Goldcorp

An example of Open Source Prospecting or Crowdsourcing, described in Don Tapscott's book on Wikinomics

Description

From Business Week at http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2007/id20070201_774736.htm

"A few years back, Toronto-based gold mining company Goldcorp (GG) was in trouble. Besieged by strikes, lingering debts, and an exceedingly high cost of production, the company had terminated mining operations. Conditions in the marketplace were hardly favorable. The gold market was contracting, and most analysts assumed that the company's fifty-year old mine in Red Lake, Ontario, was dying. Without evidence of substantial new gold deposits, Goldcorp was likely to fold.

Chief Executive Officer Rob McEwen needed a miracle. Frustrated that his in-house geologists couldn't reliably estimate the value and location of the gold on his property, McEwen did something unheard of in his industry: He published his geological data on the Web for all to see and challenged the world to do the prospecting. The "Goldcorp Challenge" made a total of $575,000 in prize money available to participants who submitted the best methods and estimates.

Every scrap of information (some 400 megabytes worth) about the 55,000 acre property was revealed on Goldcorp's Web site. News of the contest spread quickly around the Internet and more than 1,000 virtual prospectors from 50 countries got busy crunching the data." (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2007/id20070201_774736.htm)

More Information

For an extended description see here at http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2007/id20070201_774736.htm

The experiment is also described here by the Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/05/news.netrich

Also here: http://thefutureplace.typepad.com/the_future_place/2007/11/red-lake-crowds.html