Abstract

The talk addresses three crucial issues for the science and management of large-scale collaborative knowledge work: (1) maintaining contributor motivation over the long-run, (2) understanding the role of authority structures in peer-production, (3) fostering inclusion to reap the rewards of crowd diversity. The talk draws on evidence from a field experiment, from observational data analyzed using novel techniques from natural language processing and computational linguistics, and from controlled lab experimentation. The results of all three studies converge to demonstrate the importance of nonmonetary incentives, especially those based on social motives.

Email us at digitalinitiative@hbs.edu for information on attending this seminar.