An updated edition of the national bestseller--now with a new introduction and a new chapter Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success. A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty- first century. Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about: · Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry. · Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production. · Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems. An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
The Long Tripe, Wisdom of Hacks:
The authors are hacks. This is the worst kind of pseudoscience, and it's way too long. The authors build a case for various forms of collaboration using anecdotes and a few statistics (w/ fewer references). Before the reader has a chance to ask "how do I know collaboration was the factor that accelerated this company's growth" or "what else might have been going wrong at the other company" the authors quickly make up a few scientific sounding words and speak in broad generalizations about what... more info
Could be helpful if you are new to the topic...:
As has already been stated, the view of the world of mass collaboration presented in this book is rather simplistic. It could be helpful, though, if you are new to the topic and would like to understand what "emergence", "wikis" and "prosumers" mean and how the term "knowledge" is changing in meaning.
Sorely disappointing:
I heard a lot of buzz about Wikinomics when it was published a few years ago, but when I finally picked it up a few weeks ago I was sorely disappointed. I'm very surprised that it gets such a high overall rating on Amazon. First and foremost the book is extremely repetitive. I feel that instead of 300 odd pages it could have easily been under 100 while becoming significantly more readable. Granted, some sections are very well written, but I found most sections of the book difficult to read for more... more info
Touches on important points and gets the details wrong:
This is the sort of book that often comes out about new social and technological developments... it touches on all of the hotspots surrounding wikis and massively parallel collaboration, even name-drops many important people and cases related to each, but usually gets the details wrong. Precisely because the issues raised are so important to understanding how we as a society can collaborate on the scale of millions of people working together on similar projects, I must disrecommend this book to anyone... more info
