Jan 10

Written by: Joel Orr
1/10/2008 

When Don Tapscott's "Wikinomics" came out over a year ago, I was turned off by the title, so I never picked it up. A couple of days ago, I went to hear Tapscott give a breakfast talk at Stanford. It was very worthwhile. (It is co-authored by Tapscott's colleague, Anthony Williams.)

The book was Amazon.com's top-selling business book of 2007. Its subtitle is "How mass collaboration changes everything" - and it is accurate, if not inspiring.

Unfortunately, the book has none of Tapscott's excellent charts and graphics, showing the dramatic changes wrought by mass collaboration; you have to get it from the words. But it is good, readable business prose, full of case studies and meaty stuff.

He based it on a $9 million research project; this is not a rehashed web sweep.

And the book goes on: At www.wikinomics.com, you can participate in creating the "next chapter" and read an excerpt from the book. There is also a blog and a wiki.