eBay unleashes 45,000 pro-bono developers

Blue Ocean Strategy - eBay unleashes 45,000 pro-bono developers

Reinventing the rules can be tough: For most organizations the challenge lies in defying the conventional wisdom of commonly-accepted, more familiar business models.

Take for example eBay and its independent developers, which is a feature article in this month’s Fast Company:

“In the olden days--before 2005--eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) was ambivalent about independent developers who ginned up applications to help buyers and sellers navigate its online auctions. In fact, it actually charged those developers fees, up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, based on the number of people who used the programs,” explains Max Mancini who heads up eBay’s Disruptive Innovation Team.

However, in a recent move which defies conventional wisdom, Mancini’s team eliminated those fees to the developer. And shortly after doing so, the number of developers increased 100-fold.

"What that means is 45,000 software developers are thinking of ways to make it easier to use eBay … When they grow their business, they also grow ours" Mancini acknowledges.

Similarly non-conventional yet highly effective approaches which defy conventional wisdom are discussed in Blue Ocean Strategy. In fact, Blue Ocean Strategy outlines a framework for the creative process needed to identify and unlock new opportunities in highly competitive spaces. Perhaps most importantly, Blue Ocean Strategy tools force an organization to continuously question its positioning and strategies—as eBay has done—with an emphasis on creating uncontested Blue Ocean opportunities, as opposed to simply maintaining the oftentimes ill-fated status quo.