The one-sentence summary

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

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • WIKINOMICSMass 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.