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Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Alan Sklar (Narrator), Don Tapscott (Author), Anthony D. Williams (Author),
4.0 out of 5 stars 197 ratings
Editors' pick Best Nonfiction
In just the last few years, traditional collaboration in a meeting room, on a conference call, and even in a convention center has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.

Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the burgeoning growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.

A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the 21st century.

Based on a $9-million research project led by best-selling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing genomes, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding cures for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, and even building motorcycles. You'll read about:

  • Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc., CEO who used open-source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry.
  • Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production.
  • Mature companies, like Procter & Gamble, that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.

    An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the 21st century.
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Previous slide of product details
  1. Listening Length
    13 hours and 39 minutes
  2. Author
    Don Tapscott, see all
  3. Narrator
    Alan Sklar
  4. Audible release date
    April 6, 2007
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Tantor Audio
  7. ASIN
    B000P7V7E6
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
Next slide of product details
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Product details

Listening Length 13 hours and 39 minutes
Author Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams
Narrator Alan Sklar
Audible.com Release Date April 06, 2007
Publisher Tantor Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B000P7V7E6
Best Sellers Rank

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
197 global ratings

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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.

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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

"...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

"...This is a must read! Some reviewers are critical about the book containing consultantese and some self glorification by Tapscott...." 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!
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  • 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.
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  • 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
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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
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  • 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.. . .
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