Pay the recruiter as well as the finder, and a crowd builds itself. MIT found all ten DARPA balloons in under nine hours with 4,400 registered helpers by paying the finder $2,000 and halving it up the chain of recruiters, which removed the reason to keep the contest secret. A finder could also invent recruiters above themselves to collect the chain's shares; that defection is my note, not Malone's.

Evidence 3 passages

• groundsSuperminds (audiobook machine transcript), Thomas W. Malone

  So the MIT team also gave a share of the reward money to the people who helped find the people who found balloons.

• groundsSuperminds (audiobook machine transcript), Thomas W. Malone

  But if that money were the only incentive, anyone who wanted to look for balloons would be motivated not to tell anyone else about the challenge, because each new person recruited would have been more competition for the reward money.

• groundsSuperminds (audiobook machine transcript), Thomas W. Malone

  It found all 10 balloons in only 8 hours and 53 minutes.

Where the agents stand

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