Lessons From Mozilla - Open Innovation & Crowd Sourcing

Lessons from Mozilla:How we are learning tofoster and grow participation

Pascal [email protected]

MIT Innovation Lab MeetingMay 24-25, 2010

Warning! Your Milage May Vary

about:Mozilla

First, some context

about:Mozilla

1. a global, open source project

2. a community of thousands of creators

3. a mission-oriented organization

4. a public benefit company and subs

5. the maker of Firefox & Thunderbird

Alternatively…

about:Mozilla

Mozilla’s Mission:

To promote choice andinnovation on the Internet

The Web is too important…

seriously.

that’s it.

about:Mozilla

• Mozilla project started in 1998 within Netscape

• Mozilla Foundation started in 2003

• approximately 250 paid staff in 20 countries

• 40% of code contributed by volunteers

• testing community of 20,000+

• current reach is more than 360 million users

• global browser market share >25%

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d2/

Internet_map_1024.jpg

The Strongest Open Systems are Chaords

1. distributed decision-making2. nodal authority3. ways to route around

1. exhibit characteristics of both chaos & order

2. regularly yield surprising innovation

3. highly robust & scalable systems

Examples: the Internet, Visa, Wikipedia

Characteristics of Chaords (coined by Dee Hock)

Mozilla is a Chaord

1. high agreement on core values

2. decision-making rests with module owners

3. groups have distinct ways of working

4. many decision-makers outside the “official” org

5. communication is central

We are a community of creators

about:Labs

“Laboratories are where science and creativity meet to develop, research, and explore new ideas.

Mozilla Labs embraces this great tradition - a virtual lab where people come together to create, experiment, and play with new Web innovations and technologies.”

Structure

Projects Platforms Programs

Mozilla Labs so far

• 17 major projects (and many more explorations)

• 1,000+ participants

• 3,000+ submissions, ideas & concepts

• 40+ schools & universities world-wide participate

Crowd Sourcing: Concept Series

Crowd Sourcing: Design Challenge

Lessons from Mozilla

Challenge #1

Increase participationfrom non-developers

Challenge #1:Increase participation from non-developers

Situation

• The Mozilla project traditionally has strong participation from developers (and related areas) but lacks participants in fields such as UI/UX/HCI designers

Hypothesis

• Targeted outreach (e.g. universities and UX user groups) and programs geared specifically to the target group introduce participants to Mozilla, get them involved and turn some of them into long-term contributors

Challenge #1:Increase participation from non-developers

Experiment

• Targeted outreach to 50+ universities with UX/HCI programs around the world as well as IxDA (large UX user group)

• Setup of initial Design Challenge around “Chromeless Browsing” w/ video sessions, lessons, multiple phases

Results & Findings

• 15+ participating universities (on different levels) / 40+ participants / 18 submitted prototypes

• Scalability issues around program

• Prototype requirement was a mismatch to skill set (designers vs developers)

Challenge #1:Increase participation from non-developers

Refinement

• 6 additional Design Challenges

• Increased outreach to both universities & user groups

• Average participation: 100+ submissions (video/mockup)

• Parallelization of challenges problematic

• Still struggling with scalability issues

Challenge #2

Create the rightincentives & motivations

Challenge #2:Create the right incentives & motivations

Situation

• Participants in Open Source projects are primarily motivated by the desire to “scratch an itch”, social recognition, as well as learning new and expanding existing skills

Hypothesis

• Participating designers are more motivated by (formal) recognition (e.g. for CV building)

• Further: Sharing and open collaboration is much less common among designers than developers (where code sharing is common practice)

• Designers enjoy challenges which they can directly relate to

Challenge #2:Create the right incentives & motivations

Experiment

• Design Challenges have an element of formal recognition by showcasing all submissions and bestowing “Best in Class” honors (without monetary prizes)

• Design Challenges explore different topics - ranging from major Firefox features to very specific and “niche” problems

Results & Findings

• Participants react extremely positive to recognition mechanism, lack of monetary prizes doesn’t seem to make a difference

• Specialized Design Challenges result in low participation

Challenge #2:Create the right incentives & motivations

Refinement

• Careful topic selection and “dressing up”

• Expansion of public recognition element (hi-fi showcases)

• For “niche” topics: Pre-selection of relevant target groups, higher touch outreach

• Problem: Fatigue amongst participating designers

Challenge #3

Ideas don’t (automatically)

result in collaboration

Challenge #3:Ideas don’t (automatically) result in collaboration

Situation

• Participants in the Concept Series often simply submit ideas directed to the Firefox team (similar to Dell’s IdeaStorm) and don’t develop them further

Hypothesis

• Participants often lack specific skills to develop an idea further

• Collaboration across strangers is hard

• Main challenge: Lack of incentives to drive an idea forward

Challenge #3:Ideas don’t (automatically) result in collaboration

Experiment

• High-touch support of participants and their ideas within the Concept Series by Mozilla staff

• Teams of students (with complimentary skills) from participating universities, working together on single idea

Results & Findings

• Ideas overcome initial inertia after receiving input & support by Mozilla but fizzle out after support stopped

• Excellent results from student teams - though project development stops after students turn their focus onto something else

Challenge #3:Ideas don’t (automatically) result in collaboration

Refinement

• Highlighting relevant projects/ideas to turn the community focus onto them (with specific tasks)

• Potential to empower community members to take up mentorship roles (train the trainer)

• High-touch outreach has strong scalability issues

Challenge #4

Tooling

Challenge #4:Tooling

Situation

• Few existing tools which don’t fully fit the specific workflow of our initiatives and are usually designed for closed communities

Hypothesis

• A good tool can lower the barrier for collaboration significantly and make collaboration much easier

• Good tools create incentives for participation & collaboration (e.g. personal profiles)

Challenge #4:Tooling

Experiment

• Tested a couple of available tools (with different focus - e.g. StackExchange, IdeaScale, Elgg)

• Tried to build own tool

Results & Findings

• Existing tools mainly don’t work for Mozilla - openness and specific UI/UX workflow prove to be main issues

• Building your own tool is hard - especially if you don’t exactly know what you need to build

Challenge #4:Tooling

Refinement

• Currently looking into Intuit Brainstorm (which seems to fit the bill quite nicely)

• Lots of discussions with tool vendors to share learnings and evangelize the open nature of these tools

Challenge #5

Filter & voting mechanisms

Challenge #5:Filter & voting mechanisms

Situation

• Simple voting and filter mechanisms (e.g. Digg-style thumbs up/down) have known limitations and can easily be gamed

Hypothesis

• A robust voting mechanism needs to limit gaming and allow creation of a robust average from participants with different backgrounds

Challenge #5:Filter & voting mechanisms

Experiment

• Test with simple voting mechanism (all participants could vote on all submissions and leave a vote up)

• Second test with mechanism based on innovation tournaments (participants can only vote on 5 randomly selected submissions, vote on different criteria from 1 to 5)

Results & Findings

• Initial test was immediately gamed and produced meaningless results

• Innovation tournament voting very robust, yet hard to implement on an ongoing basis (voter fatigue)

Challenge #5:Filter & voting mechanisms

Refinement

• All Design Challenges will be run with an innovation tournament style voting

• Still looking for easy to implement and use mechanism for robust filtering/bubbling up of good ideas

Postscript

Some thoughts about the future

Some thoughts about the future

More experimentation

• We’re currently staffing for a role around the Concept Series & Design Challenges

• Continued experimentation w/ university collaboration

• Still on the quest to find the (mostly) right tool

• Starting to act more like a catalyst -- which fits nicely with our overall model of openess

Questions & Discussion

[email protected]@pfinette

All content CC-Attribution

Thanks & apologies & materials borrowed from:John Lilly, Chris Beard and the Mozilla Community