Greatest Hits Blog

The one-sentence summary

More and more people are using their free time to become involved in active participation.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• In the post-industrial world, there has been a huge increase in the number of people paid to think and talk, rather than to produce or transport objects.
• We now have free time on a scale like never before, but for most of the second half of the last century, most people just used it to watch TV.
• TV viewing is now in decline for the first time, and the world is beginning to use the Cognitive Surplus generated by free time to become involved in active participation rather than passive consumption.
• Subtitled ‘Creativity and generosity in a connected age’, the book uses a mixture of example, analysis and social theory to suggest why a new generation is making choices that contribute to a greater whole.
• We now have the means, motive and opportunity to experiment with ideas at almost no cost, and on a huge base of potential users. Tapping this surplus benefits everybody.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The cognitive surplus, newly forged from previously disconnected islands of time and talent, is just raw material. To get any value out of it, we have to make it mean or do things.
• Old logic is television logic. TV audiences didn’t create any real value for each other. In fact, TV raises material aspirations and anxiety. We need to rethink our concept of media – it’s not something we consume, it’s something we use.
• The internet succumbs to post-Gutenberg economics. No one in particular owns it, and everyone can use it.
• There are three types of group production:

1. Private sector: a group does something for less than its selling price

2. Public sector: obliged to work together on something of perceived high value

3. Social: value creation without price signals and managerial oversight

• People are ‘hopelessly committed’ both to being individual and collective. In chemistry, bonding atoms have valence. In social production, contributors need a ‘positive normative or ethical valence toward the process’.
• Some suggestions for harnessing the cognitive surplus:
• Starting: start small; ask why?; behaviour follows opportunity; default to social
• Growing: 100 users are harder than 12 and 1000; people differ, more people differ more; intimacy doesn’t scale; support a supportive culture
• Adapting: the faster you learn, the sooner you’ll be able to adapt; success causes more problems than failure; clarity is violence; try anything, try everything

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

It’s a great idea but it could have been expressed in an essay rather than a book.

This week Wikinomics by Tapscott & Williams.

Download Wikinomics

I've previously posted summaries of both Free and The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (see Anderson).  This week's podcast is on Free.

Download Free by Chris Anderson

The one-sentence summary

You are what you share, so start with a core idea and get others to contribute, collaborate and create.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• The future is us, via mass collaboration, not mass production.
• The rallying call of the web is for shared power that makes society more open and egalitarian.
• There has been an unparalleled wave of democratic, productive and creative participation online. This book is itself an example.
• The generation growing up with the web will not be content to remain spectators. They want to be players and their slogan is “we think therefore we are.”
• Self-determination is a powerful thing. In 1998, BT had failed to get its field engineers to work harder so set up a Freedom to Choose scheme whereby they scheduled their own work. After three years they were working two hours a week less and earning more. Productivity was up 5% and quality 8%.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• You are what you share is the new mantra, and the author works through numerous examples of how this works in the modern world, all facilitated by the web.
• The roots of we-think reside in a strange mixture of online contributors:

~ The academic brings a belief that knowledge develops through sharing ideas and testing them through peer review

~ The hippie brings a deep scepticism about all sources of authority

~ The peasant favours shared use of communal facilities and resources

~ The geek offers to realise their dreams by networking them together

• When you put all this together, you have a powerful blend.
• The way it works is to start with the core, then other people contribute to it, they connect over it, they collaborate, and they create. These are the 5 Cs

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

It is not set out in any particular sections. It is more like a very long essay. As such it is not easy to dip in and out, or to refer back to something in particular. So it is best to treat it as a thought-provoking whole, rather than anything specific you can take action on.

The one-sentence summary

The Internet has changed everything, so you need to open up your business to your customers.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Mass collaboration changes everything, and this is how.
• The knowledge, resources and computing power of billions of people are self-organising into a massive, new collective force.
• Interconnected and orchestrated via blogs, wikis, chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks and personal broadcasting, the web is being reinvented to provide the world’s first global platform for collaboration.
• Peer production is what happens when masses of people and firms collaborate openly to drive innovation.
• There are many weapons of mass collaboration – free telephony, open source software, global outsourcing platforms, etc.
• P&G now has 90,000 registered scientists who give them ideas but are not on the payroll, courtesy of their InnoCentive marketplace.
• Companies used to be secretive. Now they can benefit from the four principles of Wikinomics, which are being open, peering, sharing and acting globally.
• Wikinomics is defined as a perfect storm in which technology, demographics and global economics create an unrelenting force for innovation and change.
• The Net generation do not passively receive messages – they want to search, scrutinise, authenticate, collaborate and organise everything. N Gen norms are speed, freedom, openness, innovation, mobility and playfulness.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• Coase’s Law from 1937 (a firm will expand until transaction costs reach those of the open market) now needs to be viewed backwards (firms should shrink until transaction costs no longer exceed the cost of doing it externally).
• An Ideagora is a marketplace for ideas, based on the agoras that were the centre of politics and commerce in Athens.
• The benefits of peer production are harnessing external talent, keeping up with users, boosting demand for complementary offerings, reducing costs, shifting the locus of competition, taking the friction out of collaboration, and developing social capital.
• The stock of human knowledge now doubles every five years.
• Virtually all of Google’s new product ideas come from the 20% of time they are required to take off for ‘goofing around’.
• Tarzan economics means that we cling onto the vine of the old before we embrace the new.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• It is fairly long and detailed so you have to dig hard for the nuggets.