“Wiki” is the Hawaiian word for quick, and it also is a software term for a site that allows multiple users to create and edit the same Internet page. So if you’re an expert on any subject whether it is dinosaurs, democracy or even deep sea diving, you can add your two cents to the Wikipedia page on those topics. If someone disagrees with your information, they can change it any way they see fit.
The authors of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, both experts in the digital world, believe corporations should follow the Internet’s lead and start tapping into the massive brain power of the masses.
This has led to the authors, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, to create a word to describe a new economy rising out of this phenomenon. The term “wikinomics” is their description of how the workers of the world, are expressing their feelings, which with time can impact every aspect their lives, including how companies are run.
Using the Wikipedia website as their prime example, the duo shows how online communities are emerging into more organized forms; which are changing the way new wave and old-school companies do business. The benefit to utilizing such websites is that companies gain access to ideas and opinions that may boost profits, and mostly without large financial investments.
Tapscott is chief executive of New Paradigm, a think tank and strategy consulting company. He also is author of other best-selling books about the digital world including Paradigm Shift, The Digital Economy and The Naked Corporation. Williams is a research director at New Paradigm, and he holds a Master’s of Research from the London School of Economics.
Tapscott and Williams used the information they gathered during one of Tapscott’s many research projects about the emerging digital world to outline the basics of Wikinomics. Wikipedia is an apt example for the authors’ arguments, as it is a web-based encyclopedia that allows its users to update any or all of its entries using their collective knowledge. This collaboration has made Wikipedia the go-to site for many online surfers looking for basic information about any question.
Today, Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in the world, far surpassing its more senior and well-respected rival Encyclopedia Britannica. Britannica fans are fast to point out there have been problems in the Wikipedia world, from false entries to edit wars, and so on. Despite its faults, Wikipedia still rules and its inexpensive cost structure make it the clear victor in the information war.
Wikis join a handful of other online communication tools such as blogs, chat rooms and the like that give users total control of their web experience. Sites including MySpace®, Flickr® and YouTube® allow people of all ages, races, and beliefs to personalize the Internet—an experience that has proven not only fascinating but down-right addicting.
Other, more traditional companies are picking up on this baton and running with it, Tapscott and Williams say. For example, venerable products company Procter & Gamble® has opened up some of their files, research and products to public scrutiny. The public then can offer their ideas or educated suggestions to P&G in return for a monetary reward or plain old bragging rights.
The exchange has created huge opportunities for these individuals as well as the consumer products company. P&G benefits from it because they gain new insights without having to invest millions of dollars into them. Every participant in the program benefits as well, having contributed to the success of the business as well as their own pride (and possibly their pocketbook).
This might sound scary to some businesses, which typically guard their secrets. Indeed, Tapscott and Williams note that some music companies have reacted with anger and concern when people started trading songs online through the MP3® format. Instead of opening up their files to the masses, they shut out the general public and even turned to criminal prosecution to stop people from filing sharing their favorite songs. Tapscott and Williams believe this is the wrong approach for a number of reasons, primarily because people no longer feel like outsiders to a company’s inner workings. They want to feel like they understand the world around them and can mold it to look more like what they expect and want from it.
Generation X and Y (and even the yet unnamed teens and ‘tweens of tomorrow) also feel like the world should respond to them. These kids are growing up in a world where things are moving faster than ever before, and they have little room to meet one another in public spaces like soda shops, roller-skating rinks or shopping malls. Instead, they now meet on websites like MySpace, where they can personalize the experience through their words and pictures—and have others comment on it just like they would if they met in a physical meeting space. Even Tapscott and Williams open up their book to the public, setting up a website that lets readers add their anecdotes and life lessons to what the book has already outlined.
The end lessons of Wikinomics are simple: open your mind, open your business to more input from the world at large and you may benefit from the mass collaboration that is building online. Yes, it may be a tricky proposition, especially for older or more established companies used to the manager-employee dynamic. But Tapscott and Williams predict the Wiki world will be a far better one, and it is easy to see how they might be right.
