Check out this book – ‘Wikinomics – how mass collaboration changes everything‘ by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams. They also have a website http://www.wikinomics.com/ with lots of interesting bits. An easy to read book putting forth the idea that the next (and in some cases current) business model is the adoption of the social network and open source concept for business. I really enjoyed it and it certainly made a lot of sense to me.
Two quick observations…
- They cite the same companies over and over again as examples that support their points. Although these companies are multinationals and worth billions…I would have liked to have more examples.
- Is this a totally new management and business model, which will eventually reign supreme over all others? Or will it be successful in only some cases and just be an alternative?
My favourite chapter was Chapter 9 – The Wiki Workplace and their profile of the Geek Squad.
I come from a command and control management environment. That was what I was taught – through formal education and on the job observation. Although I always felt that I was more of a benevolent despot when compared to some other managers. After reading the book and looking back at some of the things I did as a manager/supervisor, I can actually see that I was attempting to implement some wikified type strategies – though certainly not to the degree talked about in Wikinomics.
In this episode I discuss the four elements of a podcast: