A friend recently asked how we intended to get people to contribute possible solutions on their own time and without compensation. Her question drives at the heart of our project and what we are trying to accomplish.
We can look to examples of crowdsourcing models and see compensation as a viable approach, a technique that was implemented by the winning team in the DARPA challenge to find 10 red balloons, but traditionally, crowdsourcing is done on the cheap, i.e. free. The quintessential example being Wikipedia, with its over 15 million articles in 270 languages, it has created a self-sustaining engine sustained by a groundswell of dedicated contributors, experts and gatekeepers of subjectivity.
But what is driving them? Dan Pink, in his 2009 Ted Talk, makes a compelling argument. Drawing on studies by Dan Ariely of MIT and further corroborating research, Pink demonstrates that higher reward systems actually have negative impacts on performance, especially when tasks require right-brain/creative involvement. When people are not inhibited by the pressure of performance, they are able to focus on their own autonomy, their own mastery of the subject matter and an ability to derive meaning from the work they achieve. Although compensation is thought to be king, creativity is driven by intrinsic motivators.
The project strives to tap into this energy that is innate in many of us, but is often clouded by the pressure to give, rather than the freedom to do. "If you build it, they will come," is a mantra I often think of when discussing this project. That doesn't mean people are going to be coming out of the woodwork, or cornfield, the moment we launch, but if we are able to provide an environment that empowers people to become master's of their own creative domain, getting people to come becomes a more attainable reality.
-Jesse
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