Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything | 
 enlarge | Authors: Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  82 reviews
Sales Rank: 1959
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Expanded
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 1591841933
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9781591841937
ASIN: 1591841933
Publication Date: April 17, 2008
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Product Description
An updated edition of the national bestsellernow with a new introduction and a new chapter
Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.
A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty- first century.
Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about:
Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry.
Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production.
Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.
An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 77 more reviews...
 Useful but boring; perfect candidate for a Cliff's Notes version July 5, 2008
The essential messages imparted by the author of this book, all of which are important to understanding Web 2.0 concepts, could have been compressed by 50% or more, in my opinion, and made more readable. Nonetheless, with considerable effort to stay awake, I managed to slog my way through to the end.
Interesting, informative- but does not answer all the real questions June 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book takes a look at the business and technology aspects of the mass-sharing open- source world whose principal Logo is 'Wikipedia'. It argues that the way of the future is in a new non- heirarchical business model in which the creative resources of mass publics work to solve problems together. My question is how people are rewarded for their efforts, and what economic benefit will accrue to the individuals who participate in this?
Hundreds of thousands anonymously contribute to creating 'Wikipedia' They are not paid for this. But they must have income from somewhere else. What happens to those who formerly worked in the Encylopedia world and had jobs? Where are they working now?
If all is open- source how will individual writers, painters, composers be rewarded for their creative efforts?
I simply do not understand through this work how the whole world of future work will be organized.
Clearly this book picks out and elaborates important trends. But it does not answer the main questions I have.
 Great topic, lousy book June 19, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Wikinomics is a painful read. The only reason that I finished it is that I was on vacation in a foreign location where it was hard to find an English bookstore with anything beyond Danielle Steele. I think that I could have learned as much about the topic from reading Ms. Steele. At least she can spell :)
Now that I have vented, here's what I didn't like:
- Too much meaningless jargon
- Arguments that rely on points that are not remotely proven
- Usually no consideration of alternative evidence/interpretations
One of the other reviewers called the style "consultantese". That is a great description. It reads like a marketing brochure for a management consulting firm, not a technology or economics book.
I'm giving it 2 stars only because the topic is important, so if you can manage to make it through the book you probably will pick up something important.
Good, but there are better June 10, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I couldn't finish reading this book completely before it was time to return it to the library. It is not one I want to purchase to reference again and again.
At first, I was thrilled to receive Tapscott and William's message. The companies they cover are the new stock market darlings of the Internet.
It absolutely makes sense for a software development company, such as the one I am at now, to open up support channels for "prosumers" to tell us what they want and need in our products. Such effort would also provide material for marketing, development, customer support, Help files and User Guides. This is not so much "mass collaboration" as it is good, old-fashioned "listening to the customer."
Although Tapscott and Williams don't have a very in-depth understanding of exact technologies powering the collaboration phenomena, they do a great job of illustrating the very real changes currently cutting apart the music, media, financial services and just about every industry. Executives ignore these developments at their peril.
Blogging, for one thing, seems like the new press release. The online public pays more attention to a supposedly personal message from a CEO than a canned press release aped by the media.
But then, I found myself slogging through it. The book is full of the same generalizations over and over again. The authors spend way too much time to get to too few points. They make obvious attempts to coin new jargon. The authors admit to several "studies" they have done, raking in, by their own admission, $9 million, so I guess such unabashed egocentricity must work in the real world, although I thought mighty corporate heads were smarter than to fall for that.
Like their own experience, the authors often confuse entrepreneurial spirit, with few resources, for corporate creativity. They never offer a clear blueprint for how a company without a solidly established R&D department, and its attendant army of patent protecting prosecutors, can tap the intellectual brainpower of the World Wide Web for maximum profits.
While the stories are fascinating, they can hardly compare to the realpolitik of economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.
Nor can they compare to the vast world-wide experience and sophistication of New York Times globe trotting columnist Thomas Friedman in his seminal The World is Flat.
Finally, in my opinion, Wikinomics does hold up as well as the fascinating story John Battelle etches in The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.
All three of these books are factually stronger, and yet easier to read, making them more powerful, informative and thought provoking than Wikinomics. And yet, Wikinomics is a good sequel to The Search, because it shows how companies are capitalizing on the spread of free information on the Internet.
Red Hat capitalized on open-source Linux. IBM supported open-source Apache while their own Websphere languished. Linden, and many others, profit from the content created by their users.
As I write this, two giants are making opening salvos in the smart phone operating system market. The man who revolutionized personal computers, handheld music players, movie animation and music distribution with proprietary technology is announcing that more than 250,000 people downloaded the free tools to build applications for his proprietary iPhone. In the meantime, Google is using open source for their smart phone OS.
Tapscott and William must be thrilled. Stayed tuned for their sequel.
overlong, cliche-ridden, with many ideas to consider May 28, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I listened to this on CDs instead of turning pages.
It might be better as a book; it would be easier to skim.
The book is organized in chapters, sections, and subsections,
but I do not know how deep the outline goes. Chapters are
numbered and named, but the more detailed portions have
names only. The narrator is good, but he can not reveal
the level of the topic in the outline, so you can skip
parts you suspect will only add another example of a point
already made.
The book is too long, at 11 CDs. I suspect 4 to 6 could
deliver all the worthwhile material.
Other reviewers have noted a profusion of "consultantese."
Much of it is blather. The favorite word is eco-system.
The authors can talk of yours, each of your competitors,
each of your suppliers, and each of your customers, all in
the same sentence, with each eco-system being different.
There is also a lot of integration, all of it seamless.
A person that can help you is "the uniquely qualified mind"
and there are thousands of them. Those were the ones that
annoyed me most. Other readers will focus on other cliches.
The book contains many examples of organizations using the
principles of openness, "peering", colaberation,...
Some have enough history that they appear to be long term
success stories. Some show promising signs of success.
Others might or might not make it, but the authors know
they will.
The authors seem to think they have found the next big thing,
and businesses, even all organizations, better get on
board or they will be left behind, in the dust, doomed to
failure, in the dustbin of history.
In spite of the flaws, there are probably several hundred,
or thousand, successes that could be triggered by one of
the insights in this book.
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