Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #954 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The word "wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian, and here author and think tank CEO Tapscott (The Naked Corporation), along with research director Williams, paint in vibrant colors the quickly changing world of Internet togetherness, also known as mass or global collaboration, and what those changes mean for business and technology. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written, compiled, edited and re-edited by "ordinary people" is the most ubiquitous example, and its history makes remarkable reading. But also considered are lesser-known success stories of global collaboration that star Procter & Gamble, BMW, Lego and a host of software and niche companies. Problems arise when the authors indulge an outsized sense of scope-"this may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance, or the rise of Athenian democracy"-while acknowledging only reluctantly the caveats of weighty sources like Microsoft's Bill Gates. Methods for exploiting the power of collaborative production are outlined throughout, an alluring compendium of ways to throw open previously guarded intellectual property and to invite in previously unavailable ideas that hide within the populace at large. This clear and meticulously researched primer gives business leaders big leg up on mass collaboration possibilities; as such, it makes a fine next-step companion piece to James Surowiecki's 2004 bestseller The Wisdom of Crowds.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Can you learn about Web 2.0 without spending more time staring at a computer screen? With Alan Sklars unabridged recording of this book, the answer is yes. Consumers, businesspeople, and academics can benefit from this investigation into how online collaboration tools have the potential for transforming research and production. Sklar is a sophisticated reader whose well-known voice is a smooth platform for the authors case studies of innovative information sharing. They provide an enthusiastic overview, and Sklar provides an engaging reading that will make listeners excited about returning to their computers to experience new technologies. R.F. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Anyone who has done even a modest amount of browsing on the Internet has probably run across Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia that now dwarfs the online version of Encyclopedia Britannica. This is the prime example of what is called the new Web, or Web 2.0, where sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and even the Human Genome Project allow mass collaboration from participants in the online community. These open systems can produce faster and more powerful results than the traditional closed proprietary systems that have been the norm for private industry and educational institutions. Detractors claim that authentic voices are being overrun by "an anonymous tide of mass mediocrity," and private industry laments that competition from the free goods and services created by the masses compete with proprietary marketplace offerings. The most obvious example of this is Linux, the open-source operating system that has killed Microsoft in the server environment. But is this a bad thing? Tapscott thinks not; and as a proponent of peering, sharing, and open-source thinking, he has presented a clear and exciting preview of how peer innovation will change everything. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Solid beginning, some frays near the end
This book provides a good overview of how collaboration is starting to change industries and social networking. Even for someone who is part of the Internet generation, this book examinees many different angles, and presented cases that even I, a veteran Internet junkie, knew very little about. The book does an excellent job of explaining why supporting open platforms has the potential to be extremely profitable. The sections about Linux and Goldcorp seemed particularly solid, providing clear evidence of accomplishments that would not have been possible if the companies involved had chosen to pursue their goals as a closed entity.

That said, the book make some stumbles towards the end, when it tries to argue that open collaboration is just as beneficial for manufacturing physical items as it is for creating and exchanging information. Three of its primary studies are Boeing, Chinese motorcycle manufacturers, and BMW. The Boeing case study was done before the actual end product was ever complete. Perhaps things were going well at the time, but Boeing has hit significant delays since then, and has also bought out one of the companies it was collaborating with. The example of Chinese motorcycle manufacturers seemed sketchy, because it is quite arguable that the Chinese manufacturers in question engaged in some actions that were not intellectually honest. And the example of BMW also seems poor, because while this book seems to praise BMW's model as a way of making innovative products, auto industry buffs agree that BMW's "user interface" is one of the worst in the industry.

Even so, this book is well worth four stars, because it presents original ideas that I don't think you can find articulated anywhere else. If you're interested in where business will be heading in the future, buy this book.

Wikinomics Will Change the World
The theme of this book is simple enough to understand and clearly stated at the beginning of the book: More minds and new technologies are allowing more people to share information and ideas, collaborate and innovate in ways the world has never seen, all of which will lead to more rapid and innovate change in the way we live our lives and interact with each other. The remainder of the book is merely examples of how this has happened and how the authors believe that the open sourcing of everything will continue to grow. The book was published in 2006 and while Facebook, flickr, Wikipedia and Linux, among other sites, were up and running and using mass collaboration and user-created content to gain popularity across the web, many more sites have become more popular in the past two years (YouTube or Twitter, for example). The trend will continue to grow. Companies large or small expecting to do well in the next decade will be left behind in the business world if they fight mass collaboration and the opening and transparency of their proprietary information to both their employees and their competitors. In short, resistance is futile. Mass collaboration is the future and the world can benefit immensely because of it. Let's hope we all do.

Helping ArmstrongAuctions.com succeed
This is a great book! Highly recommended.

I read about 5 - 8 business, marketing, technology and auction related books a month to stay on the cutting edge in my auction business. The internet is playing an increasingly important role in my industry and I have been studying about different ways to harness the power of the net to benefit our auction clients. A lot of what is out there is marginal at best....but not Wikinomics, I read this book with highlighter in hand and it is marked up all over the place.

My son and I spent 18 months and over $100K building the latest and greatest live online auction system, which is just about complete and ready to launch. We had lots of new features in mind that we thought would have to be added later...now we are going to use these ideas and bring them to market even quicker. Plus, I always knew there had to be more things possible that I haven't even thought of yet, by harnessing the power and the wisdom of everyone interested, I know we can bring a world class live online auction solution to market quickly and efficiently.

Thanks Don and everyone at Wikinomics, your work is very important and appreciated.

Alan Armstrong, President of ArmstrongAuctions.com, FlyBoysToys.com and Big Gavel Inc.