How To Tap Into Cognitive Surplus In A Company

Similar to Code for America (which itself is based on Teach for America), I am thinking companies could benefit a lot if they do something like Code for Company. One might think that all corporate developers work and do coding for the company - but in reality, corporate developers only code for the project they are assigned to. 

Lot of corporations have lot of cognitive surplus within their own organization similar to Cognitive Surplus we have in overall community[2, 3]. I think companies can benefit by tapping into corporate cognitive surplus.

What corporations can do to use the cognitive surplus they already have:

• Let all developed employed by the company in all locations to register themselves as community developer
• Post projects to be picked by the team of developers already employed by the company
• Make sure that the IP stays with the company
• Encourage community developers to contribute some of their time to company wide projects
• Developers who contribute the corporate community should not be penalized but should be applauded
• Ask managers who go to vendors to project assignments to try this community first
• To start with it may benefit the company if they dedicate some developers for certain period of time to kick start the community 

This will be a good start for large corporations to start a new work model to engage the Agile Workforce[1] (where companies need to have multiple work models), for following reasons:

• since individuals can have an identity beyond the immediate manager or team or project or department they work for
• the team that assembles itself for a project will be self organizing and deliver the project 
• it will be possible to get required skills/expertise much faster within the company
• company developers can learn to work in community development without worrying about intellectual property since they are still contributing to the company
• companies  can learn how to engage new workforce who don't have much loyalty to their employer but have highest professional standards
• overtime companies can cooperate with few select partner companies to build a larger community
• companies don't need to reinvent the wheel for this - copy from open source, crowd sourcing communities that already exist in the market

1. Building Agile Workforce by Jeffrey Joerres  
2. Cognitive Surplus
3. Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky