I found Tapscott and Williams book Wikinomics to be a thorough exploration of open sourcing and mass collaboration in business. According to Tapscott and Williams, Wikinomics is based on four ideas: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally. The use of mass collaboration in a business environment, in recent history, can be seen as an extension of the trend in business to outsource: externalize formerly internal business functions to other business entities. The difference however is that instead of an organized business body brought into being specifically for a unique function, mass collaboration relies on free individual agents to come together and cooperate to improve a given operation or solve a problem. This kind of outsourcing is also referred to as crowdsourcing, to reflect this difference.
In their first chapter, Tapscott and Williams introduce the modern concept of Wikinomics, “Millions of media buffs now use blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and personal broadcasting to add their voices to a vociferous stream of dialogue and debate called the “blogosphere.” Employees drive performance by collaborating with peers across organizational boundaries, creating what we call a “wiki workplace.” Customers become “prosumers” by cocreating goods and services rather than simply consuming the end product. So-called supply chains work more effectively when the risk, reward, and capability to complete major projects including massively complex products like cars, motercycles, and airplanes – are distributed across planetary networks of partners who work as peers.”
The book also discusses the seven new models of mass collaboration:
- peer pioneers
- ideagoras
- prosumers
- new Alexandrians
- platforms for participation
- global plant floor
- wiki workplace
In one of Tapscott’s blog posts this week he announces a new section on the Wikinomics website that calls attention to Wikinomics in action. It’s essentially a blogroll or link list of sites that epitomize the Wikinomics principles. The list contaiins the usual suspects, Amazon, Digg, YouTube, Second Life, but also features some cool and different sites not mentioned in the book.
Marketocracy attempts to find the best investors in the world and then track, analyze, and evaluate their trading activity. Encyclopedia of life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about all life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Radiohead remix lets visitors remix their own version of the band’s new single then post it on the web to be voted on by fans. Sermo is the social networking site for physicians where doctors around the world can share research, case studies, and observations. On Ponoko, aspiring designers can create a mockup of their choice and have it manufactured by professionals. Finally, Kluster enables users to work together to solve problems big and small, from a small marketing campaign to a large invention.
The book is coupled with a blog and a wiki, a now completed playbook contributed by a community of readers and experts. Below are several key quotes by contributers to the “missing” chapter of the book.
“Any open system has the capacity to respond to change and disorder by reorganizing itself at a higher level of organization. Disorder becomes a critical player, an ally that can provoke a system to self-organize into new forms of being… chaos is necessary to new creative ordering.” – Margaret Wheatley
