Shared Secrets – Entry #10: Smelling the Java

This is the tenth in the series on managing collaborative innovation. Click here for the Beginning of the Series

In the mid-1990s, individual programmers, first-line managers and enthusiasts from companies ranging from GE to Citibank began attending conferences on a new industry strategy, an open programming language called Java. The notable thing about this was that in the early days, Java was not a strategy at all. The company that invented the language, Sun Microsystems, took a long time itself to recognize Java for the industry-changing innovation it was. The massive movement – there are at least three million Java programmers today – seemed at first to self-organize. There was no clear leadership, hardly an agenda, and no real money from any of the major players, including Sun.

But using miniscule travel budgets and spare time, sometimes even using personal funds, thousands of employees from hundreds of companies began showing up at Java gatherings. Smart companies that respected employee intentions tracked the small moves, saw the direction things were heading, and got behind Java while others found themselves backpedaling as the wave swept over the IT industry. The collective power of these front-line employees caused the fiercest of competitors – Microsoft, Apple, Sun, IBM and many others – to work collaboratively, at first with virtually no executive involvement or legal agreements. Several of these firms went on to spend hundreds of millions contributing to a technology that was invented and largely controlled by their rival, Sun Microsystems.

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[Click here for entry #11]

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