Worldwide Success

A new revolution is under way.  One of the most profound changes of our times is happening right now, and the implications are not yet fully understood.  I am talking about global mass collaboration.  Global mass collaboration is the ability to produce goods and services collaboratively with input from hundreds, or even thousands of people from all over the world.  It is the ability to tap into human resources in ways that were unimaginable just a couple of decades ago.  Global Mass Collaboration is the new frontier of the 21st century which will change how wealth is created and distributed.

A revolution implies sudden changes.  And if you look at this change from a historical perspective it is indeed revolutionary.  But if you look only at the last 20 years, there is an evolutionary process that has been occurring, leading up to the current state, and promising even more profound changes in the next 20 years.  The foundation of this evolution is based on three key movements.  Globalization, the World Wide Web and the Open Source Movement started in the information technology industry have been the catalysts of this new and exciting operation mode.

Globalization

The power of globalization has already been manifested in many ways in several industries.  From manufacturing goods being produced in factories throughout the globe to customer service centers with a ‘follow the sun’ approach to intellectual capital being developed in low cost countries, globalization is here to stay.  From the collapse of the Soviet Union to the growth of new economies such as India and China, the world economy has experienced significant changes in the last 20 years, and is now more interconnected than ever.  In the next 20 years globalization promises better living standards and more goods available to more people, creating even more global interdependence.

World Wide Web

Although the internet has been around for a few decades, it wasn’t until the advent of the World Wide Web less than 20 years ago that it became widely available and used by the masses.  Since then, the computing power, network capabilities, and growing accessibility to the Web have created an unprecedented explosion in global participation and collaboration.  After the burst of the dot-com bubble in the beginning of the century, there was a sense that the ‘new economy’ was dead.  In reality, the burst of the bubble was a small setback to this new revolution that is still in its early stages.  There is now a new impetus in the internet community.  Some call it Web 2.0, others call it Hypernet.  Whatever it is called, there is a renewed force that is taking shape, lead by new titans of the internet such as Google.

Open Source Movement

The third phenomenon that is shaping this new revolution is the concept of openness that started with the Open Source movement.  It began with software developers who collaborated globally under no formal organizational structures to create viable products such as Linux and MySQL that are challenging the products created by traditional companies.  Then Wikipedia, a global online encyclopedia, proved that this new way of global mass collaboration can also be applied to the publishing industry.  Wikipedia was created entirely by volunteers, who edit the content in a collaborative manner, elaborating on the work of previous contributors.

Now the possibilities are endless.  Several publishers are already working on ‘wiki’ projects to generate books created entirely by volunteers.  Scientists throughout the world are collaborating to find cures for diseases.  Companies that ‘get it’ are opening their proprietary data to take advantage of resources outside of their four walls.  Don Tapscott has recently released a new book that covers this subject in detail:  Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

The Worldwide Success site is an example, albeit in a small scale, of the power of global mass collaboration.  First of all, the site was built entirely with free software available on the internet and created through global mass collaboration:  Wordpress, MySQL, PHP, and many plugins that are freely distributed by their creators.  Anyone with some basic technical abilities can create a site like this at zero cost and reach millions of people throughout the world.

This site has been available for only about 3 months, but it has already reached tens of thousands of people globally.  The graph below provided by Google Analytics shows a snapshot of where the readers are located on a typical week: 

As you can see, the site has made good penetration in the Americas and Europe, but can improve its readership in Africa, Middle East and Asia.  Part of the reason for this distribution is the languages in which the site is available:  English, Portuguese and Spanish.

But here is the true power of global mass collaboration.  I have recently established a relationship through this site with a university in China which will be using the articles published here for educational purposes.  They will also help me translate the site to Chinese, so that the articles can be made available to the greater population in China in their own language.  This site wins by being able to reach more people globally.  The university wins by having educational material freely available and providing their students an opportunity to improve their language skills.  The general Chinese population wins by having free information available in their own language on how to be successful, which can potentially lead to improvements in their lives.  Advertisers win, as they now can reach a broader group of individuals through this site that they couldn’t reach before.  This is a win-win situation.  Better yet, it is a multi-win situation.  And it was created out of nothing more than the power of global mass collaboration.

Who knows, maybe other universities throughout the world will want to establish similar relationships and have these articles available in many more languages, reaching even more people.  The possibilities are endless.

We are only starting to tap the power of global mass collaboration.  But I am truly excited about what it can do.  I believe the most profound changes of our times are about to unfold in front of our eyes.

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