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Filed under Thoughts on April 16, 2007 by Chris Dary

Collaborative Brilliance

I'm Chris Dary - a Web Application Developer here at Arc90. I joined the team about four months ago, and I've been getting my hands dirty in some great projects.

I had an idea the other day, about ideas. A meta-idea, I guess.

I looked around my office, and thought about my friends, and realized: the level of intelligence in the people that surround me essentially knows no bounds. I've truly been fortunate to be able to congregate with these people. Their ability to come up with elegant solutions, to provide excellent feedback, and to formulate great ideas consistently amazes me.

A quick thought exercise. Think about all of the people you respect in your place of work, your profession, and your social circle. As varied as their skillsets might be, they are all likely to have come up with some great ideas. Even those small, perfect little ideas - the ones that make doing something just a little bit easier. Do you remember any of those ideas that they voiced where you said, "Hey. That's a really good idea, and I never would have thought of that."

If these are the ideas you knew about, think about all of the ideas these people are having that they never even bring up - perhaps because they haven't fleshed them out, or they'd feel somehow ignorant or flat out wrong. How many ideas do you have that you've never voiced to your peers?

What if, as a business, you could encourage these ideas, and implement the good ones? Good ideas translate into better output and higher profits, right?

One of the best things about working at Arc90 is that every endeavor has been open to new ideas. None of my superiors have ever been afraid to take a fresh look at how to approach a problem, and that has led to not only some great experiences for the employees, but some great solutions for the business. These ideas being encouraged were key to the development of the company.

When you get a group of minds together, each equally contributing to solving a problem or creating something, great things can happen. With ideas flying around, people acting as sounding boards for each other, the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.

It's pretty amazing when you see it happen.

This isn't just delegated to the boardroom, though. There's already a very large movement in software today that takes every voice seriously. Where every person can make a difference. And I bet you already know what it is.

Open source software has been taking these conventions to heart for a long time. Growing from the roots of academia, it's been working for the benefit of society for many years. Linux, the Apache HTTP Server, even the very foundation of the Internet itself were all formed under an open context.

Without this collaborative brilliance from a large group of very dedicated people, the software world today would be a very different place. Spanning many time zones and decades, these voices have created something larger than any single one could have.

As awe-inspiring as all of this seems, most businesses today are not run like this. In many cases, businesses see there being two very different types of people in an effective process - the boss and the employee, the brain and the hand. This doesn't translate very well into the industry we're seeing nowadays - software development especially. Often the 'hand' himself has more insight into the process and can more effectively identify problems - and elegant solutions to them.

Software development is a different animal than classic management science ever could have dreamed of back in the industrial revolution. Mind and hand are blurring, and figuring out where to draw the line is wasted effort.

Instead, borrow from Open Source, and let every person make a difference.

It's pretty amazing when you see it happen.

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Comments

You have some interesting ideas here, Chris. The OSS movement has been picking up steam as of late and it shows no signs of stopping. Its amazing what collaborative minds can come up with in their spare time. The problem I see with running your business like OSS is you have to go in full force or not at all, otherwise it becomes nothing but a gimmick, a tag line to add to your company website. And how far to you intend to take it? Do you plan to model your creative strategy like the collaborative conscience of OSS and Free Software, or do you plan to actually release projects under the GPL or compatible license, and contribute to the community? Contribution, as you know, is at the heart of the subject.

Posted on April 21, 2007 1:31 PM by Matt Kemp

I think you're right Chris. Increased motion to the open source community has (literally) no bounds to its benefit. When all people are both allowed and encouraged to give their 2 cents towards even the tiniest bit of code, you have the opportunity to see massive improvements on the whole as far as reliablilty and optimization of software. Of course Matt also makes a great point, we can't just borrow from open source and then close the lid on the box. When one choses to be part of the open source community, they have to chose whether to be a leech or one who shares. Just like p2p networks, the backbone of open source has to be people willing to share even after the software is developed.

Posted on April 22, 2007 5:24 PM by Michael McDonnell

As someone often impressed by the gradual miracles of software development (at the hands of both enterprising companies such as yours and equally innovative open sources), the prospect of collaboration between amateur and professional seems as natural as it is brilliant. As my biologist roommate might quote, "Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking," and I believe in the not-so-distant future your approach of professional symbiosis between innovators will see great benefit to all involved. In all other fields of industry this interplay of creative cooperation exists to some extent, yet no other industry but software can communicate an entire "prototype" instantly to anywhere in the world, giving your expertise a distinct advantage.

The above comments stressing contribution ring true, of course, but even in my limited experience with software development I can recall dozens of disused, undeveloped ideas partially constructed that could perhaps be realized by someone possessing !different! -- not necessarily better or worse -- abilities and approaches than myself. Thus even the waste byproduct of corporate innovation could constitute a significant contribution to the OSS community, and the trash component to this trash-into-treasure equation possible with OSS surely already exists in some dank, forgotten corner of your own hard drive. Contribution doesn't have to mean divided resources or compromised efficiency.

Well-written, casual and enjoyable post, Mr. Dary.

Posted on May 3, 2007 2:52 PM by N

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