Wikinomics summary

Within the last 25 years, the internet has become a significant part of the lives of more than one third of the global population, and enabled us to communicate and cooperate with people all around the world on a massive scale.

In fact, this easy access to information technologies is one of the primary tools for active participation in numerous areas of life traditionally reserved for certain elites, such as scientists or academics.

So what actually makes collaborative efforts successful?

For starters, both sides of a collaboration must be open to each other. This means having a willingness to let external talents contribute, thereby making collaborations possible. One great example of this is Linden Labs’ game Second Life, which is totally unscripted and allows users to create every aspect of the game from scratch.

Companies that don’t adequately adopt the principles of mass collaboration will ultimately be left in the dust; they simply won’t be able to produce enough value quickly enough, and would also lose the interest of the consumer.

In fact, today’s open markets offer more opportunities to customers and – the flip side – more competition for companies. This is because mass collaboration helps companies not only to better develop their products, but also to better market them to their customers.

Although mass collaboration is an overwhelmingly beneficial strategy, it also involves certain risks.

For example, finding the right ideas and implementing them consumes a lot of time, energy, and resources, and in some cases turn out to be very expensive. This is especially true in underdeveloped idea markets, where finding the right partners for a collaboration can be tough. Even worse, if you are especially unlucky, competitors can swoop in and take advantage of the same ideas you want to exploit before you have a chance to get them off the ground.

While the protection of intellectual property is part of the foundation of monetary success, companies must be prepared to share at least a certain amount of their intelligence in order to collaborate effectively.

Intellectual property is important because it is necessary for commercial success. In a world where money matters, “intellectual communism” – where one offers innovation and value without receiving monetary compensation – simply doesn’t provide incentives.

An effective collaboration starts in-house – indeed, the implementation of the principles of mass collaboration within one’s own organization is as important as finding good global partners.

In fact, many companies already adopt this mindset: As the cost of finding partners continues to sink, it becomes more lucrative for businesses to focus on a core activity and then to outsource other functions whenever it is cheaper to do so. Since performing all the necessary tasks to produce a product in-house can be very expensive, it is only logical to delegate certain tasks to suppliers.

Ultimately, mass collaboration is greatly beneficial to companies: it helps them to expand their operations, produce novel and exciting innovations, and create value in general.

But perhaps most importantly, mass collaboration can bolster your bottom line: by collaborating with others on a massive scale, companies can squeeze more from less. For instance, mass collaborations can help reduce a company’s expenditures by splitting the cost burden between themselves and the cooperating companies, or they can boost their profits by sharing “useless” inventions.

Technology and the opportunities that it creates are an engine for social development. As a result, global collaboration is no longer limited to creating intellectual property, but has evolved into a culture in itself.

The digital era has changed the way people think and therefore the way society as a whole functions. Indeed, the “Net Generation,” which has grown up amid ever-developing technology, has its own unique values, such as an emphasis on personal rights, co-creation of media content and skeptical views of authority, while valuing qualities like speed, transparency and playfulness.