Playing the Game Large
A couple of months ago, in response to some positive press ("the Flickr folk succeed... by stealing damn near every single great idea that's floating around on the Internet"), Stewart posted something really smart:
People are so afraid of stealing, and they're so afraid of being stolen from. It's insane. Because by "stealing" I just mean taking other people's ideas. That's what ideas are for. That's why there's music. That's why there's culture.
A lot of innovation goes on in our offices, but one of the reasons the results are good is because we have no fear of recombinant idea folding. Our egos don't get fed from being recognized for inventing cool shit and then taking all the credit for it, but from playing the game large, on the field with everyone else, part of the ecosystem; we have no 'not invented here' syndrome.
There's a lot to consider here, and I've come back to this quote often in the last few weeks to help me re-frame the way I think about my relationships with partners and competitors. Around the office we kvetch about partners using our intellectual property with their other clients. It's troublesome, because we spend a lot of time thinking about user experience, managing web teams, developing information architecture strategies, and the other things that make up our business. Even Jess's value-centered design model represents a substantial investment of time and energy. And really, our partners (and most of our competitors) care about user experience to the extent it helps them land projects--and not a whole lot beyond that.
Stewart's quote reminded me of a good Harvard Business Review article from earlier in the year, "Strategy as Ecology." (Here's a summary, or you can purchase the complete article. If someone has a PDF, send it to me and I'll post it.). HBS Working Knowledge has an adaptation of the article, "Creating Value in Your Business Ecosystem", which provides a decent overview of the topic. I like this:
Like an individual species in a biological ecosystem, each member of a business ecosystem ultimately shares the fate of the network as a whole, regardless of that member's apparent strength. From their earliest days, Wal-Mart and Microsoft—-unlike companies that focus primarily on their internal capabilities—-have realized this and pursued strategies that not only aggressively further their own interests but also promote their ecosystems' overall health.
This seems like a good description of "playing the game large"--recognizing that our ecosystem is a major factor in our success. In the ecosystem view, stealing ideas is an adaptative behaviour. Sharing ideas is too, since they both make for a healthier network.
