Hybrid

More and more, we see new organizations that mash up public benefit missions, market strategies and web-like organizing structures. Mozilla. Miro. Wikipedia. Kiva. And many others. This page exists to gather information about these mission + market + web hybrids. Please add to it.

Upcoming: Hybrid Summit, June 16, 2009, Mountain View California. A small handful of hybrid orgs will gather swap stories, strategize and better understand what makes hybrid organzations hum.

What's a hybrid organization?

We are talking about public benefit organizations built using the culture of the web that sit at the intersection of the sharing and market economies. They typically ...

• Put mission first in everything they do, but especially in their decisions about products and services.

• Use market strategies to reach scale and have impact. They often compete with dominant commercial players -- or whole industries -- as a way to create massive social impact.

• Draw on participation, openness and the web to involve large numbers of people in creating, sharing and using public goods.

Of course, there are many other kinds of hybrids. Social enterprises have been mixing mission and market for years. The hybrids we're talking about here simply add mass online collaboration and peer production as a third element in this mashup.

Useful Articles

The idea of mission + market + web hybrids is a new one. Here are blog posts and articles from people who are thinking the idea through:

• Mitchell Baker on Hybrid Organizations (2008)
• What is a hybrid organization? Mark Surman (2009)
  • Other surman posts on hybrids
• Creative Commons as hybrid org - Mike Linksvayer (2009)
• The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online - Kevin Kelly (2009)
  • Response to Kevin Kelly by Lawrence Lessig
• The Emerging Fourth Sector by Heerad Sabeti with the Fourth Sector Network Concept Working Group

As these articles show, we're still figuring out what we mean. Who know's, maybe 'hybrid' isn't even be the right term? The point is: there is something new and interesting here. It's worth figuring out.