02. Go from R&D to R&We

Back in the Aussie summer of 2002, Liam Mulhall was ready to abandon the high-stress, high-tech business. He had put in his time at the local office of Red Hat, the big U.S.-based provider of open sourcing solutions, and now he and his two buddies had a new Plan A. They wanted to buy a pub in Sydney. The problem was, the price was more than the lads could afford. So they fell back on Plan B, which, in this case, was Plan Brew. With a nothing-to-lose attitude—“It was our money and not a lot of it,” Mulhall allows—they would make beer, but with a twist; they were going to tap the power of community.

Mulhall had stumbled onto the story of PK-35, a Finnish soccer club. The team’s coach invited fans to determine its recruiting, ...

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