Reading :: Wikinomics

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams

I honestly don't have a lot to say about this book. It's engagingly written and full of interesting case studies about how companies have begun to leverage mass collaboration. But there's not a lot new here -- the book covers the same ground as most other new economy books. It might be a better general introduction than most, but it didn't open new horizons for me.

The authors outline four principles of "wikinomics" or mass collaboration: openness; peering; sharing; and acting globally. These are expanded via several case studies, including usual suspects Linux and Wikipedia as well as more unconventional collaborations such as keiretsu (called "B-webs" here).

The one piece of news that might jump out at rhet-comp people is that our own Matt Barton is briefly profiled, cogently explaining the considerable benefits of wikis for classroom collaboration.