Collaboration Incentives

Forrester Research predicts that Enterprise 2.0 applications will be a market worth $4.6 billion globally by 2013. Which basically says that it is a hype in 2008.
Anyway, there will be an added $$$ market for training & consulting: Even though web2.0 applications are pretty common nowadays– e.g. 73% of internet users globally are reading blogs according to a UniversalMcCann survey – that still does not make web2.0 users good collaborators. While sharing and working together may come natural to the “net generation” who grew up with internet and mobile phone, the same cannot be said of older employees.

But how do you teach collaboration? One way seem to be multiplayer online games: A recent HBR article described how online multiplayer games can be used for leadership training and for simulating team structures. The authors concluded that “nonmonetary incentives built into a game economy strongly motivate individuals to accomplish group aims.”

What’s wrong with monetary incentives? Research - e.g. by Adrian Furnham, a Behavioral Psychologist , author of “The Psychology of Money” - found that that the concept that better paid people are more productive and happy does not tie in with the evidence found in the workplace. In fact, money is more likely to be a cause of dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. (see here).
Money may also not be the best motivation to get high quality contributions in an enterprise wiki or team workspace. Niko Nyman describes two ways to motivate people towards collaboration with money– and why they have their limits:

“The $1 million challenge” — The real incentive here is not direct
monetary reward, but the opportunity of winning a significant reward.
What kind of people take part in such lottery? Are these the people whose contribution you really want? How much effort are people willing to put into the slim chances of winning?

Paid content production — Paying people by contribution. It will get very expensive to pay any significant reward to content producers. If the reward is not significant, money is not the real incentive to contribute. One way to make the rewards bigger is to reward only the best. But how do you rank the content and decide who should be paid more? Squidoo and Mechanical Turk come to mind, both of which have not been that great successes.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to intrinsic motivation again, the type of motivation that is hardest to influence from the outside. Nevertheless, intrinsic motivation is getting increasing attention because not only collaboration but also creativity thrives when people are passionate about what they do. And even though intrinsic motivation basically is a personal decision (Is the glass half full or half empty?), it can well be taught (uncovered, encouraged, trained,...)

So, when that enterprise2.0 software is implemented, don't just offer manuals.
And, to get back to the HBR article, subscribe to a "multiplayer online role-playing game perspective" on team work: Players advance by collaborating with other characters, using each other's individual strengths for the common goal.