Zoo Station

Via the Business 2.0 blog, I found the Business Experiment, a project by Robert May to see if the principles of the open source movement can be put to work in setting up a brand new business. Confused? May offers a short explanation.

The Business Experiment is a site meant to explore three concepts: wisdom of crowds, open-source business, and the distributed nature of work. The goal is to have the registered users of this site collectively start and run a real business. Business plans will be written. Financing will be sought (if needed). Employees will be hired. Systems of accountability will be put into place.

All major strategic decisions will be voted on by the registered users, and must be implemented by the employees. This will test to see if "the crowd" is really wise or not. Who do we hire? The crowd will vote on the candidates. What is our marketing strategy? Vote on it. How do we price our product or service? Vote again. It could be cool, or it could be foolish. But either way, it's definitely different.

Employees will be required to keep blogs. Eventually I hope to podcast some meetings. For the most part things will be done out in the open. People can see what goes on inside a real company because this will be a real company. At least sixty percent of the business (and possibly more) will be owned by the registered users. Ten percent will go to whoever submits the idea that we decide to pursue. Ten percent will go to this site, so that we can run other business experiments in the future. The rest will go to sponsors or investors, unless they are deemed unnecessary.

At the very least, it's an interesting idea. Have a look and decide if you want to participate in one of the more curious projects I've seen take shape on the web. If it works, it'll be quite amazing. If it doesn't, oh well.