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Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
In just the last few years, traditional collaboration-in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center-has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale. 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.
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First published January 1, 2006
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About the author
Don Tapscott
84 books182 followersDon is one of the world’s leading authorities on innovation, media, and the economic and social impact of technology and advises business and government leaders around the world.
In 2011 Don was named one of the world's most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50. He has authored or co-authored 14 widely read books including the 1992 best seller Paradigm Shift. His 1995 hit Digital Economychanged thinking around the world about the transformational nature of the Internet and two years later he defined the Net Generation and the “digital divide” in Growing Up Digital.
His 2000 work, Digital Capital, introduced seminal ideas like “the business web” and was described by BusinessWeek as “pure enlightenment." Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything was the best selling management book in 2007 and translated into over 25 languages.
The Economist called his newest work Macrowikinomics: New Solutions for a Connected Planet a “Schumpeter-ian story of creative destruction” and the Huffington Post said the book is “nothing less than a game plan to fix a broken world.”
Over 30 years he has introduced many ground-breaking concepts that are part of contemporary understanding. His work continues as a the Chairman of Moxie Insight, a member of World Economic Forum, Adjunct Professor of Management for the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Martin Prosperity Institute Fellow.
In 2011 Don was named one of the world's most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50. He has authored or co-authored 14 widely read books including the 1992 best seller Paradigm Shift. His 1995 hit Digital Economychanged thinking around the world about the transformational nature of the Internet and two years later he defined the Net Generation and the “digital divide” in Growing Up Digital.
His 2000 work, Digital Capital, introduced seminal ideas like “the business web” and was described by BusinessWeek as “pure enlightenment." Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything was the best selling management book in 2007 and translated into over 25 languages.
The Economist called his newest work Macrowikinomics: New Solutions for a Connected Planet a “Schumpeter-ian story of creative destruction” and the Huffington Post said the book is “nothing less than a game plan to fix a broken world.”
Over 30 years he has introduced many ground-breaking concepts that are part of contemporary understanding. His work continues as a the Chairman of Moxie Insight, a member of World Economic Forum, Adjunct Professor of Management for the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Martin Prosperity Institute Fellow.
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May 13, 2008
Before I begin my thoughts on this book, I should announce that I am openly hostile to several of the notions mentioned in the book, and therefore went into it with a skeptical mind. The book did little to allay my skepticism. 'Wikinomics' is a giddy, fanboy account of the 'new' economy of collaboration generated by 'Web 2.0.' However, rather than provide analysis and examination of the strengths, weaknesses, and variety of this brave new world it is instead 300 pages of anecdotal evidence used to support the authors' thesis that mass collaboration is good. The authors also have a sharp tendency to immediately discount any critics as 'outdated,' or are quick to pronounce the worldview of their critics as 'dead.' They also tend to be redundant. They focus purely on a handful of companies, or a handful of examples where mass collaboration is working. They spend no time anaylzing the impact on traditional business that are not related to IT or electronics, nor do they consider the impact on academic disciplines that are not science or computer science related.
I give this book a 'boo.'
I give this book a 'boo.'
January 30, 2019
Review to come soon!
June 3, 2011
Full disclosure: I received this book for free, though it was on my to-read list already.
I first heard about Don Tapscott on CBC's Spark, where Nora Young interviewed him about the Net Generation and "digital natives." They also have an interview about MacroWikinomics, the sequel to Wikinomics, which I will be reading soon.
Tapscott intrigued me. According to Wikipedia, he was born in 1947. Yet he talks about the effects of technology on economy and business as if he were, if not exactly a digital native, then a digital confidant. He has a confidence in the benefits of digital, networked technology that belies the stereotype of the Baby Boomers as a generation that just "doesn't get it." Given any amount of thought, this stereotype, like most others, is quickly seen to be absurd: most of the successful companies Tapscott and Williams cite in this book, not to mention pioneers of the Internet like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, were born in the 1940s and 1950s. Age is not the dominant factor in companies' resistance to wikinomics, or change of any kind. It's a willingness to embrace a paradigm shift. Those of us in the Net Generation have it easy, because we have grown up into the Network Age rather than having it thrust upon us.
And that brings me to my first caveat about Wikinomics: this book isn't really for me. I'm not its audience. Tapscott and Williams do a great job explaining their concepts, but they did not consistently hold me riveted. Most of this book seemed very obvious to me, because I grew up with it; I live and breathe it. So I found myself nodding my head most of the time, murmuring, "It's obvious," under my breath. Furthermore, I am not the type of person who would primarily benefit from Wikinomics, because I do not run companies or even work for a company. Although I think anyone could find this book useful and informative, the format is clearly intended for people who might want to implement wikinomics in their own organizations.
If the term wikinomics is not illuminating, the subtitle of the book explains everything: it's "how mass collaboration changes everything." Specifically, Tapscott and Williams contend that the capabilities provided by computers that are becoming increasingly faster and increasingly networked allow companies to leverage the contributions of a massive user/customer base (the consumer turns into a "prosumer," a producer-consumer). Moreover, those companies that do not leverage this advantage will soon find themselves in great difficulty. For Tapscott and Williams, wikinomics is all about reducing costs while remaining profitable in a market where consumers are increasingly connected, increasingly more well-informed about competitors' offerings, and increasingly eager to be involved.
As with many books of its ilk, Wikinomics uses several case studies to make its argument. It opens with Goldcorp, Inc. in 2000 and its effort to revitalize Red Lake mining operations by crowdsourcing possible locations of gold deposits. Goldcorp released its preciously-hoarded geological data online for anyone to access and advertised rewards for people who sent in analyses that located good deposits of gold for them. It worked well: not only did Goldcorp discover some of its most profitable gold deposits ever, but the discoveries happened faster and more efficiently than its traditional R&D process.
Tapscott and Williams tell the same story about IBM, Apache, and Linux. I've heard the Linux story several times now (most recently and more verbosely in Next Generation Democracy ), but the IBM-Apache story was new. Basically, IBM invested a lot of money and people into open source efforts like Linux and Apache. In return, it got the use of these products at a cost much less than that of a proprietary, in-house solution. As early as the 1990s, then, wikinomics already made sense: in order to reap rewards, companies were first giving something away. It seems counter-intuitive, but I don't see how it's any different from the shaving razor model: give away the razor once, sell the blades for life (only now it's "give away the razor once, sell the blades, sell a new razor with more blades, repeat"!).
During their analysis of the open source software movement, Tapscott and Williams made a remark that struck me, as a programmer, as particularly interesting:
What this passage really put into perspective for me is this: I am extremely grateful we have Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. Oh, and Linux too. I can't imagine deciding I was unhappy with the existing operating systems and choosing to write my own (for fun!). I love programming, but I have no real desire to learn the network innards of Apache or the vast, untamed lands of Linux kernel development. I have real respect for those people who can manage to operate at that level, but Wikinomics reminded me that we are lucky we have all this stuff just waiting to be used! It's true that the "plumbing" of open source continues to develop. Lately I've been reading a lot about the "NoSQL" challengers, such as Apache Cassandra, to the relational database systems. This is still very high-level stuff for me, so I continue to stick with good ol' MySQL—but it's fascinating to watch these ongoing developments in the plumbing. Ten or twenty years ago, a lot of what's available to programmers like me just didn't exist; one had to go and spend money and time to develop it from scratch. Now, one has the option of doing that, and sometimes it's the best solution. However, there also exist resources one can use to bootstrap development, saving costs and time. And those resources exist thanks in part to mass collaboration.
But I digress. You can tell I'm passionate about this kind of thing, though more from the technical side than the economic side. Tapscott and Williams are also passionate, and that brings me to the second caveat: they might be too passionate. I certainly cannot accuse them of failing to communicate their enthusiasm and excitement for their subject matter. Wikinomics has lots of interesting insights into the economics of mass collaboration, but it also contains an unwavering optimism about the changes happening the industry. There are token attempts to address the critics—chapter 10 is devoted entirely to this—and, to be fair, they do refute several of the common challenges to wikinomics and mass collaboration. They make compelling cases about how open source software and digital downloads of culture do not have to mean an end to intellectual property (but they are the same arguments I've seen elsewhere). Regrettably absent from these rebuttals are any that address the growing digital divide or the potential for wikinomics to further degrade the balance of power between consumer and corporation.
Both of these issues have weighed heavily on my mind since I took a Philosophy and the Internet course last term. For my final essay, I defended James Tully's view that the Internet reinforces imperialism and hegemony as the most convincing interpretation we had studied. Tully convinced me that the manner in which the Internet has developed, from its origins in the power grids and communications networks of the dominant, imperialist nations, that the Internet is not the great democratic equalizer we would like it to be. Despite the amazing services springing up around mobile devices in places like Kenya, developing countries are still seriously behind when it comes to Internet access. Indeed, even a place like, oh, say, Canada, has sub-par broadband penetration (I think about the North here, and poor Labrador, and all my friends who live just far enough outside my city that they only have dial-up). So Tapscott and Williams tune that those companies that embrace wikinomics will profit and those that won't will decline is all well and good, but it makes me wonder about those who aren't so lucky to be so well connected. It makes me wonder if this will just exacerbate the digital divide. And while I think, personally, that wikinomics holds great potential for allowing developing nations to help bolster their economies and improve their connectivity to the world, I wish Wikinomics had covered more of that.
In my philosophy class we also discussed "immaterial labour," i.e., production of knowledge and information. If you're on Facebook, MySpace (hah, MySpace…), or yes, even Goodreads, then you're a participant in this labour. If you search using Google, Yahoo!, Bing (hah, Bing…), then you contribute to immaterial labour. We give companies our personal data, whether it's our birthdays and photos and what we did or read last night or our interests, destinations, gift ideas, etc. In return, the companies give us services—but they also use that data for profit. They improve their targeted advertising and improve their offerings, and often they do not compensate us, the providers of that information, for the time we spend. Tapscott and Williams take the rather uncritical line of, to paraphrase, "Participation from mass collaborators will help these companies deliver better products and better services." I'm not so convinced the truth is so simple, and again, it would have been nice to see a more thorough treatment of the dangers of letting companies harness us as unpaid knowledge workers.
Wikinomics is a well-structured, well-written roadmap for the tumultuous present and probable future of economics and corporate R&D in the digital era. Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams sometimes grow excessive in their praise for wikinomics or their certitude of its benefits. However, they are absolutely right about one thing: there are no rollbacks here. The infrastructure of our age is such that returning to an insular, closed-door model of competition just will not work. So if wikinomics isn't the answer, and that's always a possibility, then there must be something even weirder and wilder. But that will be the province of companies and people who challenge themselves to innovate. The companies that metaphorically stick their fingers in there ears, continue with the same business practices, and expect different results while implementing no real changes? Yeah, those companies will get left in the dust. Even if you end up disagreeing that wikinomics is the way, Wikinomics provides a good wake-up call and a great starting point for thinking about where our digital future is taking us.
I first heard about Don Tapscott on CBC's Spark, where Nora Young interviewed him about the Net Generation and "digital natives." They also have an interview about MacroWikinomics, the sequel to Wikinomics, which I will be reading soon.
Tapscott intrigued me. According to Wikipedia, he was born in 1947. Yet he talks about the effects of technology on economy and business as if he were, if not exactly a digital native, then a digital confidant. He has a confidence in the benefits of digital, networked technology that belies the stereotype of the Baby Boomers as a generation that just "doesn't get it." Given any amount of thought, this stereotype, like most others, is quickly seen to be absurd: most of the successful companies Tapscott and Williams cite in this book, not to mention pioneers of the Internet like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, were born in the 1940s and 1950s. Age is not the dominant factor in companies' resistance to wikinomics, or change of any kind. It's a willingness to embrace a paradigm shift. Those of us in the Net Generation have it easy, because we have grown up into the Network Age rather than having it thrust upon us.
And that brings me to my first caveat about Wikinomics: this book isn't really for me. I'm not its audience. Tapscott and Williams do a great job explaining their concepts, but they did not consistently hold me riveted. Most of this book seemed very obvious to me, because I grew up with it; I live and breathe it. So I found myself nodding my head most of the time, murmuring, "It's obvious," under my breath. Furthermore, I am not the type of person who would primarily benefit from Wikinomics, because I do not run companies or even work for a company. Although I think anyone could find this book useful and informative, the format is clearly intended for people who might want to implement wikinomics in their own organizations.
If the term wikinomics is not illuminating, the subtitle of the book explains everything: it's "how mass collaboration changes everything." Specifically, Tapscott and Williams contend that the capabilities provided by computers that are becoming increasingly faster and increasingly networked allow companies to leverage the contributions of a massive user/customer base (the consumer turns into a "prosumer," a producer-consumer). Moreover, those companies that do not leverage this advantage will soon find themselves in great difficulty. For Tapscott and Williams, wikinomics is all about reducing costs while remaining profitable in a market where consumers are increasingly connected, increasingly more well-informed about competitors' offerings, and increasingly eager to be involved.
As with many books of its ilk, Wikinomics uses several case studies to make its argument. It opens with Goldcorp, Inc. in 2000 and its effort to revitalize Red Lake mining operations by crowdsourcing possible locations of gold deposits. Goldcorp released its preciously-hoarded geological data online for anyone to access and advertised rewards for people who sent in analyses that located good deposits of gold for them. It worked well: not only did Goldcorp discover some of its most profitable gold deposits ever, but the discoveries happened faster and more efficiently than its traditional R&D process.
Tapscott and Williams tell the same story about IBM, Apache, and Linux. I've heard the Linux story several times now (most recently and more verbosely in Next Generation Democracy ), but the IBM-Apache story was new. Basically, IBM invested a lot of money and people into open source efforts like Linux and Apache. In return, it got the use of these products at a cost much less than that of a proprietary, in-house solution. As early as the 1990s, then, wikinomics already made sense: in order to reap rewards, companies were first giving something away. It seems counter-intuitive, but I don't see how it's any different from the shaving razor model: give away the razor once, sell the blades for life (only now it's "give away the razor once, sell the blades, sell a new razor with more blades, repeat"!).
During their analysis of the open source software movement, Tapscott and Williams made a remark that struck me, as a programmer, as particularly interesting:
To understand this progression, think of the open source software movement as two oncoming waves, with roughly a decade between them. The first wave bought us the plumbing: open source Web servers, operating systems, and the various pieces of code needed to run the Internet.…
The first wave of open source provided the foundation for the really expensive and complex applications that enterprises use to run their businesses. But when it came to the enterprise applications themselves, open source hit a wall. Indeed, for almost as long as software has existed, these enterprise-proof applications have been the preserve of large software houses like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. Now that's changing, with a second wave of open source.
What this passage really put into perspective for me is this: I am extremely grateful we have Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. Oh, and Linux too. I can't imagine deciding I was unhappy with the existing operating systems and choosing to write my own (for fun!). I love programming, but I have no real desire to learn the network innards of Apache or the vast, untamed lands of Linux kernel development. I have real respect for those people who can manage to operate at that level, but Wikinomics reminded me that we are lucky we have all this stuff just waiting to be used! It's true that the "plumbing" of open source continues to develop. Lately I've been reading a lot about the "NoSQL" challengers, such as Apache Cassandra, to the relational database systems. This is still very high-level stuff for me, so I continue to stick with good ol' MySQL—but it's fascinating to watch these ongoing developments in the plumbing. Ten or twenty years ago, a lot of what's available to programmers like me just didn't exist; one had to go and spend money and time to develop it from scratch. Now, one has the option of doing that, and sometimes it's the best solution. However, there also exist resources one can use to bootstrap development, saving costs and time. And those resources exist thanks in part to mass collaboration.
But I digress. You can tell I'm passionate about this kind of thing, though more from the technical side than the economic side. Tapscott and Williams are also passionate, and that brings me to the second caveat: they might be too passionate. I certainly cannot accuse them of failing to communicate their enthusiasm and excitement for their subject matter. Wikinomics has lots of interesting insights into the economics of mass collaboration, but it also contains an unwavering optimism about the changes happening the industry. There are token attempts to address the critics—chapter 10 is devoted entirely to this—and, to be fair, they do refute several of the common challenges to wikinomics and mass collaboration. They make compelling cases about how open source software and digital downloads of culture do not have to mean an end to intellectual property (but they are the same arguments I've seen elsewhere). Regrettably absent from these rebuttals are any that address the growing digital divide or the potential for wikinomics to further degrade the balance of power between consumer and corporation.
Both of these issues have weighed heavily on my mind since I took a Philosophy and the Internet course last term. For my final essay, I defended James Tully's view that the Internet reinforces imperialism and hegemony as the most convincing interpretation we had studied. Tully convinced me that the manner in which the Internet has developed, from its origins in the power grids and communications networks of the dominant, imperialist nations, that the Internet is not the great democratic equalizer we would like it to be. Despite the amazing services springing up around mobile devices in places like Kenya, developing countries are still seriously behind when it comes to Internet access. Indeed, even a place like, oh, say, Canada, has sub-par broadband penetration (I think about the North here, and poor Labrador, and all my friends who live just far enough outside my city that they only have dial-up). So Tapscott and Williams tune that those companies that embrace wikinomics will profit and those that won't will decline is all well and good, but it makes me wonder about those who aren't so lucky to be so well connected. It makes me wonder if this will just exacerbate the digital divide. And while I think, personally, that wikinomics holds great potential for allowing developing nations to help bolster their economies and improve their connectivity to the world, I wish Wikinomics had covered more of that.
In my philosophy class we also discussed "immaterial labour," i.e., production of knowledge and information. If you're on Facebook, MySpace (hah, MySpace…), or yes, even Goodreads, then you're a participant in this labour. If you search using Google, Yahoo!, Bing (hah, Bing…), then you contribute to immaterial labour. We give companies our personal data, whether it's our birthdays and photos and what we did or read last night or our interests, destinations, gift ideas, etc. In return, the companies give us services—but they also use that data for profit. They improve their targeted advertising and improve their offerings, and often they do not compensate us, the providers of that information, for the time we spend. Tapscott and Williams take the rather uncritical line of, to paraphrase, "Participation from mass collaborators will help these companies deliver better products and better services." I'm not so convinced the truth is so simple, and again, it would have been nice to see a more thorough treatment of the dangers of letting companies harness us as unpaid knowledge workers.
Wikinomics is a well-structured, well-written roadmap for the tumultuous present and probable future of economics and corporate R&D in the digital era. Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams sometimes grow excessive in their praise for wikinomics or their certitude of its benefits. However, they are absolutely right about one thing: there are no rollbacks here. The infrastructure of our age is such that returning to an insular, closed-door model of competition just will not work. So if wikinomics isn't the answer, and that's always a possibility, then there must be something even weirder and wilder. But that will be the province of companies and people who challenge themselves to innovate. The companies that metaphorically stick their fingers in there ears, continue with the same business practices, and expect different results while implementing no real changes? Yeah, those companies will get left in the dust. Even if you end up disagreeing that wikinomics is the way, Wikinomics provides a good wake-up call and a great starting point for thinking about where our digital future is taking us.
August 25, 2008
Found this to be an excellent book, very well written (enjoyed the humor), full of insights to enlighten This Reader on how the world is continually evolving and how companies that "need" to remain in control of their goods/services need to shift their mindset into a more user-friendly, open source, "peer production" collaboration in order to survive. No longer are consumers content to sit on the sidelines while big business--obsessed with control--or the media pitch "instructions" to the masses. We can "peer produce" software, hardware, news...wikipedia. Wiki is a Hawaiian term for fast.
When the Internet was born, "we" read data while resting passively on the sidelines; the new Web allows participation, interaction and creativity. No longer are all people content to sit back and read information. We want to participate, create, expound upon ideas and share with the masses to be re-created again. While lawmakers try to enforce outdated copyright infringement, "piracy," and other myopic views, a global collaboration has snowballed via the Internet. The new Web has become a massive playground of information that has been spliced together by people with different ideas, cultures, and locations.
The beginning starts with a story of a geological company seeking diamonds to be mined. They were spending enormous amounts without results. In an innovative (and last desperate measure to stay afloat) they went on the Internet and offered $575,000 to the person(s) that new of a hot spot on Earth. The company thought they would receive responses from geologists all over the world, but they didn't count on college students, military personnel, and other people joining in the search. The non-geologists did locate a large diamond mine for the (now very successful) company in an area not even considered a possibility.
There are many examples throughout the book of how people have donated their time to create and share information for the joy of doing what they enjoy. Retired scientists have found ways to volunteer and share their knowledge. Masses volunteer their knowledge and time to help create and maintain wikipedia. Look at all the Goodreads Librarians that volunteer their time to help improve this website. People have asked me why I continually spend time updating books (for free) and my answer is, "Because I enjoy it."
People play sports, watch television, etc...because they enjoy it.
When the Internet was born, "we" read data while resting passively on the sidelines; the new Web allows participation, interaction and creativity. No longer are all people content to sit back and read information. We want to participate, create, expound upon ideas and share with the masses to be re-created again. While lawmakers try to enforce outdated copyright infringement, "piracy," and other myopic views, a global collaboration has snowballed via the Internet. The new Web has become a massive playground of information that has been spliced together by people with different ideas, cultures, and locations.
The beginning starts with a story of a geological company seeking diamonds to be mined. They were spending enormous amounts without results. In an innovative (and last desperate measure to stay afloat) they went on the Internet and offered $575,000 to the person(s) that new of a hot spot on Earth. The company thought they would receive responses from geologists all over the world, but they didn't count on college students, military personnel, and other people joining in the search. The non-geologists did locate a large diamond mine for the (now very successful) company in an area not even considered a possibility.
There are many examples throughout the book of how people have donated their time to create and share information for the joy of doing what they enjoy. Retired scientists have found ways to volunteer and share their knowledge. Masses volunteer their knowledge and time to help create and maintain wikipedia. Look at all the Goodreads Librarians that volunteer their time to help improve this website. People have asked me why I continually spend time updating books (for free) and my answer is, "Because I enjoy it."
People play sports, watch television, etc...because they enjoy it.
March 21, 2014
The book began with far too many grandiose and sometimes ridiculous statements about "collaboration" and "openness" or "open systems."
One of the most obnoxious is that the authors think that collaboration either does not happen, or happens precious little, in "hierarchical" organizations. By this term "hierarchical" the authors are not exactly clear, but they generally mean those which have not adopted their "open" (wiki-based) structure. This is crazy. My wife works for HP, which has over 300,000 employees. Could it really be that HP employees are not "collaborating" for a common purpose to keep that company together and serving millions of consumers? Now that statement does emphatically NOT imply that employees within HP (just one example of a pretty "hierarchical" company) could not collaborate *more* or at least *more effectively* toward their shared goals (making the co. more money, pleasing more customers, creating better products and services, etc. They certainly could. And sometimes it drives my wife almost batty trying to solve some issues on that subject.
Book Negatives:
1. Little to no realization (especially in the beginning of the book, but less so as the book continues) about how important private property and profit are.
2. Weak on interactions in the real world marketplace between collaboration and competition. Again, as the book continues, the authors do a better job of explaining these interactions.
3. Little to no understanding about or at least mention of the difference between countries or societies based on private property, competition and freedom of contract vs. ones based on coercion and government controls.
4. Does not see the benefits to society of how competition (structured appropriately) brings out the best, most creative and most total work in individuals, teams and companies.
5. References to successful, and some high-profile companies or products at the time of writing, but which later failed or stumbled badly such as GM, Sun Microsystems, Pringles Prints and many smaller [no-name recognition] companies, products, etc. detract from the validity or at least power of persuasion of particular points being made. Boeing's 787 project in particular shows both the promises and pitfalls, but the pitfalls were not anticipated by the authors. Boeing lost a huge amount of time, money and credibility with their new collaborative system on this new design. But after huge delays and billions of $ in extra expenses and lost orders, the plane is just now starting to reap the improvement recognition for such a breakthrough product.
6. References to government bodies, such as the CA Dept. of Education using wikis and spare teacher time to highlight the benefits of the technology is worse than a joke - its cruel. Are people to believe that this department is truly efficient? That this technology does and will allow bureaucrats to create value better/cheaper/faster than private individuals and companies? The book was written about eight years ago. Has anyone heard of this dept. introducing needed important improvements in CA since then?
7. The terms "public" vs. "private" are bandied about with too little care as to the meaning or implications. It would have been better if the authors used consistently "government" vs. "voluntary" to be more clear as to the meaning and implications of the differing organizations controlling resources. This dichotomy makes clearer the coercive nature of government vs. the non-coercive nature of the free market.
8. Lots of new technologies and companies explained. One of the coolest was the idea of "Mashups" and how they are used to good effect in the music realm as well as with useful internet mapping applications that save people huge amounts of time and hassle.
Book Positives:
1. Benefits to everyone of cooperation, and descriptions of new tools to make it happen more easily and pervasively, within companies and between companies as a non-profit ventures.
2. Understands the power of the Coase idea of transaction costs and the internet's lowering of those costs. This is insightful and very helpful.
3. Lots of neat, concrete examples from IBM, P&G, Legos, Amazon, SAP and other ongoing successful companies about how they have saved money or made money with various "open" technologies such as Linux and www.innocentive.com, and new philosophies of doing business such as "ideagoras" (what a cool name) and "prosumers" (consumers who are also producers).
4. Pretty realistic view of the tension and interplay between openness and guarded/private technologies/functions. The advice here seems quite reasonable. The discussion of Apple's difficulties with open vs. closed systems is not so much enlightening, as just reasonable reiteration of their not being "one right way" for a company to proceed. The BestBuy/Geek Squad story of the CEO trying to impose a wiki on a culture that was already using another collaborative tool that got most of the problem solved was interesting and instructive. Staying in touch with what employees really need and are willing to use is crucial.
5. The authors consistently explain the benefits of and advocate great entrepreneurial ideas, what it entails and needs to thrive - adding value for consumers. No stodgy, bureaucratic thinking here, and they seem to appreciate what it takes, (some toleration for "messiness," competition, and some unclear lines of order), as opposed to numerous "reformers" who's ideas are far too out of touch with what actually happens. Their ideas are grounded in reality, as opposed to ideas that are only fantasy, because of internal contradictions, faulty premises or false data.
6. Loved the example given of a very beneficial use of a wiki and the volunteer culture it entails, especially contrasting it with the governmental disaster that made the natural catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina even worse. The benefits and low costs and quick implementation on the volunteer side vs. FEMA and other governmental money pits and time sucks was hugely illustrative.
7. Loved their use of the Isaac Newton quote: "standing on the shoulders of giants" which I have enjoyed for over 40 years. Very appropriate.
8. The book should be good for helping individuals see the advantages of new ways of approaching old, difficult problems of organization, wasted resources, foolish hierarchies, and solving problems.
9. The explanation and use of the term "paradigm shift" is still very useful, even though it was overused about 20 years ago. It is an important concept to keep aware of.
10. Loved the Goldcorp example the book starts and ends with - (except for the claim that they slashed costs 600%!? Also love the references to the prescient author Cory Doctorow.
The book is essentially very positive, but drawbacks take away from it's potentially widespread reading and influence. Too bad.
One of the most obnoxious is that the authors think that collaboration either does not happen, or happens precious little, in "hierarchical" organizations. By this term "hierarchical" the authors are not exactly clear, but they generally mean those which have not adopted their "open" (wiki-based) structure. This is crazy. My wife works for HP, which has over 300,000 employees. Could it really be that HP employees are not "collaborating" for a common purpose to keep that company together and serving millions of consumers? Now that statement does emphatically NOT imply that employees within HP (just one example of a pretty "hierarchical" company) could not collaborate *more* or at least *more effectively* toward their shared goals (making the co. more money, pleasing more customers, creating better products and services, etc. They certainly could. And sometimes it drives my wife almost batty trying to solve some issues on that subject.
Book Negatives:
1. Little to no realization (especially in the beginning of the book, but less so as the book continues) about how important private property and profit are.
2. Weak on interactions in the real world marketplace between collaboration and competition. Again, as the book continues, the authors do a better job of explaining these interactions.
3. Little to no understanding about or at least mention of the difference between countries or societies based on private property, competition and freedom of contract vs. ones based on coercion and government controls.
4. Does not see the benefits to society of how competition (structured appropriately) brings out the best, most creative and most total work in individuals, teams and companies.
5. References to successful, and some high-profile companies or products at the time of writing, but which later failed or stumbled badly such as GM, Sun Microsystems, Pringles Prints and many smaller [no-name recognition] companies, products, etc. detract from the validity or at least power of persuasion of particular points being made. Boeing's 787 project in particular shows both the promises and pitfalls, but the pitfalls were not anticipated by the authors. Boeing lost a huge amount of time, money and credibility with their new collaborative system on this new design. But after huge delays and billions of $ in extra expenses and lost orders, the plane is just now starting to reap the improvement recognition for such a breakthrough product.
6. References to government bodies, such as the CA Dept. of Education using wikis and spare teacher time to highlight the benefits of the technology is worse than a joke - its cruel. Are people to believe that this department is truly efficient? That this technology does and will allow bureaucrats to create value better/cheaper/faster than private individuals and companies? The book was written about eight years ago. Has anyone heard of this dept. introducing needed important improvements in CA since then?
7. The terms "public" vs. "private" are bandied about with too little care as to the meaning or implications. It would have been better if the authors used consistently "government" vs. "voluntary" to be more clear as to the meaning and implications of the differing organizations controlling resources. This dichotomy makes clearer the coercive nature of government vs. the non-coercive nature of the free market.
8. Lots of new technologies and companies explained. One of the coolest was the idea of "Mashups" and how they are used to good effect in the music realm as well as with useful internet mapping applications that save people huge amounts of time and hassle.
Book Positives:
1. Benefits to everyone of cooperation, and descriptions of new tools to make it happen more easily and pervasively, within companies and between companies as a non-profit ventures.
2. Understands the power of the Coase idea of transaction costs and the internet's lowering of those costs. This is insightful and very helpful.
3. Lots of neat, concrete examples from IBM, P&G, Legos, Amazon, SAP and other ongoing successful companies about how they have saved money or made money with various "open" technologies such as Linux and www.innocentive.com, and new philosophies of doing business such as "ideagoras" (what a cool name) and "prosumers" (consumers who are also producers).
4. Pretty realistic view of the tension and interplay between openness and guarded/private technologies/functions. The advice here seems quite reasonable. The discussion of Apple's difficulties with open vs. closed systems is not so much enlightening, as just reasonable reiteration of their not being "one right way" for a company to proceed. The BestBuy/Geek Squad story of the CEO trying to impose a wiki on a culture that was already using another collaborative tool that got most of the problem solved was interesting and instructive. Staying in touch with what employees really need and are willing to use is crucial.
5. The authors consistently explain the benefits of and advocate great entrepreneurial ideas, what it entails and needs to thrive - adding value for consumers. No stodgy, bureaucratic thinking here, and they seem to appreciate what it takes, (some toleration for "messiness," competition, and some unclear lines of order), as opposed to numerous "reformers" who's ideas are far too out of touch with what actually happens. Their ideas are grounded in reality, as opposed to ideas that are only fantasy, because of internal contradictions, faulty premises or false data.
6. Loved the example given of a very beneficial use of a wiki and the volunteer culture it entails, especially contrasting it with the governmental disaster that made the natural catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina even worse. The benefits and low costs and quick implementation on the volunteer side vs. FEMA and other governmental money pits and time sucks was hugely illustrative.
7. Loved their use of the Isaac Newton quote: "standing on the shoulders of giants" which I have enjoyed for over 40 years. Very appropriate.
8. The book should be good for helping individuals see the advantages of new ways of approaching old, difficult problems of organization, wasted resources, foolish hierarchies, and solving problems.
9. The explanation and use of the term "paradigm shift" is still very useful, even though it was overused about 20 years ago. It is an important concept to keep aware of.
10. Loved the Goldcorp example the book starts and ends with - (except for the claim that they slashed costs 600%!? Also love the references to the prescient author Cory Doctorow.
The book is essentially very positive, but drawbacks take away from it's potentially widespread reading and influence. Too bad.
September 15, 2011
This is another one of those books that criticizes every old business practice of the past and hails everything young and new. To me, it actually reeks of socialism. While I understand author Don Tapscot’s need to prove his point by including numerous positive examples, the critical reader can not take his argument hook-line-and-sinker because he never recognizes the obvious -- that past business practices have enabled what we are seeing today. He also makes the book at least 100 pages longer than necessary by either repeating the same thing over and over, or saying the same thing using his best friend, the thesaurus. And he seems to think using big words like “internetworked” or made-up words like “prosumer” help his argument. Time has also shown that Tapscot was wrong to heap praise upon Boeing for embracing “mass collaboration” to produce the much-delayed 787 Dreamliner. Having said all that, I give two stars instead of only one because there is some truth in his book, but he just writes too arrogantly for me.
Read
June 2, 2023DNF: The cover and title invoke Wikipedia/Wikimedia. That is an interesting example of what the Internet could have been. Unfortunately, much of this book is about the things (like My Space) that did not pan out either as businesses or as positive social developments (see recent Surgeon General warning on social media).
A red flag for me early on was the description of studies this is based on by how many millions of dollars they cost to do, as if that were a measure of validity.
A red flag for me early on was the description of studies this is based on by how many millions of dollars they cost to do, as if that were a measure of validity.
May 30, 2020
I was quite impressed when I read the book Wikinomics back in 2007. The authors seemed to understand the importance of networking in a way that companies which (for example) sent out emails from a 'noreply' email address didn't. However, there's always a danger of misreading the runes when trying to predict what will happen in the future - so it seemed interesting to go back 13 years later and see how Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams' picture of the economy of the future panned out.
Coming back to the book, it does rely on a handful of examples and repeats distinctly vague concepts a lot (in this respect it emphasises its role as a business title). And it's true that some aspects - for example the importance of the likes of YouTube and the as-yet-unlabelled social media ring true. However, the authors did fall for an old trap of enthusiastic techie types - the assumption that everyone is going to become a producer as well as a consumer any time soon.
We saw this error early on in home computing, when those who were never happier than being up to their elbows in machine code assumed that everyone would want to program their own computers. Of course, it never happened. Similarly, back in 2007, Tapscott and Williams were convinced we were all about to become 'prosumers'. They tell us ‘Rather than being passive recipient of mass consumer culture, the Net Gen spend time searching, reading, scrutinising, authenticating, collaborating and organising.' In reality, the vast majority still spend their time consuming - just from a different, more smorgasbord-like set of media. We are told to expect 'vast, self-organised networks of knowledge producers' based around file sharing and blogs. It didn't really happen.
Related to this was the expectation that most software would become open source like Linux - and Linux is certainly still going strong, but remains pretty much unique in terms of a mass market product. Similarly Wikipedia was held up as the future of publishing - yet wikis have not really escaped from this great first example (probably not helped by the fact that no one has ever bothered to make their contributor user interfaces friendly).
There's a naivety about the authors' idea that things will be so much better when those prosumers are designing the products for the manufacturers and software houses - perhaps forgetting the old chestnut about a camel being a horse designed by committee. It's quite sweet that they hold up the movie Snakes on a Plane as an example of what can be achieved if you ask the audience what they want, rather than giving them what you think they want. Tapscott and Williams thought that in the next decade (i.e. before now) we would move from tailoring products and feature requests to prosumers actively designing the new products. It hasn't happened because, in the end, most of us are not skilled designers.
Similarly, the expectation was that Second Life or its successors would be how we all interacted in the future - and I believe it is still going, but certainly there isn't the enthusiasm there once was. For me what underlines the incorrect emphasis in the book is that the founder of Wikipedia was just on the radio explaining how Wikipedia doesn't trust social media contributions as sources - they want academic sources, books, and major magazines and newspapers. While you could argue social networks did make us kind of prosumers, it proved to be a very second rate form that the doyen of the wiki field doesn't not consider an acceptable source.
Aside from the predictions, I do have to question one iffy bit of history. We are told ‘with 42 million items today the New York Public Library is larger than the Alexandria library, but there are still very few libraries that rival the collection at Alexandria nearly two thousand years ago.’ This just isn't true. Depending on source, the classical library at Alexandria was thought to hold somewhere between 40,000 and 400,000 books. In the US alone, there are at least 100 libraries with more than 3 million books. Of course Alexandria was phenomenal for its time - but it's not a useful comparison.
Perhaps the two best rules of looking forward are that things that seem like they are going to be big at the start probably won't be, and technology is not going to change the nature of individuals and what they want to do - it just amplifies aspects of those individuals. Nonetheless, Wikinomics gives a great insight into how 2007's world of the future compares with the real thing.
Coming back to the book, it does rely on a handful of examples and repeats distinctly vague concepts a lot (in this respect it emphasises its role as a business title). And it's true that some aspects - for example the importance of the likes of YouTube and the as-yet-unlabelled social media ring true. However, the authors did fall for an old trap of enthusiastic techie types - the assumption that everyone is going to become a producer as well as a consumer any time soon.
We saw this error early on in home computing, when those who were never happier than being up to their elbows in machine code assumed that everyone would want to program their own computers. Of course, it never happened. Similarly, back in 2007, Tapscott and Williams were convinced we were all about to become 'prosumers'. They tell us ‘Rather than being passive recipient of mass consumer culture, the Net Gen spend time searching, reading, scrutinising, authenticating, collaborating and organising.' In reality, the vast majority still spend their time consuming - just from a different, more smorgasbord-like set of media. We are told to expect 'vast, self-organised networks of knowledge producers' based around file sharing and blogs. It didn't really happen.
Related to this was the expectation that most software would become open source like Linux - and Linux is certainly still going strong, but remains pretty much unique in terms of a mass market product. Similarly Wikipedia was held up as the future of publishing - yet wikis have not really escaped from this great first example (probably not helped by the fact that no one has ever bothered to make their contributor user interfaces friendly).
There's a naivety about the authors' idea that things will be so much better when those prosumers are designing the products for the manufacturers and software houses - perhaps forgetting the old chestnut about a camel being a horse designed by committee. It's quite sweet that they hold up the movie Snakes on a Plane as an example of what can be achieved if you ask the audience what they want, rather than giving them what you think they want. Tapscott and Williams thought that in the next decade (i.e. before now) we would move from tailoring products and feature requests to prosumers actively designing the new products. It hasn't happened because, in the end, most of us are not skilled designers.
Similarly, the expectation was that Second Life or its successors would be how we all interacted in the future - and I believe it is still going, but certainly there isn't the enthusiasm there once was. For me what underlines the incorrect emphasis in the book is that the founder of Wikipedia was just on the radio explaining how Wikipedia doesn't trust social media contributions as sources - they want academic sources, books, and major magazines and newspapers. While you could argue social networks did make us kind of prosumers, it proved to be a very second rate form that the doyen of the wiki field doesn't not consider an acceptable source.
Aside from the predictions, I do have to question one iffy bit of history. We are told ‘with 42 million items today the New York Public Library is larger than the Alexandria library, but there are still very few libraries that rival the collection at Alexandria nearly two thousand years ago.’ This just isn't true. Depending on source, the classical library at Alexandria was thought to hold somewhere between 40,000 and 400,000 books. In the US alone, there are at least 100 libraries with more than 3 million books. Of course Alexandria was phenomenal for its time - but it's not a useful comparison.
Perhaps the two best rules of looking forward are that things that seem like they are going to be big at the start probably won't be, and technology is not going to change the nature of individuals and what they want to do - it just amplifies aspects of those individuals. Nonetheless, Wikinomics gives a great insight into how 2007's world of the future compares with the real thing.
March 29, 2010
There’s been lots of talk about crowd-sourcing in recent years, spurred by both the widespread use of the internet as a collaboration tool as well as specific destination sites like the top-of-mind Wikipedia and others.
In Wikinomics, author and business consultant Don Tapscott (The Digital Economy) and Anthony Williams attempt to illustrate and define examples of companies and projects that have quickly risen or others that have re-energized their operations using the tools of group collaboration to expand their offerings beyond the shell of their staff or existing talent pool.
Numerous examples are citied – from the rise of open source programming of Linux and Apache to the use of collaborative initiatives in existing businesses like Proctor and Gamble and BMW, to the dynamic informational database of the aforementioned Wikipedia. Companies like Amazon, YouTube, myspace, SecondLife and tools like APIs and data mashups are cited as examples of platforms and applications that can help existing organizations penetrate the new connected and social online world.
The problem lies not in the examples or even the explanation of the principles, but in the POV of the writers themselves. It seems Tapscott is rather intent on showing off his personal authority status more than he is interested in providing an interesting narrative for the reader. His writing almost seems like he is talking down to companies that are not yet on the wiki-wagon or who, for various reason of their own, are willing to defend their way of doing business for the time being (Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia, as an example).
While much of what Tapscott proffers is certainly true, much of it has already been written about (Lego, Lessig, DJ Danger Mouse, etc.) and his style is both repetitive and not nearly as inviting as authors like Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) or Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) who elicit great personal enthusiasm from their reader base.
Sure, it’s important to have great ideas, but presentation counts for something, too.
In Wikinomics, author and business consultant Don Tapscott (The Digital Economy) and Anthony Williams attempt to illustrate and define examples of companies and projects that have quickly risen or others that have re-energized their operations using the tools of group collaboration to expand their offerings beyond the shell of their staff or existing talent pool.
Numerous examples are citied – from the rise of open source programming of Linux and Apache to the use of collaborative initiatives in existing businesses like Proctor and Gamble and BMW, to the dynamic informational database of the aforementioned Wikipedia. Companies like Amazon, YouTube, myspace, SecondLife and tools like APIs and data mashups are cited as examples of platforms and applications that can help existing organizations penetrate the new connected and social online world.
The problem lies not in the examples or even the explanation of the principles, but in the POV of the writers themselves. It seems Tapscott is rather intent on showing off his personal authority status more than he is interested in providing an interesting narrative for the reader. His writing almost seems like he is talking down to companies that are not yet on the wiki-wagon or who, for various reason of their own, are willing to defend their way of doing business for the time being (Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia, as an example).
While much of what Tapscott proffers is certainly true, much of it has already been written about (Lego, Lessig, DJ Danger Mouse, etc.) and his style is both repetitive and not nearly as inviting as authors like Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) or Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) who elicit great personal enthusiasm from their reader base.
Sure, it’s important to have great ideas, but presentation counts for something, too.
December 22, 2010
Not really much positive to say about this one, other than the authors picked an interesting subject, were able to stick a few interesting examples in, and, umm, guess that's about it on the upside.
Something rubbed me the wrong way that may or may not be a fair criticism, so I'm simply going to stick it off to one side, and not really call it a negative, though I guess I'd like to. Dunno why this bugged me so much, since I'm not typically a spelling or grammar Nazi, but, folks, it is Encyclopædia Britannica, not Encyclopedia Britannica. I guess my problem is that the authors are trying to make a case that Britannica's business model is flawed or perhaps that they've failed to adjust to the new realities of the internet, AND wish to present themselves as experts capable of making such a judgment. And yet they cannot even spell the enterprise they're critiquing correctly? Fair or not, this certainly raised an eyebrow on my part.
Hell, at the end of the book the Acknowledgments run to three pages, including somebody they call their "book coordinator extraordinaire," presumably some sort of employee. And there's a paragraph thanking the "Portfolio team" (whatever that is) at their publisher, Penguin. Guess on a Portfolio Team you don't need no steenkin' copy editors?
Helpful hint to all future "book coordinator extraordinaire[s]" and "Portfolio Team[s]:" On a Wintel machine it is Start>>All Programs>>Accessories>>System Tools>>Character Map. Or,
+0230 - æ
+0198 - Æ
if you're in a rush, as long as the font isn't one of the weirdo ones like Webdings. Like I said, don't know why this bugged me so much, or even if this is a fair criticism. But, meh, at least I've now gotten it off my chest.
Ah, the heck with it. The other reviews seem to hit on most of the other stuff I wanted to raise, and that little rant took me way past the time I allotted in my mind for this review. Though I'm fairly sure wherever it is the authors made their comment about an organizational chart looking like a Jackson Pollock paining, Tom Peters made the same comment at least a decade ago, and even added a copy of the painting he had in mind. But, alas, I ain't got no "review coordinator extraordinaire" or "Portfolio Team" to help me out and dig out the exact reference in the exact book. Damn. Gotta get me some of that.
***EDIT AS OF 12/21/2010***
The Wikinomics people re-visit the Boeing Dreamliner (in April 2008), and oops..
http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index....
'course True Believers™ never apologize or admit errors. But, whatever.
And the plane is still not ready...
For Boeing, the 787 Dreamliner Nightmare Just Won't Stop... (12/21/10 retrieval)
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/inv...
Wonder when they'll revisit Boeing again?
Something rubbed me the wrong way that may or may not be a fair criticism, so I'm simply going to stick it off to one side, and not really call it a negative, though I guess I'd like to. Dunno why this bugged me so much, since I'm not typically a spelling or grammar Nazi, but, folks, it is Encyclopædia Britannica, not Encyclopedia Britannica. I guess my problem is that the authors are trying to make a case that Britannica's business model is flawed or perhaps that they've failed to adjust to the new realities of the internet, AND wish to present themselves as experts capable of making such a judgment. And yet they cannot even spell the enterprise they're critiquing correctly? Fair or not, this certainly raised an eyebrow on my part.
Hell, at the end of the book the Acknowledgments run to three pages, including somebody they call their "book coordinator extraordinaire," presumably some sort of employee. And there's a paragraph thanking the "Portfolio team" (whatever that is) at their publisher, Penguin. Guess on a Portfolio Team you don't need no steenkin' copy editors?
Helpful hint to all future "book coordinator extraordinaire[s]" and "Portfolio Team[s]:" On a Wintel machine it is Start>>All Programs>>Accessories>>System Tools>>Character Map. Or,
+0230 - æ
+0198 - Æ
if you're in a rush, as long as the font isn't one of the weirdo ones like Webdings. Like I said, don't know why this bugged me so much, or even if this is a fair criticism. But, meh, at least I've now gotten it off my chest.
Ah, the heck with it. The other reviews seem to hit on most of the other stuff I wanted to raise, and that little rant took me way past the time I allotted in my mind for this review. Though I'm fairly sure wherever it is the authors made their comment about an organizational chart looking like a Jackson Pollock paining, Tom Peters made the same comment at least a decade ago, and even added a copy of the painting he had in mind. But, alas, I ain't got no "review coordinator extraordinaire" or "Portfolio Team" to help me out and dig out the exact reference in the exact book. Damn. Gotta get me some of that.
***EDIT AS OF 12/21/2010***
The Wikinomics people re-visit the Boeing Dreamliner (in April 2008), and oops..
http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index....
'course True Believers™ never apologize or admit errors. But, whatever.
And the plane is still not ready...
For Boeing, the 787 Dreamliner Nightmare Just Won't Stop... (12/21/10 retrieval)
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/inv...
Wonder when they'll revisit Boeing again?
August 29, 2015
Probably more groundbreaking when it was published than it is today, when it reads a bit more like a stroll down memory lane. But an interesting read nonetheless, and not just to see if its predictions have come to fruition.
March 16, 2008
Unsubstantial froth. A complete waste of trees, time, and money.
March 9, 2019
Interesting book. Remarkable that the book was written in 2006, has proven to be mostly accurate. Still felt they were a bit too bullish on the whole crowdsourcing idea.
November 27, 2010
Il termine "wikinomics" (wikinomia"), che indica l'attività economica basata sul concetto di Wiki (cooperazione di massa e gratuità) è stato coniato da questo libro, del 2006.
Comprandolo mi aspettavo, perciò, di leggere un saggio sul difficile connubio fra economia tradizionale (del profitto) ed "economia del dono".
Con mia sorpresa, iniziando la lettura ho scoperto però che questo volume parla di tutto fuorché di wikinomics.
La lettura (che non credo terminerò, a questo punto), si è rivelata una delusione, nonostante l'entusiasmo di molti recensori e lettori, che era stato lo stimolo che mi ha spinto all'acquisto del volume.
Dal punto di vista del tema presunto dell'opera, dice molto di più, e con lucidità mentale decisamente superiore, Chris Anderson nel suo Gratis, che riesce a darci una delineazione preliminare dell'"economia del gratis" che egli stesso ammette essere incompleta e semplicemente abbozzata, ma almeno centra in pieno il tema trattato, dimostrando competenza nell'analisi e (a mio parere) anche una buona dose di lungimiranza.
Viceversa, Wikinomics è un'opera incredibilmente quanto inutilmente verbosa (500 pagine, ne sarebbe bastata la metà) e che dice un sacco di cose che sono vere e non nuove, ed un sacco di altre che sono nuove ma non sono, semplicemente, vere.
Gli autori sono infatti troppo impregnati del modo di ragionare economico di prima dello scoppio della crisi economica mondiale, al punto che questo volume mi ricorda molto, specie per il tono ipereccitato da scrittore "fatto" di cocaina o di gas esilarante, uno dei tanti volumi di economia prodotti all'epoca della bolla delle "dot com", e di cui oggi nessuno serba più la minima memoria.
La sua utilità, quindi, mi sfugge.
L'opera è divisa fondamentalmente in due parti. Nella prima, dopo una smisurata introduzione al tema, del tutto inutile, si affronta il mondo della cooperazione di massa gratuita via Rete. Intelligenza collettiva, generazione di prosumers, Wikipedia, Linux, Myspace, Facebook, peer production, il problema dell'hacking e della pirateria online...
Il riassunto è diligente ed anche esaustivo, direi. Se non avete mai letto nessun altro libro sulla cooperazione online (al contrario di me), direi che potreste leggere questa parte con molto gusto ed interesse: la sintesi operata dagli autori non dice nulla di nuovo ma è decisamente esaustiva. Decisamente un buon punto di partenza, quindi, che per chi fosse digiuno della materia può addirittura risultare esaltante.
Si noti peraltro che questa prima parte del saggio riguarda tutta e soltanto il mondo dei bits e dei pixels, ovvero quella Rete sui quali la "economia del dono" è nata. E questo ha la sua importanza.
I guai arrivano infatti nella seconda parte, laddove gli autori cercano di applicare i princìpi nati e sperimentati nel mondo dei bits al mondo degli atomi, alla produzione materiale.
Il loro sforzo è dimostrare che la wikinomics si può applicare con ottimi risultati anche al mondo degli atomi, ed anzi che essa sia un motore di sviluppo capace di generare ottimi profitti per i capitalisti e gli azionisti.
Ebbene, non è vero. E non per astruse motivazioni teoriche, ma per il fatto più banale che ciò di cui trattano gli autori da questo punto in poi non è più la wikinomics, ma la collaborazione di massa, quella tradizionale, sia pure facilitata e velocizzata al massimo dall'esistenza della Rete.
Il fatto che migliaia di persone cooperino per la costruzione di un oggetto, infatti, non è wikinomics: già le piramidi egizie sono state costruite con questo metodo. La Rete, in questo metodo di costruzione, c'entra solo perché permette di far collaborare persone distanti migliaia di chilometri, ma anche qui c'erano già riuscite da mo' la posta prima e il telefono e il fax poi, e non si trattava di wikinomics nemmeno in questo caso.
La novità è che oggi la comunicazione orizzontale è enormemente facilitata dalla Rete, a scapito di quella verticale top-down... ma il punto è che anche quella è sempre esistita, dietro le spalle dell'arroganza e spesso l'incompetenza dei capi. Solo che nessuno ha mai riconosciuto che il successo di un'azienda si basa anche sulla capacità dei suoi lavoratori: il merito è sempre stato preso al 101% dai suoi manager e dai suoi padroni. I lavoratori erano solo pezzi di ricambio.
La novità oggi è quindi solo che con la Rete, che lascia traccia di tutto, è più facile dimostrare che non è così (e che non è mai stato così nella storia umana).
Gli autori si spremono le meningi per cercare di capire come mettere a profitto la disponibilità di milioni di persone a cooperare pur non avendo rapporti di subordinazione lavorativa, ma quello che inventano è solo la globalizzazione della concorrenza dei posti di lavoro, cioè il precariato di massa (e può essere utile, a questo punto, leggersi o rileggersi No logo di Naomi Klein). Un fenomeno che giudicano con un'ilarità e una felicità che contrasta già, solo quattro anni dopo la scrittura del libro, con l'impegno preso da Barack Obama a creare barriere per tutelare i posti di lavoro statunitensi e a porre limiti alla libertà di manovra della globalizzazione...
Ad esempio, a pagina 33 leggiamo che "invece di assumere più lavoratori, il CEO" [amministratore delegato, NdR] "A. G. Lafley ha ordinato ai direttori delle unità di business di cedere in outsourcing l'ideazione del 50% dei nuovi prodotti e servizi. Oggi potete lavorare per P&G senza rientrare fra i suoi dipendenti"" (p. 33):
Una prospettiva, immagino, che vi riempirà di elettrizzante eccitazione.
In effetti, "Un giovane che vive in India, Cina, Brasile, o in uno qualunque dei paesi emergenti dell'Europa dell'Est oggi può fare quello che per i suoi genitori era soltanto un sogno, ovvero prendere parte all'economia globale allo stesso livello di tutti gli altri. Potete stare in un call center di Bangalore che prende gli ordini per conto di un ristorante take-away di Los Angeles" (p. 34).
Vi giuro che questo non è stato scritto con intenti sarcastici. Lavorare per un call center di un ristorante take-away è, secondo gli autori, "il sogno dei genitori" di un laureato multilingue (per forza di cose, trattandosi di un ristorante posto in un altro Stato) indiano.
Per farla breve, non passa molto da quando si entra infine nel mondo della produzione materiale che la wikinomia diventa semplice e banale outsourcing, subappalto, globalizzazione. Le ben dieci pagine (380-391) dedicate a descrivere con entusiasmo come la Boeing, da costruttrice di aerei, sia diventata assemblatrice di parti fisicamente costruite in giro per il mondo da centinaia di aziende subappaltatrici, che spesso le progettano in proprio, sono un vero monumento alla miopia e stupidità di cui solo gli economisti possono essere capaci.
Perché se vent'anni fa poteva essere eccitante immaginare un mondo in cui i profitti salivano perché si licenziavano costosi operai americani (e italiani) e si spostava il lavoro in Cina, dove grazie al "comunismo" gli operai lavorano in condizioni di semischiavitù, oggi che questo mondo è stato ormai costruito i guai che ha combinato sono evidenti a tutti. Gli Usa non riescono più a ripagare un mostruoso e sempre crescente debito con la Cina, e i suoi lavoratori licenziati non possono più permettersi di pagare i beni venduti a prezzi che non siano cinesi.
Però la metastasi della proprietà intellettuale mantiene a prezzi (monopolistici) assurdamente elevati alcuni beni che, non godendo della concorrenza cinese e indiana, semplicemente mandano in rovina gli acquirenti. Le motivazioni principali per cui gli statunitensi hanno ipotecato la casa dando il via alla celebre "bolla dei mutui subprime" sono: pagare le spese sanitarie (le più costose al mondo) e pagare gli studi ai figli... Non certo andarsene alle Hawaii a spassarsela.
Il caos politico ed economico a cui ha dato vita questo sistema di cose, e questa organizzazione del lavoro, è ormai, credo, sotto gli occhi di tutti. Come è ormai chiaro a tutti che l'outsourcing trasferisce know how e competenze ad aziende che prima o poi si chiederanno perché mai lavorare in subappalto, quando possono mettersi sul mercato da sole. Il fatto che la mitica divisione computer dell'Ibm sia stata comprata da una ditta cinese già sua subappaltatrice manda o no un messaggio? Secondo le autorità Usa, che hanno già proibito "per motivi strategici" la vendita a ditte cinesi di porti e aziende petrolifere, decisamente sì.
Ma di tutto ciò non v'è traccia in questo volume. La globalizzazione offre solo occasioni. Chi non vi si adatterà, è destinato a scomparire. Le aziende devono imparare a cooperare in Rete. Eccetera, per decine e decine di pagine e di esempi.
Data la prospettiva degli autori, che è quella degli economisti neoliberisti che hanno causato l'attuale crisi economica mondiale, non stupisce vedere come abbiano centrato un tema cruciale per l'economia oggi, mancando poi di definirne i limiti e la portata.
La legislazione sulla "proprietà intellettuale" è diventata talmente soffocante e parassitaria da costituire ormai un oggettivo ostacolo alla ricerca e allo sviluppo economico. Troppi parassiti succhiano sangue dalla "catena del valore" per non fare diventare anemico il corpo dell'economia.
Tapscott e Williams lo sanno, come dimostra l'elenco, a p. 75, delle imprese che sul web hanno fallito perché hanno insistito ad un approccio "proprietario": "Gli sconfitti hanno costruito "giardini recintati", i vincitori hanno costruito agorà" (p. 75). Peccato però che poi non sappiano trarre le debite conclusioni dall'osservazione.
Linux, l'open source, la wikinomics tutta, sono nati come risposta politica e polemica contro una società in cui anche per potere pigiare un tasto di una tastiera occorreva pagare il detentore di un brevetto.
La collaborazione fra aziende farmaceutiche per mettere in comune un database di dati brevettati, esaltata dagli autori del libro come un trionfo della nuova economia del wiki, non è altro che un banale ritorno al passato, quando non era consentito brevettare pure e semplici nozioni (come la sequenza di nucleotidi di un gene), ed in cui tutti potevano fare liberamente uso delle nozioni che erano patrimonio comune della società.
Qui non siamo di fronte al trionfo della wikinomics, ma a quella che è stata definita "La tragedia degli anti-commons", cioè al fallimento di una concezione del sapere come realtà in cui tutto può essere reso proprietà privata, tutto può essere recintato, tutto può essere brevettato, al punto che nessuno riesce più ad andare fisicamente nella sua proprietà, perché anche lo spazio delle strade è stato recintato e richiede il pagamento di un pedaggio.
Le industrie cinesi che gli autori esaltano (pp. 371-380) come geniali, per esempio, perché sono capaci di consorziarsi per produrre una motocicletta dal nulla suddividendo il lavoro fra mille piccoli laboratori, riescono nel compito anche perché è più facile farsi beffe dei brevetti in questo modo che creando una grande azienda (e il fatto che nel titolo del paragrafo si parli di una "gang" invece che di un "consorzio" forse significa che gli autori lo sanno). Provate voi a fare causa e centinaia di piccoli laboratori sparpagliati sui monti di qualche oscura provincia cinese. Non è certo come fare causa alla Honda...
La "saggezza dello stormo" risiede in effetti in primis nel fatto di essere uno stormo. Gli stormi esistono perché la moltiplicazione di bersagli che si muovono ciascuno per traiettorie diverse confonde i predatori, e rende loro più difficile concentrarsi su uno solo ed acchiapparlo.
La cooperazione industriale delle fabbrichette cinesi funziona alla grande perché permette loro, come stormo, di fare pernacchie ai brevetti industriali e alla "proprietà intellettuale" tanto cara al capitalismo. Non è un mistero per nessuno, a iniziare da chi quei brevetti li detiene... ma con l'eccezione degli economisti entusiasti della globalizzazione e della delocalizzazione in Cina o Vietnam.
Fra tali eccezioni stanno anche Tapscott e Williams, che ovviamente sono ciechi e sordi a queste tematiche, bubbole per sovversivi. Loro si pongono il problema di come si possa sfruttare economicamente per far profitti la balordaggine di milioni di persone disposte a lavorare gratis, o per un pugno di briciole di pane.
La risposta è che non si può. L'economia del dono esiste come alternativa all'economia del profitto. Ha logiche differenti, che seguono strade diverse.
Non si può prendere i wikipediani e farli lavorare gratis per l'Enciclopedia britannica, a meno che il risultato finale non sia a sua volta gratuito. Non si capisce per quale motivo qualcuno dovrebbe lavorare gratis per qualcosa finalizzato esclusivamente a far guadagnare qualcun altro.
Il fatto è che Tapscott e Williams non capiscono perché mai qualcuno dovrebbe fare qualsiasi cosa per una motivazione diversa dal profitto personale, che nella loro visione del mondo è la sola motivazione che metta in moto gli esseri umani (come da dogmi della religione liberista).
Non capendo questa motivazione, non capiscono neppure come fare ad assecondarla e sfruttarla. Perché in effetti trarre profitto dall'economia del dono si può. Tutti potete, se volete, vendere CD con l'intera Wikipedia. O con Linux. La sola cosa che dovete fare è trovare qualcuno disposto a pagarvi per qualcosa che può avere gratis dalla Rete. Ma se lo trovate, potete farlo.
Ed il paradosso è che il caso si può dare. A Steven Jobs è attribuita una dichiarazione (non so se vera o no, ma "se non è vera ben trovata") che dice: "I clienti di Itunes sono persone il cui tempo vale di più di 99 centesimi". Osservazione corretta. (Anche se i suoi Ipods, che contengono l'equivalente di 1000 CD come niente, cioè come dire 10.000 canzoni, non sarebbero venduti se la gente pensasse di doverli riempire con 10.000 downloads a 99 centesimi l'uno. Ma questo è un altro discorso).
In conclusione, questo è un libro già vecchio. Il modello economico che propugna - la globalizzazione senza barriere - è al momento attuale al centro di una tempesta che non è destinata a calare ma al contrario ad accrescersi.
Se una cosa dimostra bene è solo che la wikinomics, nata sulla Rete, funziona alla grande con i beni immateriali, mentre il tentativo di applicarla al di fuori di questo àmbito cozza frontalmente con l'attuale organizzazione economica. Per funzionare, dovrebbe come minimo poter operare in una società in cui non esistessero affatto i brevetti. Figuriamoci.
Ciò di cui parla il libro, ma senza saperlo, è il bisogno ormai urgente se non vitale di superare una realtà in cui tutto è stato privatizzato, creando milioni di minuscoli (o non minuscoli) monopolii e di rendite di posizione, ognuna della quali è un oggettivo ostacolo al progresso, se non addirittura al libero funzionamento di quel mercato tanto caro ai capitalisti.
Gli autori sono entusiasti di fronte alla scoperta del fatto che cooperando gli esseri umani producono meglio e di più che facendosi la guerra, cioè concorrenza. Solo che per le loro premesse ideologiche non possono mettere le cose in questi termini.
Quindi attribuiscono ad un banale mezzo di comunicazione, la Rete, presunte virtù che sono invece intrinseche al metodo cooperativo. Che funzionava già ai tempi dei piccioni viaggiatori. E che solo l'ottusità di ideologie economiche miopi aveva dichiarato morto e sepolto.
Bentornata, cooperazione di massa. Lasciaci solo un attimo di tempo per seppellire la competizione individuale selvaggia, e ti ridiamo subito il tuo posto di motore della Storia...
Comprandolo mi aspettavo, perciò, di leggere un saggio sul difficile connubio fra economia tradizionale (del profitto) ed "economia del dono".
Con mia sorpresa, iniziando la lettura ho scoperto però che questo volume parla di tutto fuorché di wikinomics.
La lettura (che non credo terminerò, a questo punto), si è rivelata una delusione, nonostante l'entusiasmo di molti recensori e lettori, che era stato lo stimolo che mi ha spinto all'acquisto del volume.
Dal punto di vista del tema presunto dell'opera, dice molto di più, e con lucidità mentale decisamente superiore, Chris Anderson nel suo Gratis, che riesce a darci una delineazione preliminare dell'"economia del gratis" che egli stesso ammette essere incompleta e semplicemente abbozzata, ma almeno centra in pieno il tema trattato, dimostrando competenza nell'analisi e (a mio parere) anche una buona dose di lungimiranza.
Viceversa, Wikinomics è un'opera incredibilmente quanto inutilmente verbosa (500 pagine, ne sarebbe bastata la metà) e che dice un sacco di cose che sono vere e non nuove, ed un sacco di altre che sono nuove ma non sono, semplicemente, vere.
Gli autori sono infatti troppo impregnati del modo di ragionare economico di prima dello scoppio della crisi economica mondiale, al punto che questo volume mi ricorda molto, specie per il tono ipereccitato da scrittore "fatto" di cocaina o di gas esilarante, uno dei tanti volumi di economia prodotti all'epoca della bolla delle "dot com", e di cui oggi nessuno serba più la minima memoria.
La sua utilità, quindi, mi sfugge.
L'opera è divisa fondamentalmente in due parti. Nella prima, dopo una smisurata introduzione al tema, del tutto inutile, si affronta il mondo della cooperazione di massa gratuita via Rete. Intelligenza collettiva, generazione di prosumers, Wikipedia, Linux, Myspace, Facebook, peer production, il problema dell'hacking e della pirateria online...
Il riassunto è diligente ed anche esaustivo, direi. Se non avete mai letto nessun altro libro sulla cooperazione online (al contrario di me), direi che potreste leggere questa parte con molto gusto ed interesse: la sintesi operata dagli autori non dice nulla di nuovo ma è decisamente esaustiva. Decisamente un buon punto di partenza, quindi, che per chi fosse digiuno della materia può addirittura risultare esaltante.
Si noti peraltro che questa prima parte del saggio riguarda tutta e soltanto il mondo dei bits e dei pixels, ovvero quella Rete sui quali la "economia del dono" è nata. E questo ha la sua importanza.
I guai arrivano infatti nella seconda parte, laddove gli autori cercano di applicare i princìpi nati e sperimentati nel mondo dei bits al mondo degli atomi, alla produzione materiale.
Il loro sforzo è dimostrare che la wikinomics si può applicare con ottimi risultati anche al mondo degli atomi, ed anzi che essa sia un motore di sviluppo capace di generare ottimi profitti per i capitalisti e gli azionisti.
Ebbene, non è vero. E non per astruse motivazioni teoriche, ma per il fatto più banale che ciò di cui trattano gli autori da questo punto in poi non è più la wikinomics, ma la collaborazione di massa, quella tradizionale, sia pure facilitata e velocizzata al massimo dall'esistenza della Rete.
Il fatto che migliaia di persone cooperino per la costruzione di un oggetto, infatti, non è wikinomics: già le piramidi egizie sono state costruite con questo metodo. La Rete, in questo metodo di costruzione, c'entra solo perché permette di far collaborare persone distanti migliaia di chilometri, ma anche qui c'erano già riuscite da mo' la posta prima e il telefono e il fax poi, e non si trattava di wikinomics nemmeno in questo caso.
La novità è che oggi la comunicazione orizzontale è enormemente facilitata dalla Rete, a scapito di quella verticale top-down... ma il punto è che anche quella è sempre esistita, dietro le spalle dell'arroganza e spesso l'incompetenza dei capi. Solo che nessuno ha mai riconosciuto che il successo di un'azienda si basa anche sulla capacità dei suoi lavoratori: il merito è sempre stato preso al 101% dai suoi manager e dai suoi padroni. I lavoratori erano solo pezzi di ricambio.
La novità oggi è quindi solo che con la Rete, che lascia traccia di tutto, è più facile dimostrare che non è così (e che non è mai stato così nella storia umana).
Gli autori si spremono le meningi per cercare di capire come mettere a profitto la disponibilità di milioni di persone a cooperare pur non avendo rapporti di subordinazione lavorativa, ma quello che inventano è solo la globalizzazione della concorrenza dei posti di lavoro, cioè il precariato di massa (e può essere utile, a questo punto, leggersi o rileggersi No logo di Naomi Klein). Un fenomeno che giudicano con un'ilarità e una felicità che contrasta già, solo quattro anni dopo la scrittura del libro, con l'impegno preso da Barack Obama a creare barriere per tutelare i posti di lavoro statunitensi e a porre limiti alla libertà di manovra della globalizzazione...
Ad esempio, a pagina 33 leggiamo che "invece di assumere più lavoratori, il CEO" [amministratore delegato, NdR] "A. G. Lafley ha ordinato ai direttori delle unità di business di cedere in outsourcing l'ideazione del 50% dei nuovi prodotti e servizi. Oggi potete lavorare per P&G senza rientrare fra i suoi dipendenti"" (p. 33):
Una prospettiva, immagino, che vi riempirà di elettrizzante eccitazione.
In effetti, "Un giovane che vive in India, Cina, Brasile, o in uno qualunque dei paesi emergenti dell'Europa dell'Est oggi può fare quello che per i suoi genitori era soltanto un sogno, ovvero prendere parte all'economia globale allo stesso livello di tutti gli altri. Potete stare in un call center di Bangalore che prende gli ordini per conto di un ristorante take-away di Los Angeles" (p. 34).
Vi giuro che questo non è stato scritto con intenti sarcastici. Lavorare per un call center di un ristorante take-away è, secondo gli autori, "il sogno dei genitori" di un laureato multilingue (per forza di cose, trattandosi di un ristorante posto in un altro Stato) indiano.
Per farla breve, non passa molto da quando si entra infine nel mondo della produzione materiale che la wikinomia diventa semplice e banale outsourcing, subappalto, globalizzazione. Le ben dieci pagine (380-391) dedicate a descrivere con entusiasmo come la Boeing, da costruttrice di aerei, sia diventata assemblatrice di parti fisicamente costruite in giro per il mondo da centinaia di aziende subappaltatrici, che spesso le progettano in proprio, sono un vero monumento alla miopia e stupidità di cui solo gli economisti possono essere capaci.
Perché se vent'anni fa poteva essere eccitante immaginare un mondo in cui i profitti salivano perché si licenziavano costosi operai americani (e italiani) e si spostava il lavoro in Cina, dove grazie al "comunismo" gli operai lavorano in condizioni di semischiavitù, oggi che questo mondo è stato ormai costruito i guai che ha combinato sono evidenti a tutti. Gli Usa non riescono più a ripagare un mostruoso e sempre crescente debito con la Cina, e i suoi lavoratori licenziati non possono più permettersi di pagare i beni venduti a prezzi che non siano cinesi.
Però la metastasi della proprietà intellettuale mantiene a prezzi (monopolistici) assurdamente elevati alcuni beni che, non godendo della concorrenza cinese e indiana, semplicemente mandano in rovina gli acquirenti. Le motivazioni principali per cui gli statunitensi hanno ipotecato la casa dando il via alla celebre "bolla dei mutui subprime" sono: pagare le spese sanitarie (le più costose al mondo) e pagare gli studi ai figli... Non certo andarsene alle Hawaii a spassarsela.
Il caos politico ed economico a cui ha dato vita questo sistema di cose, e questa organizzazione del lavoro, è ormai, credo, sotto gli occhi di tutti. Come è ormai chiaro a tutti che l'outsourcing trasferisce know how e competenze ad aziende che prima o poi si chiederanno perché mai lavorare in subappalto, quando possono mettersi sul mercato da sole. Il fatto che la mitica divisione computer dell'Ibm sia stata comprata da una ditta cinese già sua subappaltatrice manda o no un messaggio? Secondo le autorità Usa, che hanno già proibito "per motivi strategici" la vendita a ditte cinesi di porti e aziende petrolifere, decisamente sì.
Ma di tutto ciò non v'è traccia in questo volume. La globalizzazione offre solo occasioni. Chi non vi si adatterà, è destinato a scomparire. Le aziende devono imparare a cooperare in Rete. Eccetera, per decine e decine di pagine e di esempi.
Data la prospettiva degli autori, che è quella degli economisti neoliberisti che hanno causato l'attuale crisi economica mondiale, non stupisce vedere come abbiano centrato un tema cruciale per l'economia oggi, mancando poi di definirne i limiti e la portata.
La legislazione sulla "proprietà intellettuale" è diventata talmente soffocante e parassitaria da costituire ormai un oggettivo ostacolo alla ricerca e allo sviluppo economico. Troppi parassiti succhiano sangue dalla "catena del valore" per non fare diventare anemico il corpo dell'economia.
Tapscott e Williams lo sanno, come dimostra l'elenco, a p. 75, delle imprese che sul web hanno fallito perché hanno insistito ad un approccio "proprietario": "Gli sconfitti hanno costruito "giardini recintati", i vincitori hanno costruito agorà" (p. 75). Peccato però che poi non sappiano trarre le debite conclusioni dall'osservazione.
Linux, l'open source, la wikinomics tutta, sono nati come risposta politica e polemica contro una società in cui anche per potere pigiare un tasto di una tastiera occorreva pagare il detentore di un brevetto.
La collaborazione fra aziende farmaceutiche per mettere in comune un database di dati brevettati, esaltata dagli autori del libro come un trionfo della nuova economia del wiki, non è altro che un banale ritorno al passato, quando non era consentito brevettare pure e semplici nozioni (come la sequenza di nucleotidi di un gene), ed in cui tutti potevano fare liberamente uso delle nozioni che erano patrimonio comune della società.
Qui non siamo di fronte al trionfo della wikinomics, ma a quella che è stata definita "La tragedia degli anti-commons", cioè al fallimento di una concezione del sapere come realtà in cui tutto può essere reso proprietà privata, tutto può essere recintato, tutto può essere brevettato, al punto che nessuno riesce più ad andare fisicamente nella sua proprietà, perché anche lo spazio delle strade è stato recintato e richiede il pagamento di un pedaggio.
Le industrie cinesi che gli autori esaltano (pp. 371-380) come geniali, per esempio, perché sono capaci di consorziarsi per produrre una motocicletta dal nulla suddividendo il lavoro fra mille piccoli laboratori, riescono nel compito anche perché è più facile farsi beffe dei brevetti in questo modo che creando una grande azienda (e il fatto che nel titolo del paragrafo si parli di una "gang" invece che di un "consorzio" forse significa che gli autori lo sanno). Provate voi a fare causa e centinaia di piccoli laboratori sparpagliati sui monti di qualche oscura provincia cinese. Non è certo come fare causa alla Honda...
La "saggezza dello stormo" risiede in effetti in primis nel fatto di essere uno stormo. Gli stormi esistono perché la moltiplicazione di bersagli che si muovono ciascuno per traiettorie diverse confonde i predatori, e rende loro più difficile concentrarsi su uno solo ed acchiapparlo.
La cooperazione industriale delle fabbrichette cinesi funziona alla grande perché permette loro, come stormo, di fare pernacchie ai brevetti industriali e alla "proprietà intellettuale" tanto cara al capitalismo. Non è un mistero per nessuno, a iniziare da chi quei brevetti li detiene... ma con l'eccezione degli economisti entusiasti della globalizzazione e della delocalizzazione in Cina o Vietnam.
Fra tali eccezioni stanno anche Tapscott e Williams, che ovviamente sono ciechi e sordi a queste tematiche, bubbole per sovversivi. Loro si pongono il problema di come si possa sfruttare economicamente per far profitti la balordaggine di milioni di persone disposte a lavorare gratis, o per un pugno di briciole di pane.
La risposta è che non si può. L'economia del dono esiste come alternativa all'economia del profitto. Ha logiche differenti, che seguono strade diverse.
Non si può prendere i wikipediani e farli lavorare gratis per l'Enciclopedia britannica, a meno che il risultato finale non sia a sua volta gratuito. Non si capisce per quale motivo qualcuno dovrebbe lavorare gratis per qualcosa finalizzato esclusivamente a far guadagnare qualcun altro.
Il fatto è che Tapscott e Williams non capiscono perché mai qualcuno dovrebbe fare qualsiasi cosa per una motivazione diversa dal profitto personale, che nella loro visione del mondo è la sola motivazione che metta in moto gli esseri umani (come da dogmi della religione liberista).
Non capendo questa motivazione, non capiscono neppure come fare ad assecondarla e sfruttarla. Perché in effetti trarre profitto dall'economia del dono si può. Tutti potete, se volete, vendere CD con l'intera Wikipedia. O con Linux. La sola cosa che dovete fare è trovare qualcuno disposto a pagarvi per qualcosa che può avere gratis dalla Rete. Ma se lo trovate, potete farlo.
Ed il paradosso è che il caso si può dare. A Steven Jobs è attribuita una dichiarazione (non so se vera o no, ma "se non è vera ben trovata") che dice: "I clienti di Itunes sono persone il cui tempo vale di più di 99 centesimi". Osservazione corretta. (Anche se i suoi Ipods, che contengono l'equivalente di 1000 CD come niente, cioè come dire 10.000 canzoni, non sarebbero venduti se la gente pensasse di doverli riempire con 10.000 downloads a 99 centesimi l'uno. Ma questo è un altro discorso).
In conclusione, questo è un libro già vecchio. Il modello economico che propugna - la globalizzazione senza barriere - è al momento attuale al centro di una tempesta che non è destinata a calare ma al contrario ad accrescersi.
Se una cosa dimostra bene è solo che la wikinomics, nata sulla Rete, funziona alla grande con i beni immateriali, mentre il tentativo di applicarla al di fuori di questo àmbito cozza frontalmente con l'attuale organizzazione economica. Per funzionare, dovrebbe come minimo poter operare in una società in cui non esistessero affatto i brevetti. Figuriamoci.
Ciò di cui parla il libro, ma senza saperlo, è il bisogno ormai urgente se non vitale di superare una realtà in cui tutto è stato privatizzato, creando milioni di minuscoli (o non minuscoli) monopolii e di rendite di posizione, ognuna della quali è un oggettivo ostacolo al progresso, se non addirittura al libero funzionamento di quel mercato tanto caro ai capitalisti.
Gli autori sono entusiasti di fronte alla scoperta del fatto che cooperando gli esseri umani producono meglio e di più che facendosi la guerra, cioè concorrenza. Solo che per le loro premesse ideologiche non possono mettere le cose in questi termini.
Quindi attribuiscono ad un banale mezzo di comunicazione, la Rete, presunte virtù che sono invece intrinseche al metodo cooperativo. Che funzionava già ai tempi dei piccioni viaggiatori. E che solo l'ottusità di ideologie economiche miopi aveva dichiarato morto e sepolto.
Bentornata, cooperazione di massa. Lasciaci solo un attimo di tempo per seppellire la competizione individuale selvaggia, e ti ridiamo subito il tuo posto di motore della Storia...
March 9, 2010
Assignment Module-6: Book Chat.
Book title: WIKINOMICS. How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Author: Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
The book, “WIKINOMICS: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”, is about how mass collaboration has changed how we do things in both our social life and in the corporate world. The book dwells mostly on how mass collaboration has affected the global economy. As I prepared to read the book, I believed that I knew that discussion of how collaboration impacts on businesses had something to do with management decision making and their actions that are geared towards improving the quality of their products for the purpose of attracting more customers. After reading the first few chapters I realized that I was wrong on this issue. Learning what impact mass collaboration had on global economy stood out most for me.
The following paragraph illustrates how wrong I was about the impact that collaboration has on global economy.
The collaboration economy, which is the outcome of two converging forces: a change in the deep structures of the corporation as companies are forced to open up their walls and collaborate with external resources to create value, and the rise of truly global economy that demands and enables new kinds of economic cooperation and opens up the world of knowledge workers to every company seeking uniquely qualified minds to solve their problems (P-55).
The gist of this book is about how the traditional corporate structure has collapsed and allowed the consumers to be part of decision making and eventual producers of what they consume. The book describes how consumers participate in the creation of products in an active and ongoing way with the consumer co-innovating and co-producing the product that they consume. The author coins the term prosumers to describe how the gap between the producers and consumers is blurring. In prosumer communities, companies develop a strategy to create products with its consumers.
The book challenged me to think about the exciting opportunities that I could put to use my knowledge of Web 2.0 tools for both my profession and personal live. For example in classroom instructions, this model can be applied so that students get more involved in making decision on how and what they learn. Many interesting and innovative cases, including some new ways Proctor & Gamble is doing business outside of the traditional corporate hierarchy, are discussed in detail.
The theme of the book is how mass collaboration has replaced the old corporate order with a new order in which corporate managers’ work with the consumers to determine what will be produced. To do so corporate managers, make a deliberate move to collapse the boundary between the corporation and its environment. The authors give several examples where corporation made deliberate moves to invite the general public in shaping the final product.
Faced with bankruptcy of his Goldcorp Inc., firm for failure to find new gold deposit to process, Rob McEwen made a controversial decision to invite people outside his firm to join in the exploration. The author quote McEwen telling his chief geologist that he was going to put all the data and geology that the company had on file and share it with the world with the hope that there was someone out there who would tell Goldcorp Inc., where to find deposits of Gold. This was a controversial and risky decision because the information to be posted on file for public perusal is always supposed to be a company’s top secret seen only by the top management. The decision worked out surprisingly well. The authors write that:
Within weeks, submissions from around the world came flooding into Goldcorp headquarters. As expected, geologists got involved. But entries came from surprising sources, including graduate students, consultants, mathematicians, and military officers, all seeking a piece of the action. “We had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had never seen before in the industry,” says McEwen. “When I saw the computer graphics I almost fell out of my chair.” The contestants had identified 110 targets on the Red Lake property, 50 percent of which had not been previously identified by the company. Over 80 per cent of the new targets yielded substantial quantities of gold. In fact, since the challenge was initiated an astounding eight million ounces of gold have been found. McEwen estimates the collaborative process shaved two to three years off their exploration time (p-9).
The authors give several other examples of how mass collaboration is used in manufacturing industry to incorporate the views of the consumers in the final product. Examples given include the manufacture of BMW, Linux system software and production of multiplayer games. The most interesting application of mass collaboration that I read was the idea of collaborative science. Science2.0. will result into the collapse of walls between institutions and be replaced by open scientific networks. An example is where twenty labs at different institutions around the world make use of a wiki on which data, research protocols and other research resources and outcome are posted. The researchers will then use RSS feeds that stream results as they happen and use wikis to collaboratively author or modify reports.
I fully agree with the authors’ point of view about the rise of the second-generation internet, the coming of age of a new generation of collaborators that the authors refer to as Net generation and the change of global economics to a collaboration economy. I realize that I have experienced most of the issues that the author raises in his book in my day to day undertaking although not at the scale that the authors describe. All along I have known how Wikipedia works although I could not relate to other experiences so as to see this as a new global perspective of doing things. I have my experiences with Amazon and also knew about the use of the web to help people find their loved ones after Katrina hit New Orleans. What the authors have helped me to do is to tie the loose end and see how all these things have come together to create a new way of doing things in all sectors of the economy. I agree with the authors’ point of view that the principles of good collaboration are as follows.
• Being open to allow customers, peers and others more access to your content, intellectual capital to collaborate and create something new.
• Peering to recognize that people form their own communities to create value, such as open source, and prefer these communities to traditional hierarchies that concentrate on control.
• Sharing to overturn the economics of scarcity in favor of wide distribution and tailoring.
In this regard, value comes not from distribution but from application of your products
and services.
For collaborative global economy to succeed the authors argue that the following actors and the roles that they play are important.
• Peer pioneers who will create the new business models based on wikinomics and found the companies that will displace both traditional companies and first generation web companies.
• Ideagoras the creation of open forums where ideas are freely shared and developed based on attracting world class talent from around the connected world.
• Prosumers who are a rising group of customers who will both produce and consume new products and services.
• New Alexandrians the 'librarians' who will bring people together. In other words, the mavens that draw the Prosumers into the Ideagoras.
• Platforms of Participation which is where the wiki economy will happen. These are places where companies open their products and platforms to enable collaboration and creation of next generation products and businesses.
• Global Plant Floor recognizes that manufacturing has become more open and able to support mass customized products. This is essential for new products to get to market effectively.
• Wiki Workplace the environment where people will collaborate in the future, connect and collaborate to create new sources of value ( p.269)
This book is about decision makers in the production of goods engaging and giving a chance to consumers to participate in the creation of products in an active and ongoing way. Consumers will co-innovate and co-produce the products they consume.
The basic idea in this book has some application in learning. Recent change in the way instruction is done has favored active learning by students as opposed to passive learning. This idea comes from the work of education reformer John Dewey and Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and other social constructivist theorists. Constructivist idea is that learners should be given the opportunity to decide how and what they will learn and that the role of teachers is to provide the environment that is required for this to be achieved. This interpretation of learning as active process is the same principle that Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams promote in the global economy in their book.
The authors have done extremely well in expounding their main idea. They have used very convincing examples. They have also coined terms like prosumers that are very appropriate for their intended meaning. The authors also do extremely well in helping the reader not only see how the main theme of the book applies to his life but also to be able to look ahead and see how this will be applied in life. This book is most appropriate for the heads of industry. The book was a good read for me.
Book title: WIKINOMICS. How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Author: Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
The book, “WIKINOMICS: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”, is about how mass collaboration has changed how we do things in both our social life and in the corporate world. The book dwells mostly on how mass collaboration has affected the global economy. As I prepared to read the book, I believed that I knew that discussion of how collaboration impacts on businesses had something to do with management decision making and their actions that are geared towards improving the quality of their products for the purpose of attracting more customers. After reading the first few chapters I realized that I was wrong on this issue. Learning what impact mass collaboration had on global economy stood out most for me.
The following paragraph illustrates how wrong I was about the impact that collaboration has on global economy.
The collaboration economy, which is the outcome of two converging forces: a change in the deep structures of the corporation as companies are forced to open up their walls and collaborate with external resources to create value, and the rise of truly global economy that demands and enables new kinds of economic cooperation and opens up the world of knowledge workers to every company seeking uniquely qualified minds to solve their problems (P-55).
The gist of this book is about how the traditional corporate structure has collapsed and allowed the consumers to be part of decision making and eventual producers of what they consume. The book describes how consumers participate in the creation of products in an active and ongoing way with the consumer co-innovating and co-producing the product that they consume. The author coins the term prosumers to describe how the gap between the producers and consumers is blurring. In prosumer communities, companies develop a strategy to create products with its consumers.
The book challenged me to think about the exciting opportunities that I could put to use my knowledge of Web 2.0 tools for both my profession and personal live. For example in classroom instructions, this model can be applied so that students get more involved in making decision on how and what they learn. Many interesting and innovative cases, including some new ways Proctor & Gamble is doing business outside of the traditional corporate hierarchy, are discussed in detail.
The theme of the book is how mass collaboration has replaced the old corporate order with a new order in which corporate managers’ work with the consumers to determine what will be produced. To do so corporate managers, make a deliberate move to collapse the boundary between the corporation and its environment. The authors give several examples where corporation made deliberate moves to invite the general public in shaping the final product.
Faced with bankruptcy of his Goldcorp Inc., firm for failure to find new gold deposit to process, Rob McEwen made a controversial decision to invite people outside his firm to join in the exploration. The author quote McEwen telling his chief geologist that he was going to put all the data and geology that the company had on file and share it with the world with the hope that there was someone out there who would tell Goldcorp Inc., where to find deposits of Gold. This was a controversial and risky decision because the information to be posted on file for public perusal is always supposed to be a company’s top secret seen only by the top management. The decision worked out surprisingly well. The authors write that:
Within weeks, submissions from around the world came flooding into Goldcorp headquarters. As expected, geologists got involved. But entries came from surprising sources, including graduate students, consultants, mathematicians, and military officers, all seeking a piece of the action. “We had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had never seen before in the industry,” says McEwen. “When I saw the computer graphics I almost fell out of my chair.” The contestants had identified 110 targets on the Red Lake property, 50 percent of which had not been previously identified by the company. Over 80 per cent of the new targets yielded substantial quantities of gold. In fact, since the challenge was initiated an astounding eight million ounces of gold have been found. McEwen estimates the collaborative process shaved two to three years off their exploration time (p-9).
The authors give several other examples of how mass collaboration is used in manufacturing industry to incorporate the views of the consumers in the final product. Examples given include the manufacture of BMW, Linux system software and production of multiplayer games. The most interesting application of mass collaboration that I read was the idea of collaborative science. Science2.0. will result into the collapse of walls between institutions and be replaced by open scientific networks. An example is where twenty labs at different institutions around the world make use of a wiki on which data, research protocols and other research resources and outcome are posted. The researchers will then use RSS feeds that stream results as they happen and use wikis to collaboratively author or modify reports.
I fully agree with the authors’ point of view about the rise of the second-generation internet, the coming of age of a new generation of collaborators that the authors refer to as Net generation and the change of global economics to a collaboration economy. I realize that I have experienced most of the issues that the author raises in his book in my day to day undertaking although not at the scale that the authors describe. All along I have known how Wikipedia works although I could not relate to other experiences so as to see this as a new global perspective of doing things. I have my experiences with Amazon and also knew about the use of the web to help people find their loved ones after Katrina hit New Orleans. What the authors have helped me to do is to tie the loose end and see how all these things have come together to create a new way of doing things in all sectors of the economy. I agree with the authors’ point of view that the principles of good collaboration are as follows.
• Being open to allow customers, peers and others more access to your content, intellectual capital to collaborate and create something new.
• Peering to recognize that people form their own communities to create value, such as open source, and prefer these communities to traditional hierarchies that concentrate on control.
• Sharing to overturn the economics of scarcity in favor of wide distribution and tailoring.
In this regard, value comes not from distribution but from application of your products
and services.
For collaborative global economy to succeed the authors argue that the following actors and the roles that they play are important.
• Peer pioneers who will create the new business models based on wikinomics and found the companies that will displace both traditional companies and first generation web companies.
• Ideagoras the creation of open forums where ideas are freely shared and developed based on attracting world class talent from around the connected world.
• Prosumers who are a rising group of customers who will both produce and consume new products and services.
• New Alexandrians the 'librarians' who will bring people together. In other words, the mavens that draw the Prosumers into the Ideagoras.
• Platforms of Participation which is where the wiki economy will happen. These are places where companies open their products and platforms to enable collaboration and creation of next generation products and businesses.
• Global Plant Floor recognizes that manufacturing has become more open and able to support mass customized products. This is essential for new products to get to market effectively.
• Wiki Workplace the environment where people will collaborate in the future, connect and collaborate to create new sources of value ( p.269)
This book is about decision makers in the production of goods engaging and giving a chance to consumers to participate in the creation of products in an active and ongoing way. Consumers will co-innovate and co-produce the products they consume.
The basic idea in this book has some application in learning. Recent change in the way instruction is done has favored active learning by students as opposed to passive learning. This idea comes from the work of education reformer John Dewey and Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and other social constructivist theorists. Constructivist idea is that learners should be given the opportunity to decide how and what they will learn and that the role of teachers is to provide the environment that is required for this to be achieved. This interpretation of learning as active process is the same principle that Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams promote in the global economy in their book.
The authors have done extremely well in expounding their main idea. They have used very convincing examples. They have also coined terms like prosumers that are very appropriate for their intended meaning. The authors also do extremely well in helping the reader not only see how the main theme of the book applies to his life but also to be able to look ahead and see how this will be applied in life. This book is most appropriate for the heads of industry. The book was a good read for me.
October 23, 2018
Like reading an armchair Aaron Swartz.
Very few main points, supported with tons of anecdotes. A good reading strategy would be to read wherever you see very few words beginning with capital letters, because then you'd know there aren't any company names and anecdotes involved.
The chapter on government really, really impacted my thoughts, and that is why I'm giving it 3 stars. Apart from that, the book was extremely repetitive and anecdotal rather than insight-dense and logical. It was one of those books where the author could have made a blog post and done a just-as-effective job as conveying all of his main points.
I skimmed a lot of the book because the anecdotes were endless and the insights few -- although some of the insights were very important.
The author strongly praises outsourcing without mentioning things like the extra costs involved with it. A good example today would be SpaceX and Boeing (which is, coincidentally, a company Tapscott praises a lot due to its outsourcing), where SpaceX can offer much cheaper rockets because of its landing AND its vertical, in-house production of rocket components.
Read any random 10 pages of the book + the chapter on government to understand all of the author's main and important points.
Very few main points, supported with tons of anecdotes. A good reading strategy would be to read wherever you see very few words beginning with capital letters, because then you'd know there aren't any company names and anecdotes involved.
The chapter on government really, really impacted my thoughts, and that is why I'm giving it 3 stars. Apart from that, the book was extremely repetitive and anecdotal rather than insight-dense and logical. It was one of those books where the author could have made a blog post and done a just-as-effective job as conveying all of his main points.
I skimmed a lot of the book because the anecdotes were endless and the insights few -- although some of the insights were very important.
The author strongly praises outsourcing without mentioning things like the extra costs involved with it. A good example today would be SpaceX and Boeing (which is, coincidentally, a company Tapscott praises a lot due to its outsourcing), where SpaceX can offer much cheaper rockets because of its landing AND its vertical, in-house production of rocket components.
Read any random 10 pages of the book + the chapter on government to understand all of the author's main and important points.
June 11, 2017
I'm reading this book during 2017. And I believe that mass collaboration is what we so called Crowd Sourcing at this moment is becoming so pervasive in many platforms. (Kickstarter, Freelancer.com, Fiverr, Tongal.com)
In 'The Long Tail', Chris Anderson pointed out internet are now the market of an infinite shelf that products demand are never ending in every niche pool. Therefore, amateur and expert talents are now connected in every corner of the world.
In this book, author interpreted the Web 2.0 are no longer the internet what people use to think.
"The new Web is fundamentally different in both its infrastructure and applications. Instead of a digital newspaper, think of a shared canvas where every splash of paint contributed by one user provides a richer tapestry for the next user to modify or build on."
"The loser launched Web sites. The winners launched vibrant communities". This is totally true for me. There are already many examples for us to study. China electronic IoT builder 'Xiao Mi' launch it products in web and getting feedback from the innovators and early adopters and spread through the whole markets and become one of the tycoons in mainland China.
Carryology, Australia essential carry communities launch 'Bellroy' and become a hit in the niche markets. Ikea Hacker communities even attracted more than thousands of Ikea disciple to participate and contribute in the online platforms.
Behold, this is the new era of industrial revolution. Enterprise 2.0 will be able to discern the trend and thrive in this digital era and become one of the Fortune 500 in the future. (Air Bnb, Uber, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, etc)
*The first few chapters of the book are quite redundant and keep on reiterate the collaboration benefits and method where I found it's quite boring. (Maybe I'm Net Generation, that's why it's common for me)
In 'The Long Tail', Chris Anderson pointed out internet are now the market of an infinite shelf that products demand are never ending in every niche pool. Therefore, amateur and expert talents are now connected in every corner of the world.
In this book, author interpreted the Web 2.0 are no longer the internet what people use to think.
"The new Web is fundamentally different in both its infrastructure and applications. Instead of a digital newspaper, think of a shared canvas where every splash of paint contributed by one user provides a richer tapestry for the next user to modify or build on."
"The loser launched Web sites. The winners launched vibrant communities". This is totally true for me. There are already many examples for us to study. China electronic IoT builder 'Xiao Mi' launch it products in web and getting feedback from the innovators and early adopters and spread through the whole markets and become one of the tycoons in mainland China.
Carryology, Australia essential carry communities launch 'Bellroy' and become a hit in the niche markets. Ikea Hacker communities even attracted more than thousands of Ikea disciple to participate and contribute in the online platforms.
Behold, this is the new era of industrial revolution. Enterprise 2.0 will be able to discern the trend and thrive in this digital era and become one of the Fortune 500 in the future. (Air Bnb, Uber, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, etc)
*The first few chapters of the book are quite redundant and keep on reiterate the collaboration benefits and method where I found it's quite boring. (Maybe I'm Net Generation, that's why it's common for me)
August 8, 2008
The full title of this book by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams is Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, and it sets out to describe pretty much that --how the Internet and other information technology are creating new business models that capitalize on collaboration, sharing, the wisdom of crowds (so to speak) and distributed work. It's a fascinating topic that anyone who has ventured onto the Internet can see is huge, yet the authors of this particular work seem so caught up in their own breathless hyperbole and big ideas that I had to check a calendar to make sure it wasn't the year 2000 again. As critical as their wikinomics is to commerce and culture, they still manage to oversell it.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of interest in Wikinomics. The book is at its best when it's telling you stories about companies that exemplify the collaborative models they introduce in the book, like the Goldcorp, gold mining company that dumped the entirety of its geological database onto the Internet and said "Okay, there you go. Cash monies for whoever can tell us the best place to dig for gold." And it worked. Really worked. There were also several chapters of interest on computer culture legends like Linux and Internet staples like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Second Life, and Amazon.com. This is where the book is at its best, telling you how these endeavors came to be and they they used the wikinomics principles to succeeded where their competitors (when they had them) failed. They even throw descriptions of a few tricks of wikinomics at play in places you might not expect them, such as in more aged companies like Proctor and Gamble.
And all this stuff makes sense. I've seen first-hand what can come of providing your fans with the ability to create content, collaborate, and share specialized knowledge. When I worked at GameSpy, a startup company at least partially dedicated to videogame fandom, the company built itself on the backs of people running fan sites and organizing online (and real life) communities around their favorite videogames. And the book makes good cases for how even companies whose products are NOT 1s and 0s can benefit from these principles, like outsourcing difficult research problems, using and developing open source software, or drawing on Creative Commons licenses.
The problem, however, is that the authors of Wikinomics are too busy chugging their own Kool-Aid to take a step back and get some perspective. They literally say things like how these principles --not the Internet or the computer, but just these principles of collaboration through them-- is as big a deal as the printing press or the Enlightenment-with-a-capital-E. No, really, I'm not putting words in their mouths, they really say this. Throughout all the discussions, the implication and sometimes even the flatly stated proclamation is that companies who aren't doing these things are going to die --quickly and spectacularly. Keep in mind that we're not talking about whether companies use e-mail or have a web site. The authors are saying that there is no business that won't rely on these specific collaborative techniques to prosper. Tell me if that doesn't seem like a bit of an overstatement.
Relatedly, it kind of irked me that the authors gave so little --some, but ultimately little-- consideration to the dark side of all this. They seemed to underplay the effect of everything from annoying trolls to saboteurs to corporate espionage, all of which are made possible or exacerbated by the kinds of business practices they discuss. This isn't a huge point, but it's something that I don't feel like they honestly or completely addressed.
Still, Wikinomics is worth a read for the parts that give examples and mini-bios on many of the Internet companies that you probably not only have heard of, but use. You'll just need a pinch or two of salt for the rest.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of interest in Wikinomics. The book is at its best when it's telling you stories about companies that exemplify the collaborative models they introduce in the book, like the Goldcorp, gold mining company that dumped the entirety of its geological database onto the Internet and said "Okay, there you go. Cash monies for whoever can tell us the best place to dig for gold." And it worked. Really worked. There were also several chapters of interest on computer culture legends like Linux and Internet staples like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Second Life, and Amazon.com. This is where the book is at its best, telling you how these endeavors came to be and they they used the wikinomics principles to succeeded where their competitors (when they had them) failed. They even throw descriptions of a few tricks of wikinomics at play in places you might not expect them, such as in more aged companies like Proctor and Gamble.
And all this stuff makes sense. I've seen first-hand what can come of providing your fans with the ability to create content, collaborate, and share specialized knowledge. When I worked at GameSpy, a startup company at least partially dedicated to videogame fandom, the company built itself on the backs of people running fan sites and organizing online (and real life) communities around their favorite videogames. And the book makes good cases for how even companies whose products are NOT 1s and 0s can benefit from these principles, like outsourcing difficult research problems, using and developing open source software, or drawing on Creative Commons licenses.
The problem, however, is that the authors of Wikinomics are too busy chugging their own Kool-Aid to take a step back and get some perspective. They literally say things like how these principles --not the Internet or the computer, but just these principles of collaboration through them-- is as big a deal as the printing press or the Enlightenment-with-a-capital-E. No, really, I'm not putting words in their mouths, they really say this. Throughout all the discussions, the implication and sometimes even the flatly stated proclamation is that companies who aren't doing these things are going to die --quickly and spectacularly. Keep in mind that we're not talking about whether companies use e-mail or have a web site. The authors are saying that there is no business that won't rely on these specific collaborative techniques to prosper. Tell me if that doesn't seem like a bit of an overstatement.
Relatedly, it kind of irked me that the authors gave so little --some, but ultimately little-- consideration to the dark side of all this. They seemed to underplay the effect of everything from annoying trolls to saboteurs to corporate espionage, all of which are made possible or exacerbated by the kinds of business practices they discuss. This isn't a huge point, but it's something that I don't feel like they honestly or completely addressed.
Still, Wikinomics is worth a read for the parts that give examples and mini-bios on many of the Internet companies that you probably not only have heard of, but use. You'll just need a pinch or two of salt for the rest.
October 5, 2009
If you have any familiarity with Web2.0 platforms maybe you should write your own book so that the hyperbole packaged by Dan Tapscott is bought back down to earth.
This is a fantastical journey that promises you that the Web 2.0 universe is the very best thing since sliced bread and it will tell you that over and over again by dint of high profile corporate examples.
Here there is little about the access and democracy quotient offered by these new platforms. Theres' very little about me and you. It's all about making a killing, of being first and of getting ahead -- of becoming Web 2.0 savvy... or miss the bus.
The whole point of Web 2.0 technologies is the doing and the everyday engagements -- but Tapscott's approach isn't very hands on. Instead it's a sort of banana oil salesman approach as though you can only cross the one threshold offered by the doorway described in Wikinomics.
For your actual web options, especially the potential dynamics of collective projects, you'll have to delve further by studying the more cogent and philosophical discusions of the more academic and engaged Web 2.0 commentators.
Web 2.0 warrants the tools of science and sociology for its relevance to humanity to be logged, not people, like Tapscott, who can only see corporate make overs written in the clouds.
You could even start that investigation on Wikipedia by checking out its Web2.0 entry.
More substance t be had there than in Tapscott's 320 hard copy pages....
This is a fantastical journey that promises you that the Web 2.0 universe is the very best thing since sliced bread and it will tell you that over and over again by dint of high profile corporate examples.
Here there is little about the access and democracy quotient offered by these new platforms. Theres' very little about me and you. It's all about making a killing, of being first and of getting ahead -- of becoming Web 2.0 savvy... or miss the bus.
For instance:Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.So Wikinomics is a sort of open sesame for Web start ups and with all its fanfare misses the essential processes that strengthen the utility of these new online tools. While it is true than any book written about online collaboration is going to be out of date the day it is published, there has to be something ironic about the fact that a hard copy book is deployed to proclaim the delights of the web.
An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.
The whole point of Web 2.0 technologies is the doing and the everyday engagements -- but Tapscott's approach isn't very hands on. Instead it's a sort of banana oil salesman approach as though you can only cross the one threshold offered by the doorway described in Wikinomics.
For your actual web options, especially the potential dynamics of collective projects, you'll have to delve further by studying the more cogent and philosophical discusions of the more academic and engaged Web 2.0 commentators.
Web 2.0 warrants the tools of science and sociology for its relevance to humanity to be logged, not people, like Tapscott, who can only see corporate make overs written in the clouds.
You could even start that investigation on Wikipedia by checking out its Web2.0 entry.
More substance t be had there than in Tapscott's 320 hard copy pages....
February 5, 2019
The book is not bad but it is outdated. And not really worth a read in 2019.
August 18, 2008
Interesting if somewhat tedious toward the second half. It basically elaborates on a fairly obvious concept, and tries to generalise the principles behind why and when the concept of mass collaboration and engagement works. This was interesting, especially when they dig into the conditions in which wikis work - they don't do much of this latter, though, the book is fuller of positive egs than negative ones. Also good were the myriad examples and case studies. However, the authors try to segment (for the academic purpose of comprehensive organisation, perhaps) the central idea of wikinomics into the various fields where it applies, eg consumer goods, science, manufacturing, etc, with the unfortunate consequence of repeating themselves several times.
MUCH better than "Once you're lucky, twice you're good', another other book about Web 2.0 which as far as the first couple chapters go is mere shameless trumpeting of software-designer rockstardom than thoughtful analysis. Though I think 'The Wisdom of Crowds' (also from the first couple chapters) might pip Wikinomics in terms of conceptual breadth and readability.
MUCH better than "Once you're lucky, twice you're good', another other book about Web 2.0 which as far as the first couple chapters go is mere shameless trumpeting of software-designer rockstardom than thoughtful analysis. Though I think 'The Wisdom of Crowds' (also from the first couple chapters) might pip Wikinomics in terms of conceptual breadth and readability.
October 1, 2009
Пока пробиралась через всю эту книгу, постоянно думала: "И для кого она написана?". ИТ-менеджерам? Вряд ли, все слишком очевидно, автор кропотливо перечисляет и Google, Youtube, MySpace, Wikipedia, рассказывает как будто детям, что такое Линукс, и кто его создал. Простые истины. Похоже, что книга написана для тех, кто очень любит бесконечные кейсы, красивые книги с историями успеха, кто не очень разбирается в современных технологиях, а, главное, не очень им доверяет. Ведь проще делегировать проблемы, чем тратить деньги, создавая "песочницу" для совместного решения задач, для идей. Мир изменился, меняются и правила игры. Все просто. Сразу вспоминается чем-то похожая книга Freakonomics.
Оправдывает эту книгу одно - кто-то же должен был написать ее.:)
Оправдывает эту книгу одно - кто-то же должен был написать ее.:)
April 8, 2018
took awhile (years) to read this old book recently to check on the common problems of futurist...and Tapscott is definitely not one..too general in terms what he said and whatever he said has already happened..he missed out on education sharing, auto sharing, wrong direction on "news reporting" for the future..his offerings of "open society" and sharing of everything in every sectors including his incorrect prediction health care have provided nothing but false hope and too idealistic. I simply cannot give higher than 1 star...(there are a lot of futurist whom they can do better)...
August 5, 2022
This book does not stand the test of time. Not even a few years after release. Which is natural, because it is mostly about technological change. Still, not even at its core values or ideas does it show anything new or mildly relevant. What I mean is, for the effort you need to put in to read this, you are not getting enough useful knowledge.
June 14, 2007
Not the "Blink" or "Freakonomics" I was expecting/hoping for. A few examples did stick in my head, but overall, the only word I can use to describe this book is Thick. Perhaps a good read for a business nerd, but not for fun reading.
March 20, 2009
This is a really powerful book in terms of what it reveals about people's preferred method of communicating and learning.
The wall or wiki format is far more intuitive and powerful than the forum format.
The wall or wiki format is far more intuitive and powerful than the forum format.
April 6, 2011
Many good examples and explanations on how today's economy works. Sometimes there are too many details, which make reading it a bit boring, but on the other hand, it's a good source of inspiration and how-to approaches.
February 9, 2015
One of the worst books I actually managed to finish. Facts wrong, hard to read and already out of date. It had some good stuff in it - say 4 or 5 pages with a bunch of links worth - but otherwise stay away. 2.5 of 5.
June 16, 2022
I remember how groundbreaking was this book when it was first published back in 2006 compared to reading it today when it reads outdated. I have to admit though that it has proven to be mostly accurate in its predictions.
February 16, 2015
A nice summary of the wiki-style economy. But I thought there was a bit of overselling that threatens the credibility of the analysis.
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