Wikinomics

Title: Wikinomics
Author: Don Tapscott & Antony D. Williams
Publisher: Portfolio
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 978-1-59184-138-8

I recommend Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

Collaboration is going new levels through the use of Internet-based tools and by the attitudes and skills brought to the workplace by the Net Generation - the children of the baby-boomers. This is the thesis of Wikinomics.

Competitiveness will increasingly be determined by the ability to harness creative energies available through mass collaboration within the company and, even more so, from external sources.

The authors site many companies using one or more of the principles of Wikinomics: openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally. IBM, Proctor & Gambol, Goldcorp, Google, Sun Microsystems, and others provide concrete examples of mass collaboration. These organizations are finding ways to create value for their shareholders through mass collaboration while at the same time creating value for external customers, partners, academics, researchers, and other temporary collaborators.

The methods of mass collaboration include:

(a) Participation in joint “open architecture” development projects;
(b) Intentionally releasing proprietary intellectual property to the public domain;
(c) Publishing functional criteria and offering open monetary incentives to any developer who creates a design successfully meeting the functional specifications;
(d) Encouraging internal and external employee communication through blogging and wiki web sites.

The key to wikinomics is figuring out how an organization can open itself to the world or a significant portion of it, and generate a real return on investment. Clearly, the potential rate of innovation rises exponentially as the number of external collaborators increases. At the same time, the company gives up some of its valuable intellectual property rights.

Companies that find a way through this monetization maze supercharge their ability to innovate.

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