virtually overnight.

That’s the power of collaboration! With the tools we have available to us now, if there was a time where anyone can make a difference, I think it's now!

Scott Wain