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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
Buy New: $7.30
You Save: $20.65 (74%)
New (55) Used (12) Collectible (1) from $7.30
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:
 a waste of time March 22, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
There are lots of simplistic syllogistic arguments put forth without much elaborations in this verbose repetitive book. The theme and arguments not strong and quite some examples are pretty bad and confusing. The so-called predictions are conjured up without much profound thought processes. they also lack quantitative analyses, which I would expect for all arguments put forth. The author doesn't seem to have spent much time in researching when writing up all these college level arguments. To give analogies, this book is full of arguments like "if you are hungry, eat", "you need to sue, find a lawyer".
Good, but not critical enough and scores high on the buzzword-meter September 11, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The book gives a quick tour of the new collaborative ways in which people aggregate and process information. It points out that collaboration can also be applied to produce new 'stuff', outside of software and even applying to manufacturing. It makes for interesting reading for people who a) know something about open source and want to know about its business implications and b) managers who don't know about open source/collaboration but would like to.
It is, imho, less interesting for those who want in-depth answers to the real thorny _business_ problems around open-source. I.e. How to make money at it, if you want to. It hints at important questions such as rewarding the community at large, not losing the family jewels as you open up, etc. Unfortunately, it never quite gets down to specific recommendations beyond "you have to find the right mix of proprietary vs. open source IP".
Not to criticize it overmuch. Wikinomics often jars your thinking with insightful nuggets. For example, it cites Goldcorp as the example of a mining company which opened up its secret prospection data to outsiders. Wikinomics, probably rightly, uses that as a counter-intuitive example of enlisting external help for a type of company that never shares that kind of data. Hmmm, why not share? If the prospection data applies to land on which only your company can operate, isn't that a pretty safe gamble? I don't know, really, but the point is that the anecdote makes you think of things differently. Same with IBM's success at getting a new OS (Linux)almost for free, while gathering goodwill from the community and genuinely collaborating. How far Big Blue's embarrassing anti-trust proceedings seem now...
Less helpful is Wikinomics' recurring use of cherry-picked anecdotes by sector, rather than a broad analysis of various businesses. First of all, it rarely compares its chosen 'smart companies' to their competitors. Yes, BMW is opening up. Does that make their cars any better? How is their stock doing? vs. Toyota? How is their reliability? How innovative are their cars?
Red Hat is a huge success story in Linux, but its dominance also highlights the relative failure of other Linux vendors. No explanation is given for that - network effects? first mover?
I would have welcomed some case studies of failures for big corporations in opening up. What caused those failures? What can be learned from them?
Google is also cited as a big example of openness. That is only partially true and could have served to highlight the necessary(?) split between proprietary information and public openness. Google opens up its APIs and the search is certainly free. I am a big fan myself. However, they have not chosen to release much code back to the community (cf. MapReduce) , mostly by sidestepping the GPL because they don't distribute their software. Their choice, and probably motivated by good business logic. Apple also walks a fine line between leveraging open source and keeping its business very much a secret.
This is just the kind of case studies Wikinomics could sink its teeth into, but it spends way too much time gushing over all the boundless possibilities of collaboration.
Conclusion: a good eye-opener but take it with a grain of salt. Note that my perspective is that of a developer interested in open source _and_ business profits.
Web 2.0 could spread to "Business 2.0" January 7, 2007
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
Tapscott introduces the fundamental shift in paradigm with the adoption of web 2.0 innovations. He names these technical and economic consequences to web 2.0 innovations Wikinomics. Tapscott cites various businesses mostly from the mid 90's to very recent events in the 2006's.
Tapscott addresses changes in our "prosumer" culture, globally competitive economy, technological advances in communication, and open collaboration across industries (manufacturing, politics, retail).
While I find Tapscott's tone overly optimistic, it is still loaded with great information and implementable ideas.
 Helped me see the changes all around April 12, 2007
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
This books started a bit slow and was a little preachy at first. However, once I got into the meat of it, I learned so much that I gave it five stars anyway. One section of the book discussed why it probably wouldn't be a good idea to invest your life doing Google Map mash-ups was a good read, and it was practically the next day when Google did exactly what the book said it might, made it easy for anyone else to do that very thing, removing any value-add you might bring.
 Good Read- Check it out at your local library May 4, 2007
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
I checked out this book anticipating that it would be a great read and useful for some research I'm conducting about youth online. Ultimately, the book provided some interesting facts about MySpace and Facebook and that was it for my research purposes.
The book is written for a lay audience- especially those interested in e-commerce or technology for that matter. I found that some chapters were more enticing to read than others in terms of the subject matter and the quality of the writing.
I also found that as a whole the book was repetitive and could have been a chapter or two shorter.
My favourite chapters were about the social networking sites and wikipedia. Knowing more about wikipedia did not change my mind. It's a great place to begin some research for some people, but it does have that high school source look and feel to it. Thus, it's not a scholarly source and still not acceptable for citation in my courses.
Overall, I'd suggest this book to others who have read _Freakonomics_, as it has that "feel" to it. My partner read the book and wasn't too interested in it, and he is tech type who works in e-commerce. So, go figure!
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