There are various attempts at applying the open source model for problem solving. There are also many angles of looking at it - reverse salients, innovation. The open source concept has been applied even beyond the domain of software development.
Karim Lakhani, an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School, concludes that open source software development model can encourage large-scale scientific problem solving. The interview also provides probably one of the clearest explanations:
What he and his coauthors discovered: “broadcasting” or introducing problems to outsiders yields effective solutions. Indeed, it was outsiders—those with expertise at the periphery of a problem’s field—who were most likely to find answers and do so quickly.
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“Innovations happen at the intersection of disciplines. People have talked about that a lot and I think we’re providing some systematic evidence now with this study,” Lakhani says.
The open source opponents usually jump at this by highlighting problems with open source. Of course there are problems, which can be solved. We have seen that openness, even outside software development, provides high value by breaking the ice. There can be some hindrances in the execution, which have to be managed to get benefit of that value. If you consider this value, the effort to overcome the hindrances is a investment rather than the cost. Read the interview by Martha Lagace for more insight, it was one of the 25 most popular articles at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge (via HBS articles on Innovation and Entrepreneurship).
The list also includes an article at the top on the controversial topic whether Microsoft will lose out to the open source movement. But that is another story for another day.
