Product Description: 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.
Must read to keep up with the times! Excellent book. I promise you'll learn a lot! Great info to take back to your organization. It provides a different mindset on how to do things and that in itself is worth the read. You'll also be amazed at what companies are doing to stay abreast and be shocked how those who aren't doing are staying in business...but may not be for long.
Solid beginning, some frays near the end This book provides a good overview of how collaboration is starting to change industries and social networking. Even for someone who is part of the Internet generation, this book examinees many different angles, and presented cases that even I, a veteran Internet junkie, knew very little about. The book does an excellent job of explaining why supporting open platforms has the potential to be extremely profitable. The sections about Linux and Goldcorp seemed particularly solid, providing clear evidence of accomplishments that would not have been possible if the companies involved had chosen to pursue their goals as a closed entity.
That said, the book make some stumbles towards the end, when it tries to argue that open collaboration is just as beneficial for manufacturing physical items as it is for creating and exchanging information. Three of its primary studies are Boeing, Chinese motorcycle manufacturers, and BMW. The Boeing case study was done before the actual end product was ever complete. Perhaps things were going well at the time, but Boeing has hit significant delays since then, and has also bought out one of the companies it was collaborating with. The example of Chinese motorcycle manufacturers seemed sketchy, because it is quite arguable that the Chinese manufacturers in question engaged in some actions that were not intellectually honest. And the example of BMW also seems poor, because while this book seems to praise BMW's model as a way of making innovative products, auto industry buffs agree that BMW's "user interface" is one of the worst in the industry.
Even so, this book is well worth four stars, because it presents original ideas that I don't think you can find articulated anywhere else. If you're interested in where business will be heading in the future, buy this book.
Wikinomics Will Change the World The theme of this book is simple enough to understand and clearly stated at the beginning of the book: More minds and new technologies are allowing more people to share information and ideas, collaborate and innovate in ways the world has never seen, all of which will lead to more rapid and innovate change in the way we live our lives and interact with each other. The remainder of the book is merely examples of how this has happened and how the authors believe that the open sourcing of everything will continue to grow. The book was published in 2006 and while Facebook, flickr, Wikipedia and Linux, among other sites, were up and running and using mass collaboration and user-created content to gain popularity across the web, many more sites have become more popular in the past two years (YouTube or Twitter, for example). The trend will continue to grow. Companies large or small expecting to do well in the next decade will be left behind in the business world if they fight mass collaboration and the opening and transparency of their proprietary information to both their employees and their competitors. In short, resistance is futile. Mass collaboration is the future and the world can benefit immensely because of it. Let's hope we all do.
Helping ArmstrongAuctions.com succeed This is a great book! Highly recommended.
I read about 5 - 8 business, marketing, technology and auction related books a month to stay on the cutting edge in my auction business. The internet is playing an increasingly important role in my industry and I have been studying about different ways to harness the power of the net to benefit our auction clients. A lot of what is out there is marginal at best....but not Wikinomics, I read this book with highlighter in hand and it is marked up all over the place.
My son and I spent 18 months and over $100K building the latest and greatest live online auction system, which is just about complete and ready to launch. We had lots of new features in mind that we thought would have to be added later...now we are going to use these ideas and bring them to market even quicker. Plus, I always knew there had to be more things possible that I haven't even thought of yet, by harnessing the power and the wisdom of everyone interested, I know we can bring a world class live online auction solution to market quickly and efficiently.
Thanks Don and everyone at Wikinomics, your work is very important and appreciated.
Alan Armstrong, President of ArmstrongAuctions.com, FlyBoysToys.com and Big Gavel Inc.
Wicked Wikinomics This has to be the most straight forward explanation about social media to date. It is clear, and makes causal links throughout! Great
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