Knights and Gold Stars: A Case Study of InnerSource Incentivization

Given the success of the open source phenomenon, it is not surprising that many organizations are seeking to emulate this success by adopting open source practices internally in what is termed InnerSource. However, open source development and InnerSource operate from fundamentally different foundations and thus need to be incentivized differently. To the best of our knowledge, there is no significant account of a successful InnerSource incentivization program. Here we describe a comprehensive InnerSource program and structured incentive scheme implemented at Huawei, one which has led to a very successful outcome.