Management Lessons from Wikinomics
Though I have been a little late and a little slow in catching up with this remarkable book written by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams describing of some of the powerful trends of our times, here are some of the learnings from this book nevertheless and I would highly recommend it for everyone who is perplexed with the popularity of Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Linux, etc and wants to understand the social and economic dynamics behind these. The trends that these represent are becoming much larger by the day and spawning new social and economic paradigms, which were non-existent a few years ago.
The new web is all about co-creation A read/write web as compared to read-only web of the past and its given fillip to powerful social and economic trends that were nascent earlier in various places. This is fundamentally changing the way we think about innovation, value creation, consumers, intellectual property, workplace semantics, organizational structure and communication. These creates new management challenges and new opportunities for value creation and our future success as individual and organizations alike will heavily depend on our ability to understand, manage, transform and utilize these new paradigms. Here are a few pointers to some of the powerful trends that are already unmistakable in their economic and social impact.
Open Source:
Open source has become a formidable competitor to the companies selling packaged/licensed software. A large credit for this goes to integration/implementation partners like IBM, who adopted the open source software with open arms in order to reduce total cost of ownership for their customers and to rid themselves (and their customers) off the clutch of ISVs. Other reason has been monopoly in the field of basic infrastructure software like OS, Database, etc leading to slow innovation in these fields leaving the field open for open source community to lead the charge (and the result is Linux and MySQL in the fields of OS and Database respectively.)The important point to note is that open sourcing is no longer limited to software development other fields have started adopting the same model to speed up the innovation. The classic example is Human Genome Project which led to the classification of all the genes and standardization of gene discovery and search algorithms. This can lead to much faster rate of the discovery of genetic medicine so much needed to fight the diseases. In fact no life changing drug has been discovered after antibiotics in 1920 despite trillions of dollars spent in R&D by governments and pharmaceutical companies. Now the hope is high that open sourcing of parts of this R&D value chain can end this draught. As a manager, it’s going to be a necessary skill to be able to manage open source projects or at least manage the internal adaptation of an open source project. Also will be important to have the knowledge on how to best use the open sources as a complimentary value add for the organization. This can lead to newer models of project management and organization structure within the company that can be very powerful and engaging like internal open sourcing allowing people to congregate around projects that they are most interested in. Dynamic teams vs static silos.
Prosumers:
This is a natural evolution of customization and personalization of products and services with the difference that consumers put their time and energy in creating a product and service along with the organization. This not only creates higher value service/product for the consumer but the organization can also walk away with new products or ideas that go beyond one customer. One of the prime example is Lego Mindstorms (http://mindstorms.lego.com/) when Lego released the development kit for it’s legendary toy, the committed user community lapped it up and came up with great new variants of the toy, which the users shared with the community and the company alike leading to higher sales for the toy and creation of a committed community of consumers who swear by Lego. A manager needs to know the customers of its products and services by heart and how to tap their potential to add value to the product and services. A user knows the product best and, given the right tools and platform, can come up with the best next generation enhancements and variants of that product. The ability to find out how and where customers can add value will be a critical skill for business managers and leaders alike.
Open knowledge sharing:
Clichéd it may sound but the old adage that knowledge increases by sharing is true in today’s time as well and more so in the fast paced world of business and innovation. The companies are adapting to sharing their proprietary knowledge with their competitors and public alike in order to unleash much wider mental power and professional army that they can command on their own and thus increasing the pace of innovation. For example, Goldcorp decided to open up its vast geographical database about gold deposits in its mines and challenged the world to find more of the precious metal leading to discovery of large gold deposits in its mines declared empty by Goldcorp’s own geologists. This is the power of open knowledge sharing leading to much better results for all. The same phenomenon is being played out in a lot of other industries breaking silos of knowledge so that a much bigger pie can be created. The same silos of knowledge and skills exist inside organizations as well and a manager needs to look for ways to tear down these silos to unleash a new wave of innovation easier said than done but that’s what is going to distinguish a great manager with a good one. Boundryless (a term coined by Jack Welch) is not just a buzzword but a strategic cultural differentiator.
Participation platforms:
A participation platform is a critical enabler to let people collaborate that ensures sum of parts is more than the individual contributions. Companies can create and leverage these platforms to open source some of the work, to allow consumers turn ‘prosumers’, to create shared pool of knowledge and to continually refine the ideas and solutions. Leveraging the existing participation platforms for faster innovation and development and creation of new platforms wherever the need arises is going to be a critical skill for a manager. These platforms have applicability within the organizations as well; especially large multi-nationals that need to look for ways to optimize the output of their diverse workforce.
Though I have been a little late and a little slow in catching up with this remarkable book written by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams describing of some of the powerful trends of our times, here are some of the learnings from this book nevertheless and I would highly recommend it for everyone who is perplexed with the popularity of Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Linux, etc and wants to understand the social and economic dynamics behind these. The trends that these represent are becoming much larger by the day and spawning new social and economic paradigms, which were non-existent a few years ago.
The new web is all about co-creation A read/write web as compared to read-only web of the past and its given fillip to powerful social and economic trends that were nascent earlier in various places. This is fundamentally changing the way we think about innovation, value creation, consumers, intellectual property, workplace semantics, organizational structure and communication. These creates new management challenges and new opportunities for value creation and our future success as individual and organizations alike will heavily depend on our ability to understand, manage, transform and utilize these new paradigms. Here are a few pointers to some of the powerful trends that are already unmistakable in their economic and social impact.
Open Source:
Open source has become a formidable competitor to the companies selling packaged/licensed software. A large credit for this goes to integration/implementation partners like IBM, who adopted the open source software with open arms in order to reduce total cost of ownership for their customers and to rid themselves (and their customers) off the clutch of ISVs. Other reason has been monopoly in the field of basic infrastructure software like OS, Database, etc leading to slow innovation in these fields leaving the field open for open source community to lead the charge (and the result is Linux and MySQL in the fields of OS and Database respectively.)The important point to note is that open sourcing is no longer limited to software development other fields have started adopting the same model to speed up the innovation. The classic example is Human Genome Project which led to the classification of all the genes and standardization of gene discovery and search algorithms. This can lead to much faster rate of the discovery of genetic medicine so much needed to fight the diseases. In fact no life changing drug has been discovered after antibiotics in 1920 despite trillions of dollars spent in R&D by governments and pharmaceutical companies. Now the hope is high that open sourcing of parts of this R&D value chain can end this draught. As a manager, it’s going to be a necessary skill to be able to manage open source projects or at least manage the internal adaptation of an open source project. Also will be important to have the knowledge on how to best use the open sources as a complimentary value add for the organization. This can lead to newer models of project management and organization structure within the company that can be very powerful and engaging like internal open sourcing allowing people to congregate around projects that they are most interested in. Dynamic teams vs static silos.
Prosumers:
This is a natural evolution of customization and personalization of products and services with the difference that consumers put their time and energy in creating a product and service along with the organization. This not only creates higher value service/product for the consumer but the organization can also walk away with new products or ideas that go beyond one customer. One of the prime example is Lego Mindstorms (http://mindstorms.lego.com/) when Lego released the development kit for it’s legendary toy, the committed user community lapped it up and came up with great new variants of the toy, which the users shared with the community and the company alike leading to higher sales for the toy and creation of a committed community of consumers who swear by Lego. A manager needs to know the customers of its products and services by heart and how to tap their potential to add value to the product and services. A user knows the product best and, given the right tools and platform, can come up with the best next generation enhancements and variants of that product. The ability to find out how and where customers can add value will be a critical skill for business managers and leaders alike.
Open knowledge sharing:
Clichéd it may sound but the old adage that knowledge increases by sharing is true in today’s time as well and more so in the fast paced world of business and innovation. The companies are adapting to sharing their proprietary knowledge with their competitors and public alike in order to unleash much wider mental power and professional army that they can command on their own and thus increasing the pace of innovation. For example, Goldcorp decided to open up its vast geographical database about gold deposits in its mines and challenged the world to find more of the precious metal leading to discovery of large gold deposits in its mines declared empty by Goldcorp’s own geologists. This is the power of open knowledge sharing leading to much better results for all. The same phenomenon is being played out in a lot of other industries breaking silos of knowledge so that a much bigger pie can be created. The same silos of knowledge and skills exist inside organizations as well and a manager needs to look for ways to tear down these silos to unleash a new wave of innovation easier said than done but that’s what is going to distinguish a great manager with a good one. Boundryless (a term coined by Jack Welch) is not just a buzzword but a strategic cultural differentiator.
Participation platforms:
A participation platform is a critical enabler to let people collaborate that ensures sum of parts is more than the individual contributions. Companies can create and leverage these platforms to open source some of the work, to allow consumers turn ‘prosumers’, to create shared pool of knowledge and to continually refine the ideas and solutions. Leveraging the existing participation platforms for faster innovation and development and creation of new platforms wherever the need arises is going to be a critical skill for a manager. These platforms have applicability within the organizations as well; especially large multi-nationals that need to look for ways to optimize the output of their diverse workforce.
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