On the topic of possessiveness and co-creation

On top of the recent post on ownership and possessiveness, Rebecca Elvy made me think of a story I heard recently. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where I heard of it – but I remember that someone told me about the trick they used at this person's workplace in order to make people feel ownership without possessiveness. The trick is that they do not reward the good ideas people get, instead they reward those who contribute to making the ideas of the original idea generators even better. An idea is simply not rewarded before one person has conceived it and another person has refined it.
In this way, it is ensured that the good ideas are shared, and at the same time people will feel good sharing their ideas – because anyone knows that next time, she will have the possibility to refine someone else’s bright idea.
There might be downsides to this as well, of course, but essentially, instead of inspiring possessiveness, this approach breeds co-ownership and co-creation.
Which is a good thing for two reasons. Not only is possessiveness (which we established recently is the evil twin of ownership) discouraged – but it must also be remembered, (now that we are talking about “the ancestry of ownership and possessiveness”) that there is another unfortunate cousin in the family tree – the sentiment of “not-invented-here”, where people have an inclination to reject the ideas of others, simply because these are not their own ideas. The rewarding of co-creation is also quite good against “not-invented-here”, as it inspires people to be open-minded with regards to the ideas of other people – because they might be able to make them even better. It simply has a tendency to make people go from saying “No!” to saying “Yes, and…”, which is one of the pillars of creativity.
(Translated from: Noget om besidderiskhed og samskabelse)