Motivating peer production

Wikinomics defines peer production as “a way of producing goods and services that relies entirely on self-organising, egalitarian communities of individuals who come together voluntarily to produce a shared outcome”

What is particularly interesting in the classic peer production cases, e.g. Linux, is that for a good proportion of the production there is no direct monetary compensation. Why participate then.? Clearly, the peer production model involves more complex systems of compensation.

In an enterprise model, an employee may not necessary gain direct financial benefits by making extra contributions on the company wiki or contributing in other ways to the process of mass collaboration. However they stand a very good chance of earning considerable kudos and attracting attention, earning a reputation for themselves and hence enhancing the opportunities for further downstream economic gain.

It seems, then, that when implementing collaborative technologies in the enterprise we need to incorporate models that will recognise the knowledge workers who make considerable contributions to the corporate body of knowledge. Online profiles should make it clear the extent to which an individual is involved in and contributing to the collaborative knowledge base.

Perhaps a rating scheme, something along the lines of the loyalty points system that airlines use would work? For example, contributing X number of articles to the corporate wiki earns a certain recognition status. Producing a blog of a certain scope earns some sort of “expert” status in that area. Add the social networking piece to the mix and it becomes a powerful incentive for knowledge workers to participate in the collaborative workplace.

Here is my suggestion for segmentation of the community :

• Content contributor (mostly consumes, very occasionally contributes)
• Peer producer (has made an important contribution that is of value to the peer community)
• Mass collaborator (highly active, recognised authority and domain expert).