Dans un entretien accordé à la publication trimestrielle de McKinsey, Mitchell Baker, directeur et ancien PDG de Mozilla Corporation, cherche à expliquer comment le navigateur libre en est venu à rivaliser avec le nurméro un de Microsoft sur le marché, Internet Explorer, en dix ans à peine.
With 120 employees, tens of thousands of external collaborators and 150 million users around the world, the ever-growing open-source Internet browser Mozilla Firefox has made itself a model for succeeding in cooperative innovation.
Baker, who started her Internet career in the 1990s as a software lawyer at Netscape Communications, acknowledges that without the « impressive » support of the volunteer community behind Mozilla, the browser « would die ».
In fact, 40% of the code does not come from employees, Baker points out. Sometimes the company hires from within the community, but « there are some people with a high degree of expertise and specialisation who you cannot hire, and we would never find them if we were not an open project, » she says.
The success of Mozilla, which in two years has increased its number of employees from 25 to more than 120, has made it a model for running innovative projects through open communities. This is also due to the unconventional work organisation of the company, says Baker. « Our decision-making process is highly distributed and unrelated to employment status, and some of the people who make decisions about code are not employees, » she says.
« Turning people loose is really valuable. You have to figure out what space and what range, but you get a lot more than you would expect out of them, because they are not you, » explains Baker, summarising in a nutshell the concept behind Mozilla.
« Look hard at whether there are areas where you can give up some control, because the returns are great, » advises Baker. « If you have a good group of people around you – people you trust – sometimes just stepping back when you do not like something is really valuable. Let the problem play out a little bit. »
« The idea that a single individual is the best decision maker for everything, and should have ultimate control, works only some of the time, » she adds.