Realize The Potential of Collective Knolwedge

Management consultant Peter Drucker wrote "Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes." Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales launched a platform that allows people across the globe to collectively improve and increase knowledge.

Born in Huntsville, Alabama Wales received his bachelor's degree in finance then entered a Ph.D. program. Instead of writing the required dissertation, which he found boring, Wales took a job with Chicago Options Associates and "soon earned enough to support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives."

During his college years he first learned of the potential of large scale online collaboration when he became familiar with a type of virtual role playing game called Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs). In 1996 he founded the web portal Bomis with two partners. Although Bomis struggled to make money it did provide him with the funding he needed to pursue his idea for an online encyclopedia.

In March 2000, along with Larry Sanger, Wales launched a peer-reviewed open-content encyclopedia called Nupedia. Nupedia was to have expert-written entries on a variety of topics and attract enough viewers that would allow advertising to be placed alongside the entries.  Due to an arduous peer-review process, however, Nupedia failed to achieve a high rate of growth.

To help facilitate its growth and simplify the submission process, Wales and Sanger implemented a new tool called a wiki that programmer Ben Kovitz introduced to them in January 2001. When Nupedia's experts rejected the wiki for fear that mixing amateur content with professionally researched material would compromise the integrity of Nupedia's information and damage the credibility Wales and Sanger labeled the new project "Wikipedia" and went live on its own domain five days after its creation.

In its brief history Nupedia produced just 24 articles. Wikipedia currently offers over 4 million articles in over 25 languages.

Questions To Ask Yourself

• Wales understood the value of collective knowledge, and applied it in a new way to create a business. Have you thought about the practical applications of collective
  knowledge and how it might help you achieve your dream?
• How have you used collective knowledge in your life or business?
• Have you contributed to collective knowledge by using a wiki or other collaboration platform?
• Have you set up a process to improve, challenge and increase knowledge within your business, school or organization?
• How does your business, school or organization build upon its collective knowledge?