Peer Production – How to make it work?
Peer production is an interesting topic. For the purpose of this blog post, I will define peer production as a user-to- business relationship i.e. someone designs/solves a corporate problem and gets something in return (generally monetary rewards). Please see the GoldCorp or P&G’s Connect+Develop program. Peer production is also used to refer to an organisation’s customers contributing for the better of the organisation.
Peer production is not the same as open source development like Linux or Apache neither is it Wikipedia or Flickr contribution. Such kinds of contribution does not get any rewards and the motive to contribute is different from people who joins peer production communities.
First up, contributors in peer production communities, gets money if their solution gets selected and implemented. Secondly, they sometimes do not get the recognition on their solution whereas recognition from open source contribution is slightly more transparent. These are the two high level differences.
I hope to answer how to make peer production happen within your organisation. I believe that there is a motive for most, if not all, things that people do and for peer production to happen you need to give your customers and contributors outside your organisation some value for helping you. You can take the easy way out and just give $$$. However, money doesn’t solve all problems and not all contributors wants money. One must understand that some of these contributors might be the top brains of their industry/expertise and they might be looking for other things. Organisations must study who are their target audience, provide a combination of value for them and build a relationship with these top contributors – they are your best asset. These people are the trusted third party advisors who are experts in their area or a consumer of your products. Listening to what they say might save alot of time and money on your R&D.
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