Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Om Malik blog post : "I wonder if this culture of participation was helping build businesses on our collective backs. If we tag, bookmark, or share and help del.icio.us or Technorati or Yahoo become better commerical entities, aren't we commoditizing our most valuable asset: time? We become the outsourced workforce, though it is still unclear what ... See more

Customers will expect to share in the ownership and fruits of their creations. If you make it profitable for customers to get involved, you will always be able to count on a dynamic and fertile ecosystem for growth and innovation.

Firms should shrink until the cost of performing a transaction internally no longer exceeds the cost of performing it externally.

How do I make my organization a platform for participation?

This threatens entrenched barriers to entry, including the high costs of obtaining the financial, physical, and human capital necessary to compete.

A new kind of business is emerging: one that

Firms that cultivate nimble trust-based relationships with external collaborators are positioned to form vibrant business ecosystems that create value more effectively than hierarchially organized business.

Losers innovated internally. Winners innovated with their users. Losers jealously guarded their data and software interfaces. Winners shared them with everyone.

- behaves not as a multinational, but as a truly global firm

Customer tool kits and context orchestration: Forget about static, immovable products. If your customers are going to treat products as platforms anyway, then you may as well get ahead of the game. Make your products modular, reconfigurable, and editable. Set the context for customer innovation and collaboration. Provide venues. Build user-friendly... See more