Swarm Creativity Blog

If all we want is money, power, and glory, the world becomes a sad place. Academic research provides solid evidence that the pursuit of these three things makes collaboration among humans miserable. For instance, it appears that students of management and economics, who make the pursuit of money and power their life's goal, are more greedy even before they start their studies, and that they become even more so over the course of their education.   In behavioral research, first year economics students have been shown to be more likely to free-ride in public goods games: In one experiment , students could deposit money into a public account where it was multiplied and distributed to all participants, or keep their money in a private account, and still participate in the distribution of the public pool.   First year graduate students in economics kept eighty percent of the money for themselves, and only put twenty percent into the public pool, compared to all other partic...

Why do people collaboratively engage in innovative tasks? What’s the motivation to work together to develop something new? After all, if I do everything by myself, I will reap all the rewards for myself, and don’t have to share. Nevertheless, humans are the most social species of all, and progress is only possible by collectively creating new things “standing on the shoulders of giants”, by learning from what others have done, and apply it in novel ways. According to my colleagues at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence Tom Malone , Rob Laubacher , and Chris Dellarocas there are three main reasons why people engage in collective intelligence systems: Money – financial gain is a strong motivator for people participating in markets and traditional organizations, either for direct payment, or for future payment, e.g. acquiring new skills. Glory – getting recognition and building up a reputation can be an important motivator. Love – love can be an important motivator, be it beca...