Having shared goals doesn't preclude competition. Indeed, nothing can. People naturally vie for leadership, or at least for attention. They contend for scarce resources. They push their own proposals for "how to get there from here," out of a sense of ownership of (or identity with) their pet ideas.

Competitive impulses are inevitable. Channeling those impulses into good uses is a challenge for Project Persephone.

One advisor to the Project, Lisa Thorell, strongly advocates contests, saying that although social networks? might have their place in "crowdsourcing" the fermentation of ideas,

[a] social network is not a place for the architects and designers of [a project] to actually get work done. That requires a more TopCoder-style environment where you encourage architects to build multiple Project Persephone worlds to test for actual user evaluation. [The] NetFlix prize [...] tools and forums were quite simple but [the] rules were extremely well thought out. [It had] methods of submitting, timeframes, deadlines, quantitative testing methods, behavioural spurs (eg. Last Call to Action), etc. The process was one, per Netflix philosophy, of providing Context, not Control.1

Dr. Thorell also considers Netflix exemplary for its competitive approach to recruiting and selectively retaining in-house expertise.2 One might argue that picking and choosing among active contributors is a privilege "earned" only by an organization that can pay people for their work. Project Persephone needs to make do with volunteer labor for most purposes, and it would seem that beggars cannot be choosers. However, as Peter Drucker noted long ago, the more established and professional non-profits tend to institute very formal screening policies, both for qualifying new volunteers and for periodically evaluating those already recruited.3 Failure to choose judiciously might result in a dysfunctional organization, one that's truly reduced to begging, and eventually reduced to nothing. Defining the boundaries for social inclusion versus functional inclusion in Project Persephone, and determining who is allowed to cross them and under what circumstances, is likely to be an on-going organizational challenge.

 

1 Lisa Thorell of Off the Grid PR, pers. comm.

2 She cites "Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility". Reed Hastings, Netflix, 2009

3 Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices, Peter Drucker, Collins (August 3, 1992). ISBN 0887306012


This page may have a more recent version on pmwiki.org: PmWiki:Competition, and a talk page: PmWiki:Competition-Talk.

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