How mass collaboration is reshaping business – and the planet

Continued

In his book Don Tapscott calls wikinomics "the new art and science of collaboration." Here he tells Profit about its four "very uncomfortable, counter intuitive and unsettling principles." These principles may run against conventional wisdom, but Tapscott says if you get them right, you will prosper:
  
Peering: "Before the information age, the cost of collaboration in an open market was greater than the cost of doing things inside companies. Now, collaboration costs are dropping to the point where peers can create value. The most striking example of this is peers working outside the boundaries of traditional companies. If you can create an encyclopedia with a million people and it’s 10 times bigger than Britannica, and no one owns it, what else could you create that way? The answer is just about anything."

Transparency: "I wrote a book on this four years ago called The Naked Corporation. The idea is that you are going to be naked as a company, so you have to get buff. When you are buff, transparency is your friend. By being transparent you build trust and drop collaboration costs." 

Sharing: "Our research shows that by sharing some of your intellectual property – not just with partners, customers, or stakeholders, but by placing it in the commons where no one owns it -- you can grow faster, innovate better and beat your competition. And experience has shown that those who fight it lose."

Acting global: "The expression is 'Think global, act local.' But why do we want to act locally if there is a global economy? Why do want to be multinationals when what's required is truly global companies with global IT, business processes, sourcing strategies, ethics, management, structures and so on?"