Community And Company

You can run a company for profitability. You can see products/services as something that are getting assembled and you sell those for a margin. There is nothing wrong in it (and equally there isn't anything great either). If you really want to exist, you just keep making profits.

Not good enough these days and not enough any day when you want to make meaning.

You run a company plus run communities.

Communities where people learn how they assemble products and deliver services. They do bold experiments and your company becomes nothing less than a laboratory. They stretch their brain muscle, elevate their thinking and ready to make BIG mistakes.

Open source is a great example. There are many open source products where no one claims ownership but make their contributions count. The success of open source product paves way for great success in future and failures become lessons.

Communities are great way when you want build something ground up. Communities lead to paradigm shift.

Communities inside the company should be the foundation for your company (not just profits).

Wikipedia - Fundraising

What is the cost of a magazine that we buy? May be few bucks when you buy from the stands and you get few cents off when you subscribe through the publisher's website. It is a business. Are you going to buy the magazine the next time? Well, it depends on the perceived value. If you recognize that there is value, you buy it next time.

But what about Wikipedia? Why should i contribute to Wikipedia?

Unless it is a cutting edge research (and if it is a recent one), Wikipedia equally a place where you look for information. It is not just information but it is so accurate one as it is contributed by subject matter experts and verified/modified by numerous subject matter experts. It is not a business but a community. It doesn't differentiate between donors and non-donors. It is free for everyone. Free doesn't mean that it is cheap. Here free leads to accessibility. Think of people who do not have privilege to access information. For the amount of value that we get, i think, we may need to pay at least hundreds of dollars in return (may be more) if it is a standard magazine.

I would like to point you to the Wikipedia's fundraising page where it says why Wikipedia do not show advertisements. Being fourth largest website, it would be easier for Wikipedia to just build the advertising network or at a very least to insert few ads and start making money. But it is not the case.

For the past years, i have used Wikipedia everyday and the amount of knowledge that one gains is so huge and i felt that i should contribute.

I request you to think about donating to Wikipedia. Here is the page to make contribution in case if you decide to donate

Wikimedia Foundation

Thank you.