Software's open-source model provides inspiration in other arenas
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Pentagon this past spring launched its so-called Minerva initiative - a hunt for more information on the Chinese military, ways to marginalize al-Qaida, new anti-terror strategies.
Thirty years ago, it might have been top-secret stuff. Today, the military is asking everyone for help - and will post the results in full public view.
It's another example of a new world of problem-solving that seeks answers in the public square.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates calculates that the transparency of Minerva is also its strength, that by looking to everyone for advice and letting the crowd weigh in on the results, the communal know-how will be that much richer.
"There will be no room for 'sensitive but unclassified,' " Gates said in an April speech to university presidents about the project. If it were cloaked in secrecy, he warned, "you could end up with mediocre, uninventive results."
Scientific or commercial, civilian or military, business or hobby, there is a new emphasis on sharing problems and ideas in ever more public ways in hopes on hitting on more brilliant solutions.
Self-styled inventors are weighing in - for cash and intrinsic satisfaction - to solve puzzles vexing industry and government. Aspiring entrepreneurs are seeking fortune not by hoarding ideas but by sharing them. Spurred both by the endless interactivity made simple by the Internet and the all-ideas-welcome culture it has nurtured, an explosion of what one author calls "crowdsourcing" is offering new ways to get things done.
When former tennis pro Steve Timperley learned of a budding new system for handicapping tennis players - a method clubs could use to better match players of similar abilities - he chose not to hold the idea close to the vest.
Rather, he put it to a team in the University of Missouri-Kansas City's New Venture Challenge Competition to work out the kinks and develop a business plan that might bring his Tencap Tennis to market. In turn, that team opened its strategy to other business people for critique.
