What makes people collaborate rather than compete? What makes people join a collaborative project or leave a collaborative project? How do people self-organize within an open and collaborative project? All these questions and more can be answered using game theory.
Suppose that you've been working on a project for some time, and you discover a very similar open source project. Are you going to join that project, contribute all the work that you have done alone and advance with the newly discovered group? Or you are going to quietly get inspired by what this newly discovered group has developed and continue to work alone, on your project? There are valid reasons for going both ways, but in context, game theory might help you make the best decision.
Sensorica is a highly collaborative organization, which means that is must suppress individualistic, opportunistic, and competitive behavior. We don't do that by imposing these attributes to people. We rather create a game for which the best strategy for winning is to be collaborative and to attend to other people's needs.
At the macro level, out on the market, some organizations play a closed game, operating in secrecy, protecting the technology behind their products and services, and others like us play the open game, operating in total transparency and opening our technology. Both types of organizations compete on the market for the attention and the money of consumers. Which game is better to perform on the current market, and in what circumstances? Adafruit, Arduino and many other hardware-based organizations are a living proof that the open game works. In today's interconnected world, being open and transparent allows access to large scale dynamics, which can give an organization a great advantage. It can speed up innovation and attract better talent and resources. Game theory helps us formalize open business models.