Don Tapscott -January 2008
Mass collaboration is reshaping business – and the planet.
Profit: Is mass collaboration going to save the world?
Mass collaboration for sure is changing the corporation, from its deep structure and architecture to the way that we orchestrate good and services in society to innovate and to deliver value to customers. It's also beginning to change other institutions in society. Learning institutions are beginning to change the model of pedagogy from a one-way teacher focused one-size-fits-all model—where the student is isolated in the learning process -- to a student-focused collaborative model. One of the biggest changes has to do with governments and the nature of democracy, as we move from a one-way broadcast model of democracy towards new models that engages citizens.
Now, as for saving the world, let's take a look at climate change. It's no longer a partisan issue, everyone knows. We need to half CO2 emissions in the next 30 years and during that period the global economy will double. And how are we going to do that? Governments need to provide leadership, but that's insufficient. To me, we'll never turn this situation around unless we see a mass collaboration involving hundreds of millions of people, organizing to essentially reindustrialize the planet. So, yes, it turns out the killer apps for mass collaboration may be saving the world literally.
Profit: How do you convince business leaders – especially those in traditional business -- that this isn't just a fad?
DT: The cases we explore in Wikinomics are not dot coms. They are about changing the way you do R&D at a consumer-products company like Proctor & Gamble – and about where you find the uniquely qualified minds. It's changing the way you discover gold, as in the case of Goldcorp, which publishes its geological data and use the world as its geology department. And it's changing the way you create motorcycles, as in the case of the Chinese motorcycle industry, where hundreds of little companies each make a part of contribute somehow, meeting in teahouses or on the Internet.
This is no longer about social networking, or hooking up online, or creating a gardening community, or putting a video onto YouTube. Mass collaboration is becoming a new mode of production. And a new mode of production that enables better innovation and competitive advantage by definition is not a fad. It's something that will endure. We did $9 million dollars worth of research and we studied hundreds of organizations. Those that understand the principles of wikinomics are tending to do better. So extrapolated over time, those who don't will tend to decline and presumably disappear.
Profit: At the end of the book, you point readers to your Web site—www.wikinomics.com—inviting them to contribute to the Wikinomics playbook. How is that going?
DT: It's going quite well – it's unwieldy, but it's a great example of the principles of Wikinomics: peering, sharing, transparency, and acting global. We're going to peer produce this thing, I'm sharing my IP, I'm showing great transparency because if I have a dumb idea, everyone can see it, and I am acting global, because I'm viewing the world as my global research department and editorial department.
I'll tell you a fun experience: There's a new edition of Wikinomics coming out next year. My publisher wanted to take all the best ideas from the wiki and put them into a new final chapter that we could profit on. And I explained why I can't do that -- I don't own the IP and I can't exploit it commercially. To which my publisher replied, "Why would you set it up like that?" To which, I replied, "Hey you're my publisher, you should read the book." I figure if my company is the context provider for the definitive guide to the 21-century corporation, that this will help me commercially, even though I don't own it.
