Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2509 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-12
• Binding: Hardcover
• 408 pages

Management Today, August 2007
One of the best business books I have read in years. If you are running a business, you would be cavalier not to take on board its messages.

Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence
The best picture so far of the new world of enterprise, collaboration, innovation and value creation. This is a breathtaking piece of work.

Eric Schmidt, CEO Google
Wikinomics heralds the biggest change in collaboration to date... In order to understand the opportunities this presents for companies, read this book.

Customer Reviews

Essential book, limited shelf-life
This book is a tour de force in wiki-ness. Yes, it's a little uncritical but it's inspiring and readable. And, no doubt, does describe the state of the art etc etc

But if you don't read this before the end of 2008 (and that's possibly a little generous) there'll be no point. Think The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand or Release 2.0: a Design for Living in the Digital Age; everybody who's even vaguely familiar with these fields will find that they've absorbed all the content by virtue of diffusion. So it will be with this book.

They do a nice blog, though.

For now, there's still lots to learn but it'll be like one of those '500 Most Useful Websites' books by Xmas.

Falls short of an objective analysis of the mass collaboration
I'm sorry to disagree with most of the other Amazon reviewers but as someone who reads a lot of business books I was deeply disappointed with this book for the following reasons. First all the author ever sees are the increasing benefits and upsides to mass collaboration online. Arguments to the contrary are swiftly dismissed and the chapter on making money from mass collaboration is more of the investment now and profits will magically follow thinking that characterised the dotcom boom. Secondly the author is obsessed with the "revolution" that mass market collaboration is apparently creating in every aspect of society. While I don't want to underplay the importance of this trend, I find the term "revolution" is too strong (like Web 2.0) and the lack of reference to the precedents of mass collaboration disappointing(e.g. earlier online communities). Finally and frustrating the book is poorly edited and structured. The font size is tiny and the obscure chapter headings seem to overlap with one another. In short it is hard getting to the point with this book. I did, however, find within it some inspiring examples of mass collaboration that I hadn't previously heard of - for example the mining company example at the beginning. But overall I would not recommend this book - for me it simply a reflection of the euphoria that gripped the internet world back in the end of 2006 with the rising popularity of Facebook et al. The world has moved on since then.

This book needs editting and structure
This book is good as a rambling overview of the topic, if you like the US pop business book style. It has some memorable examples. But...

Don't buy this book if you want something practical and/or straight to the point. There's no obvious structure and there's a lot of padding. The only way to read it is cover-to-cover, really, which makes it frustrating as the meat of the book is so deeply buried and rushed through when you finally find it.

To be honest, a lot of the book can be summarised: "Chapter: Blah blah Linux blah Mozilla blah blah exciting and dynamic blah Facebook blah [REALLY INTERESTING EXAMPLE] blah future of communication blah good business sense blah blah Wikipedia. Next chapter: Blah blah Linux blah Mozilla blah blah dynamic and exciting..."

I was going to say this book is good if you're struggling to understand this whole 'New internet' thing. Then I remembered that when it name-drops Linux, Wikipedia, open source communities, etc (which is does constantly...) it does so assuming you already know what they are and how they work. So I don't really know who this book is for... ...erm, I guess buy this if you know what 'Open Source' means, know how Wikipedia works, but, er, don't know what they *mean*...

I guess I'd recommend this book if you know, use and understand all the above but have never reflected fully on their potential or their place in society.

Or, if you're in the Web 2.0 trade, enjoy a bit of back-slapping, and are looking to improve your sales pitch.