Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Taps Don, Anthony D. Williams Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Book Review: The Emperor's new clothes?
Summary: 3 Stars
We have seen Infonomics and now there is Wikinomics.
First of all: I like the book it contains interesting information on the subject matter.
However, it is too enthusiastic and optimistic and not objective and realistic.
It is true that many things on the web operate under the keywords Open, Sharing and Peering. But it is also true that one of the most innovative companies - Google - is closed as a clamshell about future plans and current developments, where Microsoft at least provides us with some road maps. Google throws out services as Beta to see if we like it. And it adds open API's to let customers increase the value. This is not wikinomics, but clever marketing.
Book Review: why the book on wikinomics is not free?
Summary: 3 Stars
I've bought and read the book on Wikinomics. Sure, this is a nice read with a lot of insights. If you're a regular internet user I think there is not so much new stuff in it, but alas.
My point is more of a principal nature. The authors plead for more openness and innovation will be the reward. Why then is the book itself not free or made for a modest cost-price or integrally downloadable (like manuals can be bought on paper for Linux distribution Ubuntu and these even can be downloaded for free). The reasoning would be that the authors would become more famous and are invited at more prestigous seminars with higher fees and can command higher fees for their consultancy hours.
Maybe this point is made before by others, but I tried to search on the website related to the book but did not find anything like it. And also, there is no forum about the book itself on the website of the authors. Why not let readers discuss about the contents on this site, apart from the wiki put there to write another book collaboratively (which is by itself as I see not the succesful yet).
Make analyses why this wiki is not working and others are. Try to learn something out of it, make it open, walk your talk!
Book Review: Wikiruption in the Wikiverse!
Summary: 5 Stars
The new reality of mass collaboration on free products disrupts many business models, our own among them. If you are feeling any pain from the wikiverse, or you want to cause some wikiruption of your own, read this book!
Wikinomics is a gem. The authors thoroughly explores the topic, and give a myriad of examples from current businesses and companies to make their points. They have caused me to rethink what I though I knew, and have provided many ideas for further contemplation. Bravo.
Book Review: Business in the 21st century
Summary: 5 Stars
In this book, the authors argue that the internet will change businesses for the better. Unlike in the recent book I read, "The Cult of the Amateur", by Andrew Keen (see my review), that argues the negative impact of the internet, Tapscott and Williams praise the internet as a medium to faster progress through sharing and contribution. Similarly, Al Gore in "The Assault on Reason" praises the internet and argues against any laws imposing restrictions on it.
Just a few years ago, companies met in boardrooms to take crucial decisions on their future and to solve short and long-term problems. Nowadays, the boardroom is the internet, with thousands if not millions of people sharing and contributing their expertise and know-how. Companies no longer have to solely rely on their employees to solve problems. Posting their problems on the internet will get them a multitude of possible solutions. Smart firms harness this collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.
Encyclopedias, like Wikipedia; jetliners, like Boeing; operating systems, like Linux; mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. And most of these people contribute their know-how for free!
Many examples abound of companies who have benefited from the online community. Goldcorp used an online competition to find the location of gold in North Canada. They used open source tactics, and revealed their research and statistics online. Savvy online engineers were able to use that information to pinpoint with precise accuracy where gold could be found. It is not easy for a company to make public its proprietary research, but by doing so, they stand to benefit from the expertise of thousands of people.
Wikipedia is a good example of mass contribution. The online encyclopedia has now, according to some experts, surpassed the Encyclopedia Britannica. Anyone can contribute and correct information on Wikipedia. I recently read the really great book "Charlie Wilson's War" by George Crile. I wanted to find more information on Texas congressman Charlie Wilson, but there were no entries of him on my 2007 Encyclopedia Britannica DVD. However, on Wikipedia I found a lot of information on him, and even that a movie is being made about him. All contributors, who are people like you and me, contribute to Wikipedia for free. Whoever said that the Universe does not give a free lunch?
Amazon is another great example of peer contribution. Just surf to amazon.com (like you've just done now) and read reviews submitted by millions of people on any item, whether books, electronics, foods, software, jewelry etc. You'll be able to make a better decision on whether to buy an item. These reviews are submitted to Amazon by people like you and I for free. Amazon benefits from these reviews for most people end up buying the items reviewed from Amazon.
Amazon has also opened their API to the public, allowing programmers worldwide to tinker with their code. Many people have opened online stores as a result of Amazon's open source APIs. These stores get prices and details on all products listed on Amazon. As a result, anyone can now open an online store, get information on millions of products direct from Amazon, and sell any of these products. Amazon takes care of all financial transactions for you. All you have to do is ship the products to the buyers. Who would have thought just a few years ago business could be made so easy? All of this is of course possible because of the internet.
Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other online social networking communities also pioneered a new form of collaborative production. In Second Life, for example, you may have a virtual life similar to your day to day real life. In Second Life, you may own a house, go shopping, go to clubs and meet new people, and even invest in real estate using Linden currency. I read once in Businessweek that a British woman made over a million dollars investing in real estate in Second Life. Linden money can be converted into real currency!
The bottom line of this book is that sharing your company's inner workings with the online community is good for the health and progress of your company. The contribution by the online community to your company is what's going to keep it competitive in this fast moving technologically oriented society. The internet has now made it possible to harness the brain power of millions of people worldwide.
According to the authors, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century. After all, the book is based on a $9 million research project.
I highly recommend the book. It will change the way you do business from now on. Indeed, there is power in numbers!
Book Review: A good explanation and roadmap to "mass collaboration"...
Summary: 4 Stars
This is one of those books that I should have been on top of when it first came out last year. But it took the urging of a blog reader to finally get around to it... Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. You can tell things have been moving fast in this field, as I almost felt as if I were looking in retrospect to see how his observations played out. Still, for someone who hasn't quite figured out the reason behind "mass collaboration", this is a great place to start.
Contents:
Introduction; Subtitles; Wikinomics; The Perfect Storm; The Peer Pioneers; Ideagoras; The Prosumers; The New Alexandrians; Platforms for Participation; The Global Plant Floor; The Wiki Workplace; Collaborative Minds; The Wikinomics Playbook; Acknowledgments; Notes; Index
Tapscott and Williams do a fine job in laying out the case for wikinomics, or how value is delivered by opening up your product to innovation and collaboration by others. They use a number of examples to drive home this point, such as how Amazon allows the external use of its API so that others can develop products that tie into the Amazon business model. This "opening up" means that they end up with a huge amount of research and development done by others at no cost to themselves. And as these add-on products become popular, they drive more traffic and sales to Amazon. As opposed to the closed, proprietary systems of the past, everyone wins as everyone has a vested interest in seeing the system succeed.
Each chapter in the book deals with a particular element of the collaboration models that are being explored. For instance, Peer Pioneers dives into the world of open source software and Wikipedia. This shows how people are motivated to join and participate in an offering when the normal financial incentives to do so are not present. One of my favorite chapters was Prosumers, which talks about how consumers expect to be able to participate in a product once they own it, to become a "producer" of sorts (hence, the name "prosumers"). This hacking mentality, very familiar to me, shows how companies benefit by playing to that mindset. You may lose full control over what you *thought* your product would be and do, but you'll gain so much more in the way of a devoted following dedicated to stretching the boundaries of what you thought was possible.
While some of the material towards the end of each chapter tends to devolve into "expert" recommendations and analysis, it doesn't wholly detract from what is largely a very practical book. Even if you're already swimming in the collaboration pool, this will reinforce some ideas and spur some others. And if you *don't* know what the whole Web 2.0 thing is, Wikinomics will start to open up that world to you.