Wikinomics heralds the biggest change in collaboration to date. Thanks to the Internet, masses of people outside the boundaries of traditional hierarchies can innovate to produce content, goods and services. In order to understand the opportunities this presents for companies, read this book. - Eric Schmidt, CEO Google

The authors address how the Internet's social network offers new, decentralized ways to produce content, goods, services and profit.

Using the collaborative-software "wiki" concept as their theme, the authors address how the Internet's social network offers new, decentralized ways to produce content, goods, services and profit.

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In just the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.

Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.

A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century.

Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about:

• Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry.
• Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production.
• Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.
  

An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Don Tapscott is chief executive of New Paradigm, a think tank and strategy consulting company he founded in 1992. He is the author of ten books, including the bestsellers Paradigm Shift, The Digital Economy, Growing Up Digital, The Naked Corporation and Digital Capital. He teaches at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Anthony D. Williams is a research director at New Paradigm. He holds a master’s of research from the London School of Economics where he has been teaching over the last year. He leads New Paradigm’s work in the areas of innovation and intellectual property.

INTRODUCTION
Throughout history corporations have organized themselves according to strict hierarchical lines of authority. Everyone was a subordinate to someone else—employees versus managers, marketers versus customers, producers versus supply chain subcontractors, companies versus the community.

There was always someone or some company in charge, controlling things, at the “top” of the food chain. While hierarchies are not vanishing, profound changes in the nature of technology, demographics, and the global economy are giving rise to powerful new models of production based on community, collaboration, and self-organization rather than on hierarchy and control.

Millions of media buffs now use blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and personal broadcasting to add their voices to a vociferous stream of dialogue and debate called the “blogosphere.” Employees drive performance by collaborating with peers across organizational boundaries, creating what we call a “wiki workplace.” Customers become “prosumers” by cocreating goods and services rather than simply consuming the end product.

So-called supply chains work more effectively when the risk, reward, and capability to complete major projects—including massively complex products like cars, motorcycles, and airplanes—are distributed across planetary networks of partners who work as peers. ...

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