Peter Gloor Interview

Person interviewed: Peter Gloor Interviewer: FAR Date of interview: 04/03/ 2009 Interview title: Thesis Research: Brave New Collaboration Towards a Sustainable Future Program or publication: n/a Broadcaster/publisher: n/a Gloor, Peter. 2009. "Thesis Research: Brave New Collaboration Towards a Sustainable Future" Interview by Fei Rong, Alice-Marie Archer, Rebecca Petzel. 04 March. Evidence that sharing can lead to greater financial success: “What we have shown in our own research looking at high tech startups, the more they were willing to talk to each other, there was a very direct correlation for their financial success...” (Gloor. 2009. 30:38) Web-facilitated BIG conferences:“I would like to get...is the opportunity to link together lots of groups of people, hundreds perhaps with video conferencing, and thats not yet feasible with todays technology. Todays laptops have little webcams built in, but the best one can do is just one to one web conferencing and if we could wire together hundreds of people, that would be very productive”. (Gloor. 2009. 32:37)

Being possessive can damage the capacity of a Collaboration:“There is the Berkman Centre at Harvard and they are very much about … enabling access to digital content. I think that being very possessive is actually destructive for the defenders of this digital content. Being more willing to share in life and not go after competitors is a much better attitude. It has been shown many times in research that in the long run it works better... Its much better – being open.” (Gloor. 2009. 31:00) “It doesn't mean you cannot apply for patents, but I see them more as a defensive measure... like patent trolls suing for trying to go after your own patent.” (Gloor. 2009. 31:54) Overly controlling leadership: The biggest roadblock is if you have an emperor or a dictator or people in charge who do not respect the opinion of others. If in existing companies you get coins off the ground, an usually these are started below the radar screen of senior management, and then they are hijacked by the manager who thinks its a great thing...converts it into an official project team and he makes himself the boss. That is the best way to kill such a COIN because you have the people who wanted to feel in charge, and if they don't feel in charge anymore they will just quit.” Gloor. 2009. 21:28) Face to face is more intimate: “ In the context of sustainability, if we wouldn't have to fly around the world anymore, to collaborate, we could greatly decrease our energy consumption... but so far it seems, even with the telepresence of CISCO we are not yet there. Having dinner with somebody is still a much more intimate experience, I get to know the person much better than using the most fancy teleconferencing system.” (Gloor. 2009. 36:50) Establishing trust is easier face to face: “Doing things face to face is still more effective. because the trust issue in the beginning – knowing that the other person will deliver what you ask her to do is important.” (Gloor. 2009. 06:25) Establishing trust is easier face to face: “Because you can actually do the same thing which is building up trust and a working environment based on meritocracy and fairness over long distance or face to face

initially its much faster. Knowing that if I ask you to do something and you deliver what you promised via email takes, one week, 2 weeks 3 weeks 4 weeks, doing the same Face to face takes an hour. Its much easier to touch people when you talk to people face to face”. (Gloor. 2009. 14:01) Its easier understand each other Face to Face: “Non verbal cues are much easier to give face to face than over long distance, which means you can encourage them by nodding at them, looking into their eyes etc. If you have someone joining through skype thats much harder.” (Gloor. 2009. 24:53) Alice adds: If that is, you are from the same cultural narrative and recognize the body language etc. It may well be that neutral dialogue is easier not face to face...? On retrofitting a company with a COIN: “If you inherit a large hierarchical organization for example a very big bank or a conventional telecoms company that has been a state operated company probably for 5060 years. Its very tough to convert it into a COIN... High tech companies like Microsoft they have some of that flavor there are others like intel which is know for being very hierarchical – then its very hard to convert them into COINs.” (Gloor. 2009. 09:50) Accentuated hierarchy and large disparity between top management and working team: These huge differences between the CEO and acting worker: thats not then a very good way to build up trust.(Gloor. 2009. 09:40) When to Use COINs When meeting Face to Face is impossible: “If one team member is in Stockholm and the other is in Boston then you have no choice” (Gloor. 2009. 12:58) To access the best people for the job: “If you want the best people, they are most likely not at the same location and then virtual collaboration is better” (Gloor. 2009. 13:08) How can collaboration be designed to incentivize participation and break down barriers

Use emoticons for written 'chat': “Using emoticons or those little smileys to give feedback is very valuable, there is a little bit of research that if you use those things its very good for productivity and makes people feel more cohesive.” (Gloor. 2009. 25:13) COINs are never really big – Wikipedia is an example of an ecosystem of linked COINs. Quality is more important than quantity:“Getting huge COINs is of less value than having a small group of fully dedicated people … quality not quantity”. (Gloor. 2009. 16: 42) The Long Tail of Wikipedia – an ecosystem of COINs: “If you look at wikipedia, its consists actually of an ecosystem of many small COINs. Because on the one hand you have the people which are always working on articles about religion, articles about energy, articles about physics. Wikipedia has been researched very intensively about the activity levels of the different contributors. It turns out that there is what is called a long-tail distribution which means that very few people dedicate very many hours, and very many people dedicate very few hours.” (Gloor. 2009. 17:36) Use Gate-Keepers to bridge Gaps, communicate through Stories: “You need gatekeepers. You need people that can translate because the people in ... wherever, they understand the words, and they form their own mental image, and this mental image is very different using the same words. You need people that are aware of that and can translate from one to the other. Telling it in stories – thats what I found helps a lot. Don't tell process, tell stories.” (Gloor, 2009, 44:00)

For COINs with contributors that meet face to face and contributors that don't make sure you are 'Open' and communicate your progress:“People meeting face to face have a huge advantage, because they can get immediate feedback and they will either have built up trust and then work together as a team or they will just have fallen apart and then its obsolete anyway. Bottom line is it will be a much tighter knit community then those working abroad. The people that are co-located need to be very aware of the problem and try to be as inclusive as possible of the people that are not in the same place. Always send them transcripts of meetings. Invite them to meetings to join them through skype or phone or chat. Just include them in any email communications or send emails with a transcript of what they have discussed face to face”. (Gloor. 2009. 23:00) There are some great tools out there that can make web-based meetings closer to the experience of meeting face to face: “Cisco system called Telepresence with these huge monitors that give you the feeling you almost smell the other person. The resolution is so high you can see everything.... and you get the feeling that you are interacting with the other person face to face” (Gloor. 2009. 07:07) 3.4.2.4 How to foster Motivation, Vision and Trust: Leadership for Successful COINs It can be great to meet people in your COIN Face to Face eventually: “In all my projects, and I have done many of them where I haven't met people face to face for a year… I have met everybody that I'm collaborating with very closely... face to face and that has always been a great boost and energizer for a project”. (Gloor. 2009. 13:20) Share the rewards: “If you expect people to be Pigs (coming from Deborah Ancona’s metaphor of XTeams, where team members contribute to breakfast as pigs (sausage), chickens (eggs), or cows (milk), which means they commit themselves entirely, you have to give them something too. Its sharing the rewards”. (Gloor. 2009. 29:09) Delegate and allow for self-organization: Delegation and self-organization, those sort of things are very helpful for turning an organization into a very big COIN or into an ecosystem of different COINs. That means you don't give people orders, but you give them a task to do and then its up to them to decide how they want to self-organize and they want to do the task. (Gloor. 2009. 09:40) On building trust virtually: “Transparency builds trust...that means that you give as much information about yourself as possible, and it can just mean enter a link to your facebook page. If you tell people why you are doing a certain thing whether its to get rich whether its because you want to change the world, whether its because you want a new car or a dress or whatever. If you tell that, then the other person will trust you much than if you leave him/her in the dark. ” (Gloor. 2009. 14:50) Be Clear:“Be clear about your goals and speak them out when you reach the most people”. (Gloor. 2009. 16.40) Empower your team by listening and relinquishing some control: Its always this principle of empowerment, of listening to your employees or delegating decision making to the individual”. (Gloor. 2009. 27:50) Share responsibility:“If you want to keep motivation high, give everyone the feeling they are in charge”. (Gloor. 2009. 22:26) On finding motivated people: “I have a very simple rule and that is initially for a new project, I never pay people to do something. That makes sure I only get the people who care about the idea: not the people who care about the money. They might be paid later on, but initially they have to do things because they care about what they want to do”. (Gloor. 2009. 11.21). “I think what it forces people to do is make some harsh choices. If someone says I would love to do it but I have too many other obligations, then I would say please

support me in spirit. Because if I care to do a new project, I invest the most precious thing I have and thats my own time, and I don't want to waste it with people who cannot dedicate themselves” (Gloor. 2009. 11:56) How to approach legalities for COINs On sharing: “If there is the question of sharing too little or too much, I usually ere in the direction of sharing too much.” (Gloor. 2009. 41:30) Parallel Process necessary for Success On the importance of international cultural exchanges to establish more gatekeepers: “We have at MIT many people from developing countries and they come here and study, and they are in the position to be the gate keepers because they go back to india...china...africa and in that sense your program is very valuable. Im sure it will be frustrating at times, but over time it will build a shared understanding.” (Gloor. 2009. 45:16) Things to consider when selecting tools Motivation type may define how high-tech you need to be:“Low tech collaborations like the open source programmers are low tech because they just use email and no fancy conferencing, and thats good enough if you have a shared goal. Thats the big difference if you are a company: if you are a bank and you collaborate on developing...a new product, everybody is participating because they get the salary to do it. If you have some open source programmers who collaborate on linux, its not because they are getting a salary, its because they care about the idea. Then you don't really need high tech – low tech is good enough”. (Gloor. 2009. 07:42) Tools are there to be used in combination as exemplified by Peter Gloor talking about his own tool use: “The one which we use the most is email. The one which comes afterwards is skype, and then there is something called flash meeting which is allows up to 25 people to video conference together via webcam...then we have the wikis for sharing information... we have google docs for sharing document editing.” (Gloor. 2009. 34:00). On using simple tools in combination“Having little applications like email that do one job well then combining them is probably better”. (Gloor. 2009. 35:11) Tool evaluations Email has an important place:“I don't have an ideal tool. But to run a project over the course of 2 years, there is no substitute for email.” (Gloor. 2009. 34:00). Skype has multiple capacities: “Skype has chat built in, and you can use phone and you can have the image of the counterpart. In that regard for instantaneous communication and to build up trust its a very good thing”(Gloor. 2009. 34:00). Teleprescence: “Cisco system called Telepresence with these huge monitors that give you the feeling you almost smell the other person. The resolution is so high you can see everything.... and you get the feeling that you are interacting with the other person face to face” (Gloor. 2009. 07:07) ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Background: “Thats the basic idea of the COIN. You have the core which is totally dedicated, then you have the people outside...that are the learning network, then you have the indirect network.. so its those 3 concentric circles

or those 3 different user groups, and people move in and out.” (Gloor. 2009. 18:45) The Story of the English Breakfast – illustrating COINs“You are eating english breakfast. You have the people that are in it with all their bones and their meat – thats the pigs, you eat the sausage. Then you have the chickens. They contribute something that comes from them, but doesn't cost their life – the eggs, then you have the cows. They just contribute a little bit of their milk. In projects you have the same three different roles... and people fluctuate around those roles, and thats the same with the COINs, the learning networks and the interest networks.” (Gloor. 2009. 20:00) “In principle, every start-up that is built upon disruptive innovation is the product of a COIN”...Peter talked about some research undertaken by Clayton Christensen of Harvard in his book: The Innovators Dilemma. So this next quote is Peter speaking Clayton: “any disruptive innovation has been done outside of well established companies because it will be killed in a company because it always cannibalizes existing business...they always look like COINs that leave the established company and start a new business... first its a COIN and then it will grow into a company. ” 26:20 ----------------------------------------------------------