CollaborativEye

It is exciting to see concrete examples of radical collaboration in business ventures, particularly new ones that have a chance to make a big splash. GoLife Mobile , a startup venture headquartered in Portland, OR, yesterday announced their collaborative framework for developers of mobile applications (or widgets). Rather than taking on the impossible task of producing all of the applications themselves, they are enlisting a potentially vast pool of developers who are interested in mobile platforms, and who don't mind making a buck or two for their efforts. Developers are encouraged to share widgets, and build upon the work of others. The nifty thing is that whenever your widget gets used (either as the primary application, or a component in an application), the author of the widget gets a piece of the advertising revenue that the GoLife Mobile platform will produce.

Not only will this collaborative development eco-system reduce the time to produce applications, it promises to spur innovation as well. Developers are incentivized to create compelling, reusable widgets in the hopes that other developers will incorporate them into their own applications. I particularly like the way that GoLife Mobile is combining collaboration with good old fashioned capitalism. James Whitley, the CEO of GoLife Mobile, shared with me at their developer briefing that he's a died-in-the-wool, Central Oregon capitalist, while his president of technology Mounir Shita is from "socialist Norway" -- obviously a great mixture that promises to produce some interesting results!