Just finished reading wikinomics and have reviewed it here. My advice? Definitely wait for the paperback and consider skipping it altogether. I’m an open-source and wiki fan and I found the book wildly wide-eyed and optimistic. Moreover, it is filled with unsubstantiated claims about the future of the economy and corporations. Most frustratingly, for a book about mass collaboration, the authors never get granular about their definition of collaboration…
Read it all here if you are interested. Plus here are a couple of alternative books that are much, much better, especially this one, which I’ll be talking about more soon.
eaves.ca 
Thanks for the review. I’d thought about picking up the book but the summary on the dust jacket put me off. So instead I bought A Vanished World — Muslims, Christians and Jews in Medieval Spain. I’m about a quarter of the way through the book and so far it’s pretty interesting and relevant given the times we live in.
That said I think there are already models for using collaborative tools for business. My company uses them to good effect to collaborate internally and also with partners and customers. I think it’s generally agreed that there are some basic infrastructure issues that need to be addressed before it can really be used effectively within general society.
Thanks for the review. I’d thought about picking up the book but the summary on the dust jacket put me off. So instead I bought A Vanished World — Muslims, Christians and Jews in Medieval Spain. I’m about a quarter of the way through the book and so far it’s pretty interesting and relevant given the times we live in. That said I think there are already models for using collaborative tools for business. My company uses them to good effect to collaborate internally and also with partners and customers. I think it’s generally agreed that there are some basic infrastructure issues that need to be addressed before it can really be used effectively within general society.
Thank Kim, I once lived in the south of Spain for 6 months so your book sounds doubly compelling.
I think there are lots of great tools that help enable collaboration. But I want to distinguish between exchanging information and collaboration. Lots of technologies help us exchange information (which is great and important) but let us not think that that means we are better working together. Collaboration means dealing and working with differences, which technology rarely enables. That tends to be a social skill… one that increased communication will likely make more important.
Thank Kim, I once lived in the south of Spain for 6 months so your book sounds doubly compelling. I think there are lots of great tools that help enable collaboration. But I want to distinguish between exchanging information and collaboration. Lots of technologies help us exchange information (which is great and important) but let us not think that that means we are better working together. Collaboration means dealing and working with differences, which technology rarely enables. That tends to be a social skill… one that increased communication will likely make more important.
Leaving this comment here ’cause I can’t on the review page … you give it a rating of “5”, but neglect to mention the scale. :)
Leaving this comment here ’cause I can’t on the review page … you give it a rating of “5”, but neglect to mention the scale. :)