"Counter-intuitive" collaboration saves a business

This is a powerful example of a company sharing proprietary intellectual property to enjoy the fruits of mass collaboration.

I recently read a remarkable story in Businessweek [4] about innovation in the mining industry that speaks to the power of collaboration. The struggling mining company GoldCorp used mass collaboration to catapult itself from $100 million to $9 billion, while "transforming a backwards mining site in Northern Ontario into one of the most innovative and profitable properties in the industry."

We've all watched open-source companies like Linux, e-bay, and Red Hat succeed: now, we are seeing older industries embrace the new model for innovative success.

GoldCorp's CEO published every scrap of the company's geological data on the web: an unprecedented move in his industry, where such data is considered proprietary and kept highly confidential. Then the company invited the world to join in prospecting, with $575,000 in prize money as an incentive.

The results? Hundreds of graduate students, consultants, scientists, members of the military, and geologists responded to the contest. They found 110 targets on the property, leading to the discovery of about 8 million ounces of gold — worth well over $3 billion!

This is a powerful example of a company sharing proprietary intellectual property to enjoy the fruits of mass collaboration. It serves as a gentle wake-up call for companies in all industries: closed systems are going the way of the buggy whip, and boundary-less innovation is the next big thing.