Freakonomics is Fun, but Check Wikinomics to Spur Innovation by Millions and Prosper
What
do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Which is more
dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? How much do parents really matter? Freakonomics
has become a wildly popular book as it created a new field of study
concerning these and many other, mostly freakish, issues.
Now, have you ever wondered, What do MySpace, WikiPedia, Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, Linux, and the Human Genome Project have in common? They all thrive on mass collaboration where peers come together - numbering in the thousands or millions - to create value.
Wikinomics, a just released book by Don Tapscott - the author of bestsellers, including Paradigm Shift, The Digital Economy, Growing Up Digital, The Naked Corporation, and Digital Capital - finds that businesses can harness mass collaboration to spur innovation, growth and success.
The book shows how the 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, and even building motorcycles.
Some key observations from the New World of Wikinomics:
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Employees drive performance by collaborating with peers across organizational boundaries, creating a “wiki workplace”.
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Customers become “prosumers” by cocreating goods and services rather than simply consuming the end product.
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Weapons of mass collaboration - low-cost collaborative infrastructures from free Internet telephony to open-source software to global outsourcing platforms - provide the tools required to collaborate, create value, and compete at everybody’s fingertips.
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MySpace, YouTube Linux, and Wikipedia - today’s pinnacles of mass collaboration - are just the beginning, in a long-running saga that will change everything about how the economy operates.
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There are already over 50 million active blogs where tens of millions of people share their news, information, and views in the blogosphere.
And finally, a life size real business taking advantage of the new world of Wikinomics: Procter & Gamble is planning to source 50% of their new product and service ideas from outside the company, using InnoCentive network, where 90,000 scientists around the world can help solve tough R&D problems for a cash reward.
Harness the power of mass
collaboration to spur innovation and prosper. Check the roadmap at Wikinomics.
