Chapter 10: Collaborative Minds
This chapter is essentially an attempt to tie the rest of the book together neatly at the end. The four principles: Openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally are reinforced one more time.
The "innovator's Dilemma" is an interesting one. I think it is far-reaching though. Once you are the market leader, it's hard to stay on top. To be the "best" at anything, you have to constantly be on your guard. It's similar to being a great athlete. Being the best golfer in the world in 2006 only means you have to work harder to keep that position in 2007. You are the person to beat; everyone is training just to beat you. Last years workouts aren't going to cut it just like last years business plan isn't going to work anymore.
Next up, internet phones. Why not Skype? When I found out about this, I thought-what's the catch? Why isn't everyone doing it? I think organizations that aren't doing it will be doing it soon. Who pays long distance anymore? And really, on an individual level, who has land lines anymore?
The authors hint around at a sort of touchy subject: old people and technology. And by old people I mean not Net-gen. people. The book encourages people unfamiliar with facebook, you tube etc to try it out. Immediately, I envisioned trying to explain these things to co-workers who had no idea what I was talking about. Although the impending retirement of the baby boomers will affect the makeup of firms, it is unlikely that whole firms are going to exist of people under the age of 30. So my solution- Continuing Technology Education. Doctors have to keep up with advances in medicine, lawyers have to keep up with new laws, so why shouldn't businesses encourage employees to keep abreast of new technology.
One last takeaway is that of organizational flexibility and communication. If a CEO wants any of the principles discussed in wikinomics in her firm, she’s going to have to shape the culture in a manner that is open to things that have never been done before. Otherwise, employees are going to capitalize on their ideas elsewhere. It's a huge risk to say: this has never been done before, but we're going to try it. But the reward potential is there.
3 comments:
I think the last chapter did a decent job of wraping everything together, but I disagree with the authors. I think mass collaboration is just a new tool, rather than the paradigm change the authors predict it to be. Time will tell who is right though.
Whatever you want to call it, I think it's here and should be recognized. I think a lot of people are in disbelief at first and opposed to this "mass collaboration" idea because they don't understand what it means or includes. But after reading the book, I think we can deny all we want, but it is here and affecting us.
Yes the authors have done a decent job of closing the book and we will see increased activity among collaborators, but I do not believe that it is teh wave of the future.
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