Blog Minx

What’s it about?
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything looks at how the Web 2.0 phenomenon is affecting companies around the world, in terms of seeking customer feedback, outsourcing, transparency and peer-to-peer interaction. It focuses on how big corporations are beginning to adopt trends learned from information-sharing sites like Wikipedia, YouTube and Flickr.

Main points

• Open source strategies allow you to create the best possible product.
• Web users can help you market your product for free.
• New business developments will result in more freedom and unlimited potential.
• Access to free information and services is becoming a right, not a privilege.

Rush out and buy it?

For me, Wikinomics was lacking the ‘wow’ factor. I’ve spent enough time glued to a computer screen to be familiar with the Web 2.0 revolution that Tapscott and Williams gush about through the book. Actually, I think I’m half-way between the two groups they refer to; I’m old enough to remember growing up in a time without the internet, but I’m not a stodgy middle-aged company owner who’s afraid of the Big Bad Sharing of Information.

Plus, the ‘You Write The Final Chapter!’ ending seems a tad like a dad embracing the grunge trend 10 years late to show how in touch he is. Surely in an age of mass collaboration, and following the examples touted in the book, the entire thing should have been written en masse? It could’ve done with some pruning, too, and a little more critical insight.

Wikinomics is a well-researched book with some good examples of outside-the-box thinking, and it contains some useful tips on using the information superhighway to improve your business. But unless you’re still open-mouthed at the exponential growth of user-driven content sites and need basic advice regarding how it all applies to you, I’d give it a miss.

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