sergiosantos.info

blog and works

Book: Wikinomics

31.Aug.2008

Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

Wikinomics is one of the most famous books in the last years. It covers a subject increasingly common on today’s economies: the progressive openness of companies towards their customers.

The book is not only about the new kind of web pages, the wikis, as the title might induce, although they’re often mentioned as a good example. It’s more of a comprehensive list of examples of how some important and famous companies/organizations, from mere luck or as a distinctive business plan, used the capabilities of a large number of persons (somehow related with their products/activity, like customers or even competitors), to create profit for both sides. Crowdsourcing is the most common term for this kind of activity. However the authors gave a larger picture on the whole economic movement and they’ve selected 10 specific themes in which every company might see a new opportunity to follow. Some of the most frequently mentioned projects or companies are: Linux, IBM, Procter & Gamble and, of course, Wikipedia.

One of the things that positively surprised me was, although the whole book encourages you to think open in your business, it doesn’t fall to the naive advice of “you should be open in everything you do” that much people evangelize. It teaches to think out of the box and directly to customers when you’re planning for innovation or new strategies, but also teaches to evaluate carefully what you’re giving away with it.

It’s a good book if you’re looking for interesting ideas and I found quite entertaining some of the business stories it covers. However, if you kept current with most of the famous projects often grouped in the web 2.0 movement, most of them won’t be new to you.