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| Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything | 
 enlarge | Authors: Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  93 reviews
Sales Rank: 10555
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Expanded
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 1591841933
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9781591841937
ASIN: 1591841933
Publication Date: April 17, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Book and dust cover fine condition. Remainder mark at edge
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| Customer Reviews:
I've Changed My Mind A Bit.. April 18, 2007
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book intends to show how new collaborative technologies are changing the way things work in business. It stresses the point that people and corporations need to adapt or be left behind. It speaks about things like the Open Source movement and how Web 2.0 requires some new perspectives on business and success. It contrasts archaic ways of doing business with the new "open" ways that are powering current developments in the market. It covers many case studies about businesses that have shown remarkable ability to adopt and embrace this new collaboration.
I found myself part way through this book with very negative feelings about it. It all seemed rather hype-driven to me. The authors talk very optimistically about the new "Golden Era" of Wikinomics and collaboration. It is loaded with platitudes and strange usage of words such as "huckstering", "ecosystems", "consultantese", "successism", etc. It seemed to be a large pile of "purple prose". I also found some technically inaccurate statements, such as the part about XML and tagging. There is also some questionable usage of the term "open source", even to the point where the book at one point states that Microsoft is adopting open source. I don't remember the exact words, but that is basically what they implied. That is not true. Microsoft is, in reality, trying to appear more transparent about what they are doing and are releasing some source code. From what I understand, the Windows source code has always been available to whoever is willing to sign a draconian contractual agreement. But that is not open source. Open source involves releasing source code on some very specific terms, which mere distribution of sources doesn't necessarily satisfy. Even Microsoft marketing moguls know enough to distinguish between this and "open source". They "share" source, but don't consider it "open". While generally the author's portrayal of the open source movement is pretty good, at a few critical points the authors show misunderstandings about what "open source" actually is.
Now that I've finished the book, I must say that those criticisms still apply. However, my perspective on the book has evened out a bit. I am now more appreciative of what the authors have produced. I do really think it is a valuable work for those who want to find out why applying old business techniques to the Internet will not work. What is needed are new strategies to accomidate changes that have been in the works for many years now. One can not depend on secrecy, "locking things down", and tying in the customer in order to succeed in today's environment. Competition and the necessity of rapid development requires that many minds, inside and outside of particular firms, need to collaborate to accomplish things that one firm's employees could not. By fostering openness and community innovation, large companies can leverage this community in ways that their own staff never could and they can focus on other areas which are more important to their core business. This applies to various extents to both sheer production and knowledge-based markets such as scientific research. As the open source movement has proven, the values of openness and sharing have really pervaded the current culture. People want to be able to "tweak" and "mix" the things they use. In order to succeed, businesses must start to actively seek out opportunities to collaborate, to contribute to the community and also reap the benefits of community contribution. If the only way a business can succeed is by what it hides from its customers and how it restricts its customers, it is doomed to failure. Companies need to embrace openness and find ways they can leverage these changes to accomidate win-win situations. These are just a few of the points that the authors make very forcefully.
There is much that is valuable in this book for technologists and business people. As I've mentioned, there are some annoying aspects about this book, but now seeing the book as a whole I conclude that the good outweighs the bad. I find it plausible to assume that some of the "errors" may have been moreso miscommunications than outright errors and are perhaps not very serious blunders in light of the entire scope of the book. This is a book worth getting if you have a stake in developing, marketing, or even using technology. The authors wisely broaden their presentation of the new "Wikinomics" to include all sorts of disciplines and industries. I'd particularly recommend this book to decision makers in companies that are struggling with the old mindset of "locking things down in order to stay competitive".
Wikinomics, a broad look at web 2.0 March 11, 2007
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
A great look at what is happening as a result of the Internet's power to aid broad collaboration.
Starts with historical factors that control the economics of centralization vs de-centralization. Then shows how activities are being turned on their head by the shift in economics caused of the Internet.
Shows examples of huge successes when projects shifted to an open and massive collaboration approach.
The book would be easier to read if it used fewer acronyms.
 Pamphlet rather than analysis but still worth May 19, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a pamphlet rather than a serious analysis of pros and cons (you will not come across many cons being discussed in this book), and the authors make great effort to "invent" a new jargon that has no other apparent use but to show off. In many ways this book seems to be as much about the authors as it is about the collaborative economy.
Also does not show any real business model, i.e. how to make the "wikinomics" work to actually earn some money - the "economics" part simply points out that collaboration is feasible and if one does it right it could (or should) save money.
Mostly well written (apart from the jargon bit), but goes a bit over the top in promoting the idea (and the authors) with quite a few examples either exaggerated or not discussed fully. Definitely could use more of critical thinking. For those that want more in depth and level headed approach to the same subject, I would recommend Yochai Benkler and The Wealth of Networks.
Despite my criticisms, I am glad I read it. But it is more of an airport lounge type of reading than a serious analytical work.
 A book that is stating the obvious November 23, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book is a written from the prespective of a 'consultant'--by that, I mean in a good way whereby the obvious benefits of collaboration are compiled and presented in straight forward manner. However, information presented in this book is not new and could be researched from the net (with a little bit of efforts). Having said that, the authors had done a great job in convincing me that wikinomics is the future, and ALL businesses should be awared of its implications and be ready for it fast!
Interesting, if one-sided view March 15, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
It's buried amid the many anecdotes and musings, but the critical idea dates back to 1937. The authors retroactively call it Coase's Law: "A firm will tend to expand until the costs of organizing a transaction within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction on the open market." Traditionally, this explained why corporations grew to such huge proportions. But an old idea becomes new again when the premises behind it change. Plummeting barriers in international trade and especially in the infosphere drop the cost of trading with others; soaring costs of specialized personnel and equipment (over a billion US$ for a new microprocessor fab, for example) make the do-it-yourself approach decreasingly feasible. Without changing Coase's Law in the slightest, the modern landscape of technology and communication makes exchanges of data, skill, and material the norm instead of the exception. Companies farm out work they used to do internally; taken to its extreme, the organization of one member becomes the usual case.
When communication costs go to zero, or so near zero as not to matter, whole new organizations and kinds of organizations arise, Wikipedia, Linux, and GNU being some of the best known. These self-organizing groups very nearly represent a whole new economy, in which hard-won reputation represents wealth. With traditional conglomerate industry at one end of the spectrum and every-man-a-nation at the other, the authors identify many proportions in which monopoly and free-agency can combine. Amazon typifies one such blending, not just in the millions of volunteer-written reviews they host, but in other ways of technologically opening its borders. Marketplaces of intellectual property, "ideagoras", replace closely held portfolios of patents. Counter-examples exist too, like the increasingly desperate attempts by major music and movie distributors to apply nineteenth-century legislative solutions to twenty-first century media technology.
The authors provide a wide-ranging survey, with examples from many areas. As happens so often with books of this type, however the authors seem to mistake piles of anecdotes for bodies of data that can be analyzed with real rigor. That comes in part from their enthusiasm for the transformative power of mass collaboration - it's easy to get swept up in their mood, and equally easy to see only one force at work when in fact there are many. None of that invalidates the authors' point, however, that emerging ideas of free exchange have made serious inroads into the planned economies that used to (and still do) exist within major corporations. And, just as much as these trends redefine organizations, they redefine the individual, as well.
-- wiredweird
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