In 1990, the industrialist Rob McEwen took over an old and underperforming gold mine with a land area of 55,000 acres in Ontario, Canada. The Red Lake mine had various problems. Gold production was falling and costs were rising. McEwen was convinced that the mine could produce more gold but he did not know how. Then, in 1999, he went to a seminar on computing at MIT. He learnt about the open source operating system, Linux, in which the code is visible to all and anyone can make suggestions for improvements. This triggered a remarkable idea.
In 2000, he launched the Goldcorp Challenge. He published all the data on the mine online for geologists and engineers from anywhere in the world in a contest to see who could predict accurately where to mine for gold. He offered half a million Canadian dollars in prizes.
Mining experts, both within his company and outside, were appalled at the idea of exposing the mine’s proprietary data to the world. The tradition in the mining industry is to be secretive about reserves and geological data. What’s more, the information could have exposed the company to a hostile takeover bid.
More than 1,400 scientists, data analysts and geologists from 50 countries entered the contest and downloaded the mine’s data. The creativity and accuracy of the best entries were remarkable. The winning entry was submitted by a collaboration of two Australian firms who used fractal graphics to develop a 3D picture of the mine.
McEwen was delighted, saying later, ‘We drilled four of the winners’ top five targets and have hit on all four.’ He went on, ‘From a remote site, the winners were able to analyse a database and generate targets without ever visiting the property.’
McEwen went on to transform Goldcorp from a collection of small companies into a mining giant. Its share price increased at a 30 per cent compound annual growth rate. Its market capitalisation grew from $50 million in 1993 to over $20 billion in 2015, making it the largest gold producer in the world.
Take an idea from a completely different field and adapt it to yours. McEwen went to a computing conference and then had the insight to adapt the concept of open source software to a gold mine. He created one of the first and most successful internet-based crowdsourcing contests.
Think like an outsider. McEwen had an advantage over his conventional mining competitors. He was not a miner. He had worked for Merrill Lynch in the investment business. He was not constrained by traditional rules and thinking. If you cannot be an outsider, then force yourself to think like an outsider.
Throw down a challenge. If you have a tough challenge, try posing it as a problem on a crowdsourcing site, such as Innocentive, Nine Sigma or Top Coder. You can harness the creative brains of solvers from all around the world.