Preface:
As we enter 2007, we look back at the previous year as a turning point in economic history. The read-only Internet was eclipsed by the new, participatory Web. The knowledge, resources, and computing power of millions now come together in a massive collaborative effort.
Energized through blogs, wikis, chat rooms, personal broadcasting (podcasting) and other forms of peer-to-peer content, creation and communication, this utterly decentralized and amorphous force increasingly self-organizes to provide news, entertainment, and services. This energy permeates the economy and intersects with globalization.
We are witnessing the rise of an entirely new economy where corporations
can co-create value with millions of autonomous producers and challenge traditional business designs. It is Wikinomics, the economic (business) model for generating value based on a community in mass collaboration.
Peer-to-peer mass collaboration is the birth of a new era in which all can participate and add value to large-scale economic systems in ways that were impossible prior to the internet. For large companies, seven models of mass collaboration provide ways to harness external knowledge, resources, and talent for greater competitiveness. For society as a whole, the explosion of knowledge, collaboration, and innovation may spur economic development and lead to richer, fuller lives for all.
Anyone can help make The Wikinomics Playbook the definitive guide to business in the 21st Century.
Summary: Peer production is a revolutionary new mode of value creation that harnesses the power of mass collaboration. Linux, MySpace, and Wikipedia are pioneering examples, but potential to exploit extends to virtually all information-based products and services, and increasingly physical things. What can we learn from the “peer pioneers” and where is this phenomenon headed next? How can companies collaborate with self-organizing communities to innovate faster and better than their competitors? What are the risks and how should companies manage them? What are your predictions for how peer production will play out in your company or sector?
A new global marketplace for ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds is thriving outside the boundaries of traditional firms. Companies that leverage these ideagoras can tap a global pool of talent, ideas, and innovations that vastly exceeds what they could ever hope to marshal internally. How can firms harness ideagoras to deliver superior value creation, growth, and competitiveness? Is your company equipped to harness a truly global “on-demand” workforce? How should firms reconfigure their innovation processes to take advantage of the rapid growth of talent in India, China and other emerging markets? Are there examples of ideagoras you're aware of that were not discussed in the book?
Many firms equate prosumption with “customer centricity,” where companies decide what the basics are and customers get to modify certain elements. Today, a younger, more connected generation of producer-consumers is one of the groups that is revolutionizing the way companies relate to their customers. In the new model, prosumers add value throughout the product lifecycle, starting with design and extending to aftermarket opportunities for customer-driven commerce and innovation. What are the latest prosumption examples? How can companies take advantage of this phenomenon? What role should companies play in online “prosumer communities” where customers gather to swap tools, tips, and product hacks?
A new age of collaborative science is emerging that will accelerate scientific discovery and learning. In fact, leading scientific observers expect more change in the next fifty years of science than in the last four hundred years of inquiry. As new forms of mass collaboration take root in the scientific community, smart companies have an opportunity to completely rethink how they do science, and even how they compete. How should companies engage with large-scale scientific networks? How do firms win by sharing? How will collaborative science transform the interface between science and innovation? Are web 2.0 technologies being leveraged in your scientific field or community?
Conventional wisdom says that companies should fiercely protect their intellectual property with patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Today, a growing number of firms are discovering that some of their most important business assets are actually more valuable when they are open. Companies such as Amazon, Google, and SAP increase the speed, scope, and success of innovation by opening up their products and IT infrastructures to create vibrant business ecosystems with thousands of co-innovators. What can other companies learn from these lighthouse cases and how can they develop platforms for innovation of their own? What products do you think have the potential to make great platforms for innovation? How, when, and where should companies open up these products or infrastructures? What's the secret to attracting an energetic group of people and partners to share the innovation load?
The quintessential multinational was modeled on a hub-and-spoke architecture. Today, smart firms are moving to a new model—a truly global firm that breaks down national silos, deploys resources and capabilities globally, and harnesses the power of human capital across borders and organizational boundaries. In fact, the rise to planetary ecosystems for designing and building physical goods marks a new phase in the evolution of mass collaboration. To what extent can peer production models be leveraged in the domain of physical things? How can enterprises take advantage of global sourcing, develop global brands, and make enterprise architecture, business processes, knowledge management and collaboration seamless on a global basis? How is your organization dealing with the challenges of thinking and acting globally?
Just as the new Web is revolutionizing media, culture, and the economy, it is reshaping organizations and workplaces in a profound way. Peer production and co-creation are not just happening in online communities and networks like MySpace, Avoid.net, Linux, and Wikipedia. Increasingly employees are using blogs, wikis, and other new tools to collaborate and form ad hoc communities across departmental and organizational boundaries. How will the Net Generation transform the culture, structure, and economics of the workplace? And how can companies leverage blogs, wikis, and other nascent collaboration tools to harness insights and resources from inside and outside the firm? Are you using blogs, wikis, and other collaboration tools in your workplace?
Wikinomics Beyond Business
Wikinomics focused mainly, though not exclusively, on how mass collaboration is transforming business. Our research reveals that mass collaboration and the democratization of value creation is transforming all institutions in society, including the arts and sciences, education, non-profit organizations, and government. If you're currently working in one of these fields, why not write about how mass collaboration has the potential to change how your organization or sector operates? What current examples can you provide? What are the benefits of increasing participation in these sectors? Is there a darkside?
Mass Collaboration Beyond individual Disciplines
Current collaborations are largely restricted to those possessing a common pool of knowledge, accepted means of communications and fact-checking, and common goals. But there is the possibility of the evolution of a universal communication language, through the unification of the ideas in various disciplines. This notion of unification is nothing new for science. All of the various breakthroughs in science involved the unification of previously disparate disciplines (electricity and magnetism for example), or the development of common bases and notation (axiomatic set theory in mathematics) that could describe a much larger set of ideas. Thus, the mass collaboration unleashed by the Internet can become much more massive and fluid--as the distinctions between different disciplines become blurred through a common language for communication and fact-checking. While there appears to be some progress in this direction, it is not clear what this language of the future will be.
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