Michael Gurstein (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)

“xxxxx is to Walmart
as
Open Source is to Microsoft: Discuss?”

This was Michael’s key question that immediately whetted our curiosity. What has the famous American shopping chain to do with ICT4D?

A lot, it turns out, if you mull over the transformational capacity of information systems. According to Michael, Wal-Mart’s economy is as large as that of Australia. Its purchases alone from China comprise 1% of the overall Chinese GDP. Wal-Mart has risen to such commercial success by adopting and implementing information technology for the coordination and structuring of its operations. It has identified what exactly ICT can do for it.

Understanding and adapting this new means of production to their own purposes and benefit was a determining factor in Wal-Mart’s rise to power. Who can then ‘compete’ with it? The answer can be derived from the experience with Open Source. It has become the main competitor of Microsoft by virtue of its nature: it is self-managed and is continuously coordinated and negotiated by self-critic / review and accepted norms of its practitioners. Microsoft, on the other hand, is more externally managed and structured for uniformity and internal control. Microsoft and Wal-Mart have this in common. If so, then the logical competitor for Wal-Mart would be an entity that operates on principles of self-organization, self-management, engagement and negotiations by peer review and accepted or shared norms. In Michael’s eyes, this would be communities (geographical or virtual or both).

Thus, COMMUNITIES is to Wal-Mart as Open Source is to Microsoft.

Discuss??? Always!

— timi