MENTAL MODEL · M5670

Joy's Law

BusinessHigh supportManagement

Included

Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-07-30

CORE DEFINITION

“No matter who you are, the smartest people work for someone else.” The vast majority of top talent is not in your company.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

The necessity of open innovation. Since monopolizing talent is impossible, the only way out is to build an open ecosystem (such as open-source communities, developer platforms) and leverage external smart minds to create value for you.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

Bill Joy's quote: "No matter who you are, the smartest people work for someone else." The mechanism is "talent distribution spillover" — top talent does not belong to any organization; closed employment cannot monopolize wisdom, only open ecosystems can leverage it.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Practice this model in one real situation:

Acknowledge that there are more smart minds outside the organization
Establish open interfaces (open source, platforms, crowdsourcing, collaboration)
Use external wisdom to fill internal gaps
Design incentive mechanisms for external contributors to benefit
Shift from "controlling talent" to "connecting talent."

Check to track your progress (stored locally)

Learning progress0%

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Source support: Explicit

link
en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy%27s_LawZH · Explicit
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