In contrast to the previous examples of iStockphoto and iFilm, where big media corporations have colonized grassroots initiatives after the fact, in the case of InnoCentive the initiative originates at the center of power: “Pharmaceutical maker Eli Lilly funded InnoCentive’s launch in 2001 as a way to connect with brainpower outside the company—people who could help develop drugs and speed them to market. From the outset, Inno-Centive threw open the doors to other firms eager to access the network’s trove of ad hoc experts” (Howe 2006; emphasis mine).
These are not small-scale “start-ups” or not-for-profit initiatives, but well-established, rich, profitable companies. In addition to Eli Lilly, companies using InnoCentive include Boeing, DuPont, and Procter & Gamble.<sup>4</sup> As the article puts it, these ad hoc experts “attack problems that have stumped some of the best corporate scientists at Fortune 100 companies” (Howe 2006). These companies “post their most ornery scientific problems on InnoCentive’s Web site; anyone on InnoCentive’s network can take a shot at cracking them.” The obvious reason why companies now “turn to the crowd [is] to help curb the rising cost of corporate research” (Howe 2006); companies offer merely \$10,000 to \$100,000 per solution.
But the economic benefit is only half the story, according to the article. The advantage that these companies see in crowdsourcing is the ability to mobilize the collective intelligence, or “smartness,” of the Web—smartness that does not exist anywhere else—to solve complex R&D problems. In fact, even though not all individuals in the crowd of solvers are experts and professionals (“the solvers are not who you might expect. Many are hobbyists . . .”), collectively, the article argues, the intelligence of the network is superior: “The strength of a network like InnoCentive’s is exactly the diversity of intellectual background” (Howe 2006).
Network production brings with it new modes of employment that are more flexible and precarious. And the digital discourse offers an explanation of them based on the inherent superiority of the network as a mechanism for the mobilization of dispersed skills. Hence, the legitimation for these new types of ad hoc employment schemes is based not only on economic reasoning (that this type of employment costs less and is more flexible and less burdening from the point of view of employers), and not only on emancipatory reasoning (that it allows more flexibility from the point of view of employees who would rather not be locked in committed—but possibly unsatisfying and stultifying—working relations; more on that below), but also on a new network reasoning, according to which the network is a repository of superior intelligence. Through the network, companies are able to tap into the expertise and knowledge of many more individuals than they can ever employ directly, and in turn, they can achieve better, smarter results (materialized in the form of products). Recall Kelly’s assertion that “no one is as smart as everyone” (Kelly 1998, 14). This is also very much in line with Friedrich Hayek’s conception of market information as tacit and dispersed (discussed in Chapter 3), but in this case the formula is applied not simply to information about markets but to information in the sense of specialized, professional, academic, and practical knowledge and expertise.
124
Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age