Forget everything you know about the way we do business. Mass collaboration is revolutionizing the corporation, the economy, and nearly every aspect of management. In this seven-part series, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, co-authors of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, due out Jan. 2, explain new business models that will empower the prepared firm and destroy those that fail to adjust. For more information see wikinomics.com
Walk into a typical office less than a century ago and one would expect to see long rows of desks, regimented in army fashion, with typists clicking away from nine to five -- all under a managerial ethos that borrowed heavily from the military's command-and-control structure.
But if an army marching in lockstep to tightly arranged military music is a metaphor for yesterday's workplace, the workplace of the future will be more like a jazz ensemble, where musicians improvise creatively around an agreed key, melody, and tempo.
Mass collaboration is already transforming the way goods and services are created throughout the economy, and it is now becoming a growing force in today's workplace, including a few of the world's largest companies.
Much of this is due to a younger generation of workers that embraces new Web-based tools in a way that often confounds older generations but promises real advantages for companies that adapt their style of working.
Having been nourished on instant messaging, blogs, wikis, chat groups, playlists, peer-to-peer file sharing, and online multiplayer video games, the Net Generation (as Don dubbed them in his 1987 book Growing Up Digital) will increasingly bring a new collaborative ethos into the workplace.
Smart firms understand that harnessing mass collaboration in the workplace is about more than the company blog. They're getting a jump start on the wiki workplace by leveraging the same brand of self-organization that powers some of the Web's most exciting entities.
After all, some 16,000 people are actively peer-producing Wikipedia. More than a hundred million people collaborate on YouTube. Thousands of programmers contribute to the Linux operating system. While 140,000 independent developers build applications and businesses on Amazon. If these large-scale collaborations can transform the marketplace, surely they can revolutionize the workplace too.
One company that understands this is IBM. In September, 2006, it invited employees from more than 160 countries -- along with their clients, business partners, and even family members -- to join in a massive, wide-open brainstorming session it called the InnovationJam.
Over the course of two 72-hour sessions, IBM engaged more than 100,000 participants in a series of moderated online discussions. Their combined insights surfaced breakthrough innovations that IBMers expect will transform industries, improve human health, and help protect the environment over the coming decades.
CEO Sam Palmisano believes so strongly in the concept that he's committed up to $100-million (U.S.) to develop the ideas with the most social and economic potential. Now that's putting your money where your mouth is.
Meanwhile at Google, employees are required to dedicate 20 per cent of their time to personal projects -- projects that interest employees but needn't slot neatly into Google's predefined road maps. In keeping with its belief in collaboration and encouraging self-organization, the company tracks the pet projects that employees conjure up.
"Virtually all of the product ideas in Google come from the 20 per cent of the time employees work on their own projects," Google CEO Eric Schmidt says.
Where could this go next? Why not try "wikifying" the sales playbook. After all, don't sales people in the field have the most knowledge about what does and doesn't work with customers? Capturing all these insights in a wiki would create a living repository of sales knowledge that's updated on a daily basis. What else could you co-create with employees for better results?
Loosening organizational hierarchies and giving more power to employees can lead to faster innovation, lower cost structures, greater agility, improved responsiveness to customers, and more authenticity and respect in the marketplace. But companies must work hard to realize these advantages. Most companies are led by baby-boomers, a generation who grew up using typewriters, telephones, commuter cars and old styles of collaboration, and will have a difficult time changing its work routine. Technology may open doors, but it can't force people to walk through them.
Don Tapscott is CEO of New Paradigm, a technology and business think tank, and the author of 10 books about information technology in business and society, including Paradigm Shift, Growing Up Digital.
Anthony D. Williams is an author and researcher with experience in the impact of new technologies on social and economic life. He is vice- president and executive editor at New Paradigm.
Wikinomics
Don Tapscott