How powerful is the concept of information sharing—can information sharing even cure cancer?
The Wall Street Journal, 18 September 2007 reports that two hedge fund managers have “agreed to put up $1 million of their own money every year to fund the Gotham Prize for Cancer Research…the prize will go to the person who posts the best new cancer-research idea…the winner of the Gotham prize doesn’t have to present a shred of evidence that the premise will work. To attract ideas from people outside the field of cancer research, there is no requirement that the winner be capable of seeing the idea through. And the prize money is earmarked for personal use.”
These “efforts are focused on overcoming the reluctance to share ideas,” since there is “a culture that discouraged the sharing of promising ideas. If you have a great idea, but someone else publishes first, you get no credit, professionally or financially…and ‘ideas are currency.’”
Additionally, “getting grants…forces people to do somewhat mundane experiments that follow up on other experiments rather than thinking creatively.”
The Gotham Prize site for cancer fighting ideas “will serve as a kind of marketplace of ideas,” so we can beat cancer with new ideas either never thought of or shared before.
Wow, this is truly amazing! The notion of people sharing information across the globe to defeat cancer. Think about it. Rather, than hoarding information for financial or professional gain, people share information to overcome one of the biggest scourges of our time.
And cancer is just one disease (although a horrific one), what if this was applied to defeating them all! And to other problems facing humanity. War, terrorism, famine, poverty, pollution, energy resources, and so on. Aren’t we better off pooling information, talent, and the power of numbers rather than hoarding information for self interest?
Yes, I know capitalism and market competition is a great motivator for moving things forward. But what if like with the
In User-centric EA is one way to drive information sharing in the enterprise. A core principle of User-centric EA is information sharing and accessibility. EA’s notion of information sharing includes creating a common lexicon, describing the data (metadata), registering the data so that it is discoverable, and enabling the exchange of information when and where people need it.
But it’s tough to get people to share information, since “information is power” and “information is currency”, but let’s turn the standard model on its head and create incentives for people to share and disincentives to hoard—then the world may be a better place for all of us!
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