How are wikis and other social networking tools changing the ways companies compete? To find out, Sun caught up with Don Tapscott, co-author of the bestselling book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.
Q: What is the wiki workplace and how does it fit into the overall concept of wikinomics?
A: The wiki workplace is a term Anthony Williams and I coined in Wikinomics to describe how new tools and approaches to management are changing the way companies collaborate to improve innovation and performance. Unlike the other models in wikinomics such as prosumers, ideagoras or open platforms, the wiki workplace primarily refers to collaboration within the enterprise, although the wiki workplace provides tools that allow employees to reach out to the rest of the world.
I use the term “wiki” as a metaphor. We’re not just talking about wikis, but rather about all the emerging collaborative tools that get us beyond primitive technologies such as email. Companies that embrace the new tools tend to perform better — so the stakes are high.
Q: Which technologies make wikinomics and the wiki workplace possible?
A: This is more than providing people with the ability to co-edit Web-based documents. The wiki workplace uses a variety of Web 2.0 tools to increase collaboration capabilities in every industry. For example, Sun is known for its customer-engaging blogs, Xerox is using wikis extensively for research, and the BBC collects and publishes news with RSS feeds. Then you have Best Buy and its use of social networks to reach consumers, while T. Rowe Price uses tags to identify investment opportunities.
Other tools used to increase collaborative capabilities include forums, threaded discussions, collaborative filtering, jams, and digital brainstorms. But regardless of the type of Web 2.0 software, these tools are enablers for a mindset that eliminates traditional corporate hierarchical thinking. And by doing so, they increase collaboration and innovation.
“The result is faster innovation, lower cost structures, greater agility, and improved responsiveness to customers.”
Q: How does a wiki workplace help companies compete?
A: Companies that build a wiki workplace get products to market faster by harnessing the innovation of many more people than traditional corporate structures allow. Employees can collaborate across organizational silos, work with more people, in more regions of the world, with less hassle and more enjoyment, than with earlier generations of workplace technology. The result is faster innovation, lower cost structures, greater agility, improved responsiveness to customers, and more authenticity and respect in the marketplace. These tools also enable companies to implement the other business models in wikinomics that open up innovation with the external world.
Frequently, people who come up with solutions in a wiki workplace environment aren’t necessarily in a field traditionally associated with a particular problem. That’s what the Goldcorp mining company discovered when it opened up its geological data for a particular location and asked the public for insight into where gold might be located. Many of the best submissions were from people who were not geologists. For $500,000 in prize money, Goldcorp discovered over $3 billion worth of gold, and the market value of the company went from $90 million to $10 billion.
Q: How does a wiki workplace make people more productive?
A: It addresses a big productivity problem: organizational bureaucracy. Let’s face it. Companies are hierarchies divided into organizational silos where rigid processes used for basic functions inhibit effective collaboration. Removing traditional hierarchies and boundaries within a company unleashes the potential of human capital. When companies set up ways for people to collaborate as peers across organizational silos and boundaries, they get more innovation through more collaboration. At Best Buy, for example, the 20,000 technical people there design products for the company with very little management oversight.
Q: Are there situations in which a wiki workplace makes employees less productive?
A: Conceivably, yes, but to be honest with you, I haven’t seen any situation where the wiki workplace makes employees less productive. The problem is the opposite: people are less productive because of traditional ways of organizing workforces. Most companies are so locked into old models of collaboration that they don’t realize that many of their assumptions restrain opportunity. You can open up a lot of things and the sky won’t fall — and if you do it right, you can share intellectual property in a thoughtful way that strengthens your organization.
Q: How much information should a company share with people outside the organization?
A: There are times when companies need to protect intellectual property, but not as often as people tend to believe. I often use a portfolio example to explain. Just as you have a portfolio in your mutual fund, you need a portfolio of intellectual property. Some information you’ll want to protect, but still keep open to multiple departments within the company for the sake of increased collaboration. Other information is best shared with partners and customers, but a great deal of information should be placed in a commons for anyone to access.
It might seem counterintuitive, but the commons approach can make a lot of sense. Take something as tightly controlled as risk assessment. I’m inclined to believe the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the ensuing credit crunch and crisis came about in part because of secrecy, proprietary risk models that are closed, and lack of sharing. As it turns out, hoarding this kind of information and IP is just not a good business practice. If people in the mortgage industry had created a financial risk commons, the current credit crunch probably would not have occurred. Why don’t we apply wikinomics and open source to risk? Wouldn’t a rising tide lift all boats?
“It’s a phony argument that openness undermines security. Done right, the opposite is true. Openness is the way to protect security.”
Q: How do you manage security in a wiki workplace?
A: If you mean technical security, it’s a problem endemic to all systems. Build security into your architecture. If you’re referring to the disclosure of information that could hurt a company, it’s a human issue that needs to be managed. Companies that implement wiki workplaces have guidelines, just as they do with other ways of communicating and collaboration.
Actually, Sun is a good example of this. Jonathan Schwartz decided that allowing employees to have blogs would be a great way to engage customers. There are some loose guidelines that come down to a very simple principle — don’t do anything stupid. Have people communicate about the things they find interesting or where they have expertise.
It’s a phony argument that openness undermines security. Done right, the opposite is true. Openness is the way to protect security — including national security! Several U.S. intelligence agencies have embraced the principles of wikinomics by launching Intellipedia, which uses mass collaboration to find terrorists and criminals. But opening up information really cuts against the grain of conventional wisdom, so people really need to think about the reasons their organizations keep certain kinds of information locked away.
Q: Any recommendations on how to get started with a wiki workplace?
A: You need to start with a strategic rationale of what drives your need for collaboration. Identify the opportunities and figure out where your business can most benefit from sharing data. It’s also important to understand how new collaboration tools make wiki workplace collaboration possible, and this is an area where people of my generation sometimes get lost.
Younger people find it easy to operate in a wiki workplace, because they’re used to communicating and collaborating with social networking tools. That’s why I tell people that they need to use these technologies themselves, personally, with their own fingers, to understand it. Personal use is a precondition for any kind of comprehension of the wiki workplace and wikinomics.
Try things out. Participate in a blog. Initiate an online idea jam. Build a set of RSS feeds. See what happens. What do you have to lose?
About Don Tapscott
Don Tapscott is chairman of New Paradigm, an international think tank recently acquired by the BSG Alliance. He is also an adjunct professor of management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. In addition to co-authoring Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything with Anthony Williams, Tapscott is the author of 11 widely read books about information technology in business and society, including Paradigm Shift, Growing Up Digital, and The Naked Corporation.
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