Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams
Portfolio - USA, 2006
The book is written by Don Tapscott (named as one of the most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50) and Anthony Williams. Wikinomics directs one towards thinking the enormous oppotunities Web 2.0 has to offer. It focuses on empowered consumers of today (prosumers) who produce and consume services and prodcuts of a company. The main themes/ ideas discussed are innovation throguh open source, sharing, peering and ideagoras. The book continually reminded me of how Linux OS came into being. (They have a discussion about it in the book as well).
I enjoyed reading how various companies succeeded using crowd-sourcing as a strategy and the possibilities opensourcing has to develop cutting edge services. Tapscott and Williams take examples from successful companies like Google, Apple, P&G and more. I personally like how they quote Eric Schmidt in their book -
Portfolio - USA, 2006
The book is written by Don Tapscott (named as one of the most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50) and Anthony Williams. Wikinomics directs one towards thinking the enormous oppotunities Web 2.0 has to offer. It focuses on empowered consumers of today (prosumers) who produce and consume services and prodcuts of a company. The main themes/ ideas discussed are innovation throguh open source, sharing, peering and ideagoras. The book continually reminded me of how Linux OS came into being. (They have a discussion about it in the book as well).
I enjoyed reading how various companies succeeded using crowd-sourcing as a strategy and the possibilities opensourcing has to develop cutting edge services. Tapscott and Williams take examples from successful companies like Google, Apple, P&G and more. I personally like how they quote Eric Schmidt in their book -
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told us he hadn't had a product idea in years. “Virtually all of the product ideas in Google,” he says, “come from the 20% of the time employees work on their own projects.”pp260
Its not only external innovation they talk about, but it is also how companies work their way up through internal openness. One point that stood out was collaboration between competitors - an area less talked about.
The book would have been even better if it had a step by step approach on how those companies implemented crowdsourcing. It is educating to read how corporations have used the power of Wikis, Social Networking sites, You-tube or Flickr to mass collaborate and innovate. The book also lacked stories on how companies can/ have gone wrong using these techniques - Wish there was more disciusion on 'pitfalls' of crowd-sourcing.
They also have a website: http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/
I can't wait to read the new book Macrowikinomics by the same authors.
The book would have been even better if it had a step by step approach on how those companies implemented crowdsourcing. It is educating to read how corporations have used the power of Wikis, Social Networking sites, You-tube or Flickr to mass collaborate and innovate. The book also lacked stories on how companies can/ have gone wrong using these techniques - Wish there was more disciusion on 'pitfalls' of crowd-sourcing.
They also have a website: http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/
I can't wait to read the new book Macrowikinomics by the same authors.
