Zire Golf - Shop now
$5.99 with 71 percent savings
Print List Price: $20.91

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Sold by Penguin Group (USA) LLC. Price set by seller.
Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the authors

Anthony D. Williams
Follow
Don Tapscott
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything Kindle Edition

by Don Tapscott (Author), Anthony D. Williams (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 out of 5 stars 197 ratings
Editors' pick Best Nonfiction
The acclaimed bestseller that's teaching the world about the power of mass collaboration.

Translated into more than twenty languages and named one of the best business books of the year by reviewers around the world, Wikinomics has become essential reading for business people everywhere. It explains how mass collaboration is happening not just at Web sites like Wikipedia and YouTube, but at traditional companies that have embraced technology to breathe new life into their enterprises.

This national bestseller reveals the nuances that drive wikinomics, and share fascinating stories of how masses of people (both paid and volunteer) are now creating TV news stories, sequencing the human gnome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding cures for diseases, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, and even building motorcycles.
Read more
Previous slide of product details
  1. Print length
    380 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Portfolio
  4. Accessibility
    Learn more
  5. Publication date
    April 17, 2008
  6. Reading age
    18 years and up
  7. File size
    954 KB
  8. Page Flip
    Enabled
  9. Word Wise
    Enabled
  10. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
Next slide of product details

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The word "wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian, and here author and think tank CEO Tapscott (The Naked Corporation), along with research director Williams, paint in vibrant colors the quickly changing world of Internet togetherness, also known as mass or global collaboration, and what those changes mean for business and technology. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written, compiled, edited and re-edited by "ordinary people" is the most ubiquitous example, and its history makes remarkable reading. But also considered are lesser-known success stories of global collaboration that star Procter & Gamble, BMW, Lego and a host of software and niche companies. Problems arise when the authors indulge an outsized sense of scope-"this may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance, or the rise of Athenian democracy"-while acknowledging only reluctantly the caveats of weighty sources like Microsoft's Bill Gates. Methods for exploiting the power of collaborative production are outlined throughout, an alluring compendium of ways to throw open previously guarded intellectual property and to invite in previously unavailable ideas that hide within the populace at large. This clear and meticulously researched primer gives business leaders big leg up on mass collaboration possibilities; as such, it makes a fine next-step companion piece to James Surowiecki's 2004 bestseller The Wisdom of Crowds.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Anyone who has done even a modest amount of browsing on the Internet has probably run across Wikipedia, the user-edited online encyclopedia that now dwarfs the online version of Encyclopedia Britannica. This is the prime example of what is called the new Web, or Web 2.0, where sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and even the Human Genome Project allow mass collaboration from participants in the online community. These open systems can produce faster and more powerful results than the traditional closed proprietary systems that have been the norm for private industry and educational institutions. Detractors claim that authentic voices are being overrun by "an anonymous tide of mass mediocrity," and private industry laments that competition from the free goods and services created by the masses compete with proprietary marketplace offerings. The most obvious example of this is Linux, the open-source operating system that has killed Microsoft in the server environment. But is this a bad thing? Tapscott thinks not; and as a proponent of peering, sharing, and open-source thinking, he has presented a clear and exciting preview of how peer innovation will change everything. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000QBYEH8
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Portfolio
  • Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 17, 2008
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Expanded
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 954 KB
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 380 pages
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1440639487
  • Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 out of 5 stars 197 ratings

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Previous page
  1. Anthony D. Williams

    Anthony D. Williams

    Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Anthony D. Williams is vice president and executive editor at New Paradigm and the author of numerous influential reports.

    See more on the author's page
  2. Don Tapscott

    Don Tapscott

    Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Don Tapscott is the CEO of the Tapscott Group and the bestselling author of Wikinomics, The Digital Economy, and a dozen other books on technology, business, and society. He is currently the fourth most influential management thinker in the world according to Thinkers 50. He is an adjunct professor at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and the Chancellor of Trent University.

    See more on the author's page
Next page

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
197 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the book readable and well-researched, with one noting it's essential to keep up with the times. Moreover, the content receives positive feedback for its defining ideas and amazing examples, and customers consider it appropriate for today's large enterprises. However, the writing quality receives mixed reviews, with some finding it well written while others note it's filled with generalizations.

Select to learn more

ReadabilityIdeasPacingBook contentWriting quality
19 customers mention "Readability"14 positive5 negative

Customers find the book readable, with one noting it's a must-read to keep up with the times.

"This is an important book that talks about the potential that global webs of collaboration, global platforms, and global manufacturing plant forms..." Read more

"...This book is definitely worth reading...." Read more

"...This is a must read! Some reviewers are critical about the book containing consultantese and some self glorification by Tapscott...." Read more

"...ranging implications of this cost reduction, this book is probably great reading and very informative...." Read more

16 customers mention "Ideas"16 positive0 negative

Customers find the book contains defining ideas and amazing examples that are very informative.

"This is a book that contains defining ideas with lots of benching examples. The illustration is wonderful and very inspirating...." Read more

"...is an important book that talks about the potential that global webs of collaboration, global platforms, and global manufacturing plant forms have..." Read more

"...still learning about Business 2.0 concepts like crowd sourcing, social collaboration, etc. This is a must read!..." Read more

"...of this cost reduction, this book is probably great reading and very informative. Personally I did not get anything new out of it." Read more

5 customers mention "Pacing"5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's pacing, noting it is well researched and appropriate for today's large enterprises, with one customer highlighting its positive economies of scale.

"...People working without global barriers may lead to positive economies of scale, with high levels of creativity never seen before...." Read more

"Surprisingly this book is very appropriate for today's large enterprises that would like to get some fresh, new innovative ideas from large..." Read more

"...The examples they cite are amazing indeed, and worthy of closer inspection...." Read more

"Excellent book, well researched. I use references from this book all the time." Read more

4 customers mention "Book content"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's content, with reviews highlighting its comprehensive coverage of Web 2.0 concepts and business applications.

"...It is a nice book for manager, business owner, educator, sciencist, medical professionals and people working on community and charity services...." Read more

"This book is a pretty inclusive book on all the Web 2.0/ Business 2.0 concepts. They have covered pretty much everything that matters...." Read more

"...by the author of this book, all of which are important to understanding Web 2.0 concepts, could have been compressed by 50% or more, in my opinion,..." Read more

"A good book about e-commerce, though some of the stories are dated. Most of the web sites mentioned are no long online." Read more

9 customers mention "Writing quality"4 positive5 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the writing quality of the book, with some finding it well written while others note it is filled with jargon and repetitive generalizations.

"...Yes it is dense, and some sections simply restate earlier material to death, but this may be because we now live in uncharted waters...." Read more

"...; although, others who were able to did tell me that it did a great job of explaining how group effort enhances our interaction with the digital age." Read more

"...The book is also too long and each chapter adds little to the last. The entire book is read in the first chapter...." Read more

"...Some of the writing and thoughts are excellent and will challenge your thinking and enlighten you...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Sahra Badou
    5.0 out of 5 stars Business in the 21st century
    Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2007
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    In this book, the authors argue that the internet will change businesses for the better. Unlike in the recent book I read, "The Cult of the Amateur", by Andrew Keen (see my review), that argues the negative impact of the internet, Tapscott and Williams praise the internet as a medium to faster progress through sharing and contribution. Similarly, Al Gore in "The Assault on Reason" praises the internet and argues against any laws imposing restrictions on it.

    Just a few years ago, companies met in boardrooms to take crucial decisions on their future and to solve short and long-term problems. Nowadays, the boardroom is the internet, with thousands if not millions of people sharing and contributing their expertise and know-how. Companies no longer have to solely rely on their employees to solve problems. Posting their problems on the internet will get them a multitude of possible solutions. Smart firms harness this collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.

    Encyclopedias, like Wikipedia; jetliners, like Boeing; operating systems, like Linux; mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. And most of these people contribute their know-how for free!

    Many examples abound of companies who have benefited from the online community. Goldcorp used an online competition to find the location of gold in North Canada. They used open source tactics, and revealed their research and statistics online. Savvy online engineers were able to use that information to pinpoint with precise accuracy where gold could be found. It is not easy for a company to make public its proprietary research, but by doing so, they stand to benefit from the expertise of thousands of people.

    Wikipedia is a good example of mass contribution. The online encyclopedia has now, according to some experts, surpassed the Encyclopedia Britannica. Anyone can contribute and correct information on Wikipedia. I recently read the really great book "Charlie Wilson's War" by George Crile. I wanted to find more information on Texas congressman Charlie Wilson, but there were no entries of him on my 2007 Encyclopedia Britannica DVD. However, on Wikipedia I found a lot of information on him, and even that a movie is being made about him. All contributors, who are people like you and me, contribute to Wikipedia for free. Whoever said that the Universe does not give a free lunch?

    Amazon is another great example of peer contribution. Just surf to amazon.com (like you've just done now) and read reviews submitted by millions of people on any item, whether books, electronics, foods, software, jewelry etc. You'll be able to make a better decision on whether to buy an item. These reviews are submitted to Amazon by people like you and I for free. Amazon benefits from these reviews for most people end up buying the items reviewed from Amazon.

    Amazon has also opened their API to the public, allowing programmers worldwide to tinker with their code. Many people have opened online stores as a result of Amazon's open source APIs. These stores get prices and details on all products listed on Amazon. As a result, anyone can now open an online store, get information on millions of products direct from Amazon, and sell any of these products. Amazon takes care of all financial transactions for you. All you have to do is ship the products to the buyers. Who would have thought just a few years ago business could be made so easy? All of this is of course possible because of the internet.

    Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other online social networking communities also pioneered a new form of collaborative production. In Second Life, for example, you may have a virtual life similar to your day to day real life. In Second Life, you may own a house, go shopping, go to clubs and meet new people, and even invest in real estate using Linden currency. I read once in Businessweek that a British woman made over a million dollars investing in real estate in Second Life. Linden money can be converted into real currency!

    The bottom line of this book is that sharing your company's inner workings with the online community is good for the health and progress of your company. The contribution by the online community to your company is what's going to keep it competitive in this fast moving technologically oriented society. The internet has now made it possible to harness the brain power of millions of people worldwide.

    According to the authors, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century. After all, the book is based on a $9 million research project.

    I highly recommend the book. It will change the way you do business from now on. Indeed, there is power in numbers!
    Helpful
     Report
  • Anthony Wong
    5.0 out of 5 stars Bechmarking Example with Defining Ideas
    Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    This is a book that contains defining ideas with lots of benching examples. The illustration is wonderful and very inspirating. Each chapter starts off with a real benchmarking example followed by a desciption of phenonmenon of how different people "working together". Then, a defined idea summerizes the previous description in the chapter. After that, some rebuts and various opinions from different view points are provided to readers. At last, a vision for the future is form to guide reader to develope the future of mass collaboration.

    It is a nice book for manager, business owner, educator, sciencist, medical professionals and people working on community and charity services. Also, it teaches some leadership initiative to form a success "mass collaboration organisation".

    The only short-coming is that the author did not teach reader how to develop a web site for social community and online society.

    Written by Anthony Wong.
    Helpful
     Report
  • Bobjfs
    3.0 out of 5 stars Important, though long-winded
    Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    This is an important book that talks about the potential that global webs of collaboration, global platforms, and global manufacturing plant forms have to unleash creativity and profit.

    Here are the pluses and minuses.

    The Minuses:

    First, the book is too long. A good technical editor could easily pare 1/3 out, and the authors would still make the same point.

    Second, somewhere along the line Penguin abandoned most uses of the comma. You can see it in most of their recent books, and this is a problem. It makes sentence mechanics less precise and sentences much harder to read. Again, a technical editor could go through this book and make it more readable.

    Third, some sections are unnecessarily dense. Some of the nomanilized verbs (ex. verbs turned into nouns using "tion") are priceless. I have no doubt they will end up in the Hall of Fame at the Society for Technical Communication.

    Fourth, some sections repeat earlier material ad nauseum.

    Fifth, the authors bury each chapter thesis at the end of the chapter. If you are writing technical text, please do not do this. Tell me your thesis up front. Then, I may decide whether or not I want to wade through your following arguments. Imagine how much easier would our reading lives be if everybody built written arguments like this.

    The Pluses:

    The authors present important thinking on the present transformation of business through interactive communication. People working without global barriers may lead to positive economies of scale, with high levels of creativity never seen before.

    The Bottom Line:

    Read this book. Despite its density, the points are important. You can knock out the book in a few weeks of casual reading. Yes it is dense, and some sections simply restate earlier material to death, but this may be because we now live in uncharted waters. Maybe some points bear repeating.

    My biggest concern is this book does not present a balanced picture. It talks only in glowing, positive terms about the reality of webs of collaboration. It never addresses the negative externalities that result. And as the late neo-Luddite Neil Postman wrote, every new technology solves old problems while creating new problems. What new problems will result from all this technology based collaboration?

    For example, were all module suppliers for the Boeing 787 able to deliver on their contracts, especially in the wake of our current global economic recession-depression?

    Who bears the costs of negative externalities? For example, how much pollution do Boeing's suppliers create when shipping modules from Australia or Japan to Washington state? Who pays these costs? How much fuel is burned up moving modules from one place to another? Wouldn't it be less polluting and more efficient for these companies to build plants in Washington state?

    What are the negative effects of such profound economies of scale (EOS) during economic downturns, like now? We saw similar EOS almost wipe out whole industries. Herbert Spencer, the early sociologist, would tell us to ignore it, that it's a cycle of nature that leads to stronger human institutions. Maybe so. But, it also can and does lead to real human suffering. I don't know about others, but I do not feel consoled by being able to Facebook or Twitter about environmental and human devastation wrought by global EOS.

    Finally, what is the potential for one supplier in a chain of modules to hold out for ransom before delivery? With such a duck soup of global contractual law, I think a very real potential exists for this. It's not like you can run down to the Home Depot or the next competitor to replace the module. Remember, as Tapscott and Williams write that suppliers continually re-engineer the modules. A sponsoring company like Boeing may hold no proprietary rights, or may not have the core information that lets it re-create the module.

    This is all dicey to say the lest; yet, none of it is remotely approached in the first edition of the book. If not in the second edition, the third edition must also contain critiques or, minimally, questions about the potential negatives.
    4 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
  • Lo Gran
    4.0 out of 5 stars Great elightening and disturbin essay
    Reviewed in Spain on June 4, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    This is a great essay. It is particularly enlightening for those who come from the paper analogical era because it explains a world with different rules, somewhat of science fiction. This is why it is also disturbing, because this science fiction is not so, on the contrary it is reality. Though since the book was published things kept evolving and some new patterns should be taken into account, this essay is a must to anybody who wants to understand what business is about in the digital era.
    Report
  • Gerhard Fehr
    4.0 out of 5 stars Business Web 2.0 - Kooperation führt zu Erfolg
    Reviewed in Germany on October 10, 2007
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    Das Buch gibt einen guten Ueberglick über die derzeitigen Business Cases im web, auf sehr sachliche und interessante Weise. Gleichzeitig kann man lernen, dass sich grosse Firmen (als Beispiel IBM) bereits in den späten 90-iger Jahren entschlossen haben, ihre Software und Serverentwicklung teilweise in die Linux/Apache-Welt auszugliedern, und so nicht nur einen grossen Beitrag an diese "community" zu machen, aber auch sehr mit dieser neuen Ausrichtung zu profitieren.

    Das Buch beschreibt die verschieden Möglichkeiten der Kooperation im web ohne zu vergessen, dass "proprietäre" Systeme im traditionellen Sinne nicht überholt sind, aber nicht mehr für alle Unternehmensgebiete sinnvoll. Wie vor 20 Jahren das "Outsourcing" dazu geführt hat, dass Unternehmensbereiche ausgegliedert wurde, führt auch diese Entwicklung zu einer Konzentration auf das "Wesentliche" und einem "outsourcing" von Leistungen,welche man mit Dritten teilen möchte.

    Das Buch ist leicht lesbar und ist m.E. für Leser angedacht, die an den wirtschaftlichen Zusammenhängen des "Mitmachwebs" interessiert sind.
    Report
  • M Khalif
    5.0 out of 5 stars An insightful examination of the effect of mass collaboration
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    An insightful examination of the effect of mass collaboration upon the evolving world of business and information that covers some obvious and well known fields such as Wikipedia, but other less known areas such as Boeing and The Human Genome Project.
    Tapscotts message is very clear. The old style world of the hierarchical, executive centric model of corporate governance is dying, and a new more open world of open information, mass participation, and arguably democratic, mode of development is emerging. The implications of this are met with opposition, which Tapscott routinely explores, but argues that opposition is essentially futile. The successful corporations are those that have introduced greater leniency with intellectual property and patent laws, and even when those reluctant companies have had their intellectual property integrity compromised, they have nonetheless benefited from the innovation that mass collaboration brings.
    The way forward, Tapscott argues, is largely driven by the blogosphere, and ideagoras, similar in the way that Athenians and the inhabitants of Alexandria shared information in ancient times, albeit with the tools of mass communication.
    Tapscott differentiates between the Web, and the Web 2.0, in the sense that the former was the earlier version of the net, essentially more closed and generally with a read only format, and the latter being the more open, widely participated internet world of google, youtube, myspace, and the blogosphere.

    This has led to a revolution in the workplace wherein managers and executives frequently use the blogosphere for communication and increased participation with employees, wherein the employee/employer demarcation is increasingly been flattened.
    More than just an examination of internet based business revolution, Wikinomics is also a study of globalization wherein industries such as aviation are shown to be benefitting from the tools of mass collaboration in the same way that information services are basking in the information revolution.
    The only criticism is that Tapscott reiterates his central point on Mass Collaboration a little too frequently, and some chapters, particularly the early ones, do little more than reiterate the same point but with different words, but on the whole a rewarding read.
    Report
  • Andrea L.
    4.0 out of 5 stars un must
    Reviewed in Italy on April 19, 2014
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Grande libro, che spiega dalla base i fondamenti della wikinomics, il sistema economico che sta cambiando il mondo. Da leggere
    Report
  • Penny McEwen
    5.0 out of 5 stars complicated subject made easier to grasp
    Reviewed in Canada on December 29, 2015
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    helps a bit.. . .
    Report

Report an issue


Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report