http://jonahbermanmi703.blogspot.com/2008/10/crowdsourcing-at-presidential-debate-no.html

Jonah brought up a great topic for discussion, based on a question (and classic non-answer from a politician) in the debate from a couple nights ago. 

“Should we fund a Manhattan-like Project that developed the nuclear bomb to deal with global energy and alternative energy, or should we fund one-hundred thousand garages across America, the kind of industry and innovation that developed Silicon Valley?”

I think this is a great question for debate in the class, and here’s why:

1. We’ve discussed crowdsourcing, but from the standpoint of a company searching for development innovations (ex. P&G and toothpaste, InnoCentive, etc.)  But how are the problems posted to the crowd really done?  P&G didn’t ask for the crowd to make toothpaste, they asked for solutions to a specific problem that wouldn’t necessarily limit the crowd to those who’ve spent their lives designing toothpaste.

2. Does renewable energy and green tech lend itself to more of a Manhattan Project, or Silicon Valley? Consider the following characteristics on each side:

Manhattan Project (a series of government funded projects to produce a functional nuclear weapon)

  1. Many sites, spread around the country
  2. Top secret development
  3. Parallel development of resources (plutonium) and engineering
  4. Top minds in their respective fields in all of the sites
  5. A race against evil (Axis powers)
  6. A product that is was never meant to be sold
  7. Parts of the product were able to be used in other industries (Nuclear Power) but sharing was an afterthought.

Silicon Valley (a collection of economy funded tech startups that work on various technologies)

  1. Tight grouping of development in an area known for its high powered local universities
  2. Evolved from WWII era government development in radio and communication industries
  3. Spurred on by development of a civilan venture capital system (derived from gov’t funding processes of WWII era)
  4. Known for development of a variety of technologies originating for transistor technology, and has expanded into computers and computer based industries such as software.
  5. Creates individual products for commercial and personal consumption
  6. Limited government intervention in technologies pursued.

3. What should the policy be? Out of the two choices of ” Fund one mega project (Manhattan)”, and “Fund 1000 little project (half-crowdsourcing, half-Silicon Valley)” my choice would be None of the Above.

Our current politicians know that a Manhattan style project was the best that we could do in the 1930s and 1940s, and it was able to succeed based on tremendous resources, manpower, and a looming spectre of Nazis.  It was good against evil, everyone pitched in.  There was no opportunity to sell out, or cut and run.  This wasn’t a commercial project, and was guarded so tightly that you probably would have been shot if you tried to leave.  The risks involved were worth taking, because if we didn’t succeed, there might not be a tomorrow.  The current energy crisis has a tomorrow, it’s just more expensive, and it’s much more difficult to persuade the taxpayers that we need to pay now to protect great grandkids.

The current holders of the government purse strings also know that they could not reproduce Silicon Valley in a bubble.  Any time you limit innovation to a government specified spec, you’ll either get nothing or exactly your spec. In fact, we should be asking ourselves, why hasn’t Silicon Valley solved energy before this?  They’ve tried, and it hasn’t caught on commercially.   If the government selects 1000 companies/projects, there’s going to be tremendous oversight, planning, specifications, etc (Just ask anyone working at Lockheed or Northrup Grumman). That’s great for those of us in the systems engineering business, but really locks down on innovation.  This just screams “Top-down” planning that crowdsourcing circumvents.

So how does the government tweak the commerical rewards system to tip the balance of rewards and profits so that energy tech will work?  Tax cuts for green tech, subsidies, tariffs, taxes on fossil fuels.  That would create incentives for innovative folks in Silicon Valley to work on the problem.  Some government funding might work in some labs/academic situations, but this pales in comparison to the amount of capital available if it is a global economic success (How many profs do you see driving Bentleys and owning their own Learjets?).  Small amounts of funding for Innovation prizes might also work, but the main goal is to give economic reasons why we should use renewable over oil.

 

Extra resources: The wikinomics website w/ blog posts…

http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/

And a post about how a croudsourced venture could go wrong:

http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2008/09/11/crowdsourcing-business-model-failure-vs-management-mistake/