David Rowan wrote a great article called Crowdsourcing back in 2006.  It very astutely identified a trend where individuals will happily work for pennies or even for free - all made possible by the internet and central exchanges.

 

An example is stock photography. In the old world, if your magazine or corporate brochure needed a few images a conventional picture library would charge you £100 for each pic. Suddenly, that has all changed. iStockphoto has cut the price to as low as 60p. The secret? The over 25,000 amateur photographers who between them have uploaded 4m royalty-free pics to the site. The photographers earn a few pennies, the customer gets a bargain. And in the middle, iStockphoto makes a margin.

 

But that is an example of financial gain. 

 

But in the world of 100% altrusim there is Wikipedia. Who maintains Wikipedia. We all do. Why? Because we care about the content. 

 

So why do we all care so little about our corporate information?  The DNA of the business.  Its business processes, procedures and work instructions.  We even get paid to maintain it - and we still don't do it.

 

3 Simple reasons !!! 

- They are BORING (but a necessary evil),

- Poorly presented - unintelligeble flow charts which are not described in the context of an individuals role

- Difficult find hidden on some dusty corner of the intranet.

 

Here's a video of an alternative approach..