Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

by Andrew McAfee

essentially got project submissions and recruited people to look at them: project comes in, internal person does it, we go find somebody else external [and compare the two]. “Oh, wow, they look pretty similar.” Do that a few times. “Oh my gosh, you know what? There’s talented people all over the place. We don’t have to hire them here in Mountain View. They can actually provide just as meaningful feedback, if not better.” Then we started thinking, “What do we have to pay for this stuff?” We started experimenting with different amounts of pay. “Wow, we could do it for 30%.” He manually tested his way to build the product that he launched in six weeks. When we asked Makhijani if he had formally approved opening up Udacity’s grading to outsiders, he said he had not. I just said, “That sounds pretty cool. Keep going.” And he did. It’s funny, [Udacity founder] Sebastian [Thrun] says it the best: “When we make a change to the mobile app, I find out because it’s in the app store.” There’s no product reviews here, there’s no sense that you must clear your idea with Vish or anything like that. I don’t have this absolute perfect filter of what should be in the market and what shouldn’t, let alone the creativity to do it all. So why not tap the collective brains of everybody here? In addition to egalitarianism, and often in support of it, second-machine-age companies have high levels of transparency: they share more information more widely than has been typical. Wall Street Journal te...