DAVID+AND+LUCILE+PACKARD+FOUNDATION+Nitrogen+Wiki

When the Packard Foundation set out in 2007 to design its strategy for reducing agricultural nitrogen pollution, the team wanted to cast a wider net than usual for ideas and decided to experiment with using a public wiki for gathering expert input. Their hope was that the ease of contributing to a wiki would make it easier to include a wider range of contributors and spark creative ferment beyond that of traditional interviews.

Over the course of the six-week experiment, 85 participants joined the process, representing the many facets of nitrogen pollution as an ecosystem-wide concern: ecologists, environmentalists, climatologists, horticulturalists, academics, scientists, agriculturalists, state and federal government regulatory agency personnel, and private sector industry professionals. About half were entirely new voices that had had no prior connection with the foundation.

At the end of the process, foundation staff assessed that the strategic input they received was as effective as more traditional approaches, and had the added benefits of engaging new stakeholders and the potential—although in this case unrealized—for radical ideas that wouldn’t have otherwise come to their attention. [i]

[i] [|Analysis of a Nitrogen Wiki : The David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Experiment with Online Collaboration], by Spitfire Strategies