Wikinomics
Encyclopedia
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (ISBN 1591841380) is a book by Don Tapscott
and Anthony D. Williams
, first published in December 2006. It explores how some companies in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration
(also called peer production) and open-source technology, such as wiki
s, to be successful. Tapscott and Williams have released a followup to Wikinomics, entitled Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, which was released on September 28, 2010.
: 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. This can be incentivized by a reward system, though it is not required.
The book also discusses seven new models of mass collaboration, including:
The last chapter is written by viewers, and was opened for editing on February 5, 2007.
permits. According to the authors, Coase's Law
(see Ronald Coase
) governs the expansion of a business:
However, because of the changing usage patterns of Internet technologies, the cost of transactions has dropped so significantly that the authors assert that the market is better described by an inversion of Coase's Law. That is:
, prosumption, knowledge commons
)", should have given "more consideration [to] the darker sides of human motivation as well as groupthink
and mass mediocrity", and "primarily draw on their own observations of businesses and trends for the ideas presented.".
Videos
Don Tapscott
Don Tapscott is a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, specializing in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society. Tapscott is chairman of business strategy think tank New Paradigm , which he founded in 1993...
and Anthony D. Williams
Anthony D. Williams
Anthony D. Williams is a consultant, researcher, and author. He co-authored Wikinomics along with Don Tapscott and is a vice president of research with international think tank New Paradigm...
, first published in December 2006. It explores how some companies in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration
Mass collaboration
Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature...
(also called peer production) and open-source technology, such as wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s, to be successful. Tapscott and Williams have released a followup to Wikinomics, entitled Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, which was released on September 28, 2010.
Concepts
According to Tapscott, 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 outsourceOutsourcing
Outsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.-Overview:The term outsourcing is used inconsistently but usually involves the contracting out of a business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider...
: 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
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
, to reflect this difference. This can be incentivized by a reward system, though it is not required.
The book also discusses seven new models of mass collaboration, including:
- PeeringPeeringIn computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the customers of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the...
: For example, page 24, "MarketocracyMarketocracyMarketocracy Capital Management, is the investment advisor for the Marketocracy family of mutual funds and uses the research generated by Marketocracy Data Services. Marketocracy has recruited over 70,000 people to manage over 100,000 model portfolios at that compete to become the best investors...
employs a form of peering in a mutual fund (Ticker SymbolTicker symbolA stock symbol or ticker symbol is a short abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. A stock symbol may consist of letters, numbers or a combination of both. "Ticker symbol" refers to the symbols that were printed on the ticker...
: MOFQX) that harnesses the collective intelligence of the investment community...Though not completely open source, it is an example of how meritocratic, peer-to-peer models are seeping into an industry where conventional wisdom favors the lone super-star stock advisor." - IdeagorasIdeagorasThe term Ideagoras refers to places on the Internet where large numbers of people or businesses gather to exchange ideas and solutions. The term was coined by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams in Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. This term is a portmanteau of the modern...
: For example, page 98, linking experts with unsolved research and development problems. The company InnoCentiveInnoCentiveInnoCentive is an "open innovation" company that takes research and development problems in a broad range of domains such as engineering, computer science, math, chemistry, life sciences, physical sciences and business and frames them as "challenge problems" for anyone to solve them...
is a consulting group that encapsulates the idea of ideagoras. - ProsumersProsumerProsumer is a portmanteau formed by contracting either the word professional or less often, producer with the word consumer. For example, a prosumer grade digital camera is a "cross" between consumer grade and professional grade...
: For example, page 125, where it discusses the social video game Second LifeSecond LifeSecond Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
as being created by its customers. When customers are also the producers, you have the phenomenon: Prosumer. - New Alexandrians: This idea is about the Internet and sharing knowledge.
The last chapter is written by viewers, and was opened for editing on February 5, 2007.
Coase's Law
In the chapter The Perfect Storm, the authors give an overview of the economic effects of the kind of transactions Web 2.0Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
permits. According to the authors, Coase's Law
Coase theorem
In law and economics, the Coase theorem , attributed to Ronald Coase, describes the economic efficiency of an economic allocation or outcome in the presence of externalities. The theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are no transaction costs, bargaining will lead to...
(see Ronald Coase
Ronald Coase
Ronald Harry Coase is a British-born, American-based economist and the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. After studying with the University of London External Programme in 1927–29, Coase entered the London School of Economics, where he took...
) governs the expansion of a business:
A firm will tend to expand until the cost of organizing an extra transaction within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction on the open market.
However, because of the changing usage patterns of Internet technologies, the cost of transactions has dropped so significantly that the authors assert that the market is better described by an inversion of Coase's Law. That is:
A firm will tend to expand until the cost of carrying out an extra transaction on the open market become equal to the costs of organizing the same transaction within the firm.Thus, the authors think that with the costs of communicating dramatically dropping, firms who do not change their current structures will perish. Companies who utilize mass collaboration will dominate their respective markets.
Reviews
A review of this book in the Harvard Business Review states "like its title, the book's prose can fall into breathless hype." A review of this book in Choice recommends the book for "general readers and practitioners," but cautions that the authors "present an optimistic overview of successful collaborations and business ventures", "use unique terms (e.g., marketocracyMarketocracy
Marketocracy Capital Management, is the investment advisor for the Marketocracy family of mutual funds and uses the research generated by Marketocracy Data Services. Marketocracy has recruited over 70,000 people to manage over 100,000 model portfolios at that compete to become the best investors...
, prosumption, knowledge commons
Knowledge commons
The knowledge commons encompass immaterial and collectively owned goods in the information age. Normatively loaded, it promotes free share of knowledge...
)", should have given "more consideration [to] the darker sides of human motivation as well as groupthink
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
and mass mediocrity", and "primarily draw on their own observations of businesses and trends for the ideas presented.".
See also
- Business Intelligence 2.0Business Intelligence 2.0Business Intelligence 2.0 is a term that refers to new tools and software for business intelligence, beginning in the mid-2000s, that enable, among other things, dynamic querying of real-time corporate data by employees, and a more web- and browser-based approached to such data, as opposed to the...
(BI 2.0) - Demand-side learningDemand-side learningDemand-side learning is a phrase coined by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pankaj Ghemawat of Harvard Business School in the article Microsoft vs...
- Cory DoctorowCory DoctorowCory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...
- Entrenched Player's DilemmaEntrenched Player's DilemmaThe entrenched player's dilemma is a concept featured in Wikinomics. It is the choice faced by existing businesses in a changing marketplace. To embrace new ideas fully, they must abandon their current revenue streams.Don Tapscott and Anthony D...
- File sharingFile sharingFile sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
- Human-based computationHuman-based computationHuman-based computation is a computer science technique in which a computational process performs its function by outsourcing certain steps to humans...
- FreeBSDFreeBSDFreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
- LinuxLinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
- Open BusinessOpen businessOpen business represents a concept of doing business in a transparent way by intimately integrating an ecosystem of participants, collaborating in public space....
- Participatory organizationParticipatory organizationparticipatory organization is an organization which is built based on people participation rather than their contract obligations.Most current organizations are contract-based. Contracts define a functional structure that holds such an organization together by imposing mutual obligations on people...
- StigmergyStigmergyStigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent...
- The Cathedral and the BazaarThe Cathedral and the BazaarThe Cathedral and the Bazaar is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design...
, an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods - The Long TailThe Long TailThe Long Tail or long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution...
and Free: The Future of a Radical PriceFree: The Future of a Radical PriceFree: The Future of a Radical Price is a 2009 book written by Chris Anderson, Editor in chief of Wired magazine. He is also the author of The Long Tail, published in 2006. Free follows a thread from the previous work...
, by Chris Anderson - Financial CrisisFinancial crisisThe term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these...
External links
- http://wikinomics.com
- Mass collaboration could change way companies operate, article in USA TodayUSA TodayUSA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
- Website for the public to create the "unwritten chapter"
- Abstract: Don Tapscott - Wikinomics: Winning with the enterprise 2.0
- Make Room, Wikipedia: Internet-based Collaboration Could Change the Way We Do Business, February 21, 2007
- Up is down and black is white as Wikinomics changes the business world, article on PCWorld.ca
- The Cult of the Amateur, New York Times' Book Review on Andrew Keen's criticism of Web 2.0 philosophy
- A Book Review of Wikinomics
- Review by Roger Parry in Management Today August 2007
- The Guardian: "The wiki way", 5 September 2007
Videos
- 2007-02-26 Don Tapscott 82 minute presentation on Wikinomics, hosted on Google Video and Internet Archive (mpeg4 and Windows Media Player)
- 2007-01-25 Don Tapscott 45 minute presentation on Wikinomics, hosted by The Canadian Club. (Windows Media Player only)
- 2006-11-08 Don Tapscott 3 minute preview of Wikinomics to ZDNet.