Categories: graduate school

Imagine your a CEO of a struggling software company and your future looks uncertain. The company’s revenue is stagnant and your internal R&D team is not innovating new features and products fast enough. You have two choices to save your company:

1. Hire or consult the “best” people and increase your R&D resources, OR
2. Open your intellectual property to the public (open source) to stir innovation and create more value?

Many smart companies today would perform the latter.

Wikinomics, one of my three summer readings for grad school, talks about how the art of science and collaboration is emerging due to changes in technology and business.

“In the past, firms have relied heavily on closed, hierarchical approaches to producing and harnessing knowledge. Increasingly though, knowledge is the product of networked people and organizations looking for new solutions to specific problems. Collaboration, publication, peer production, and exchange of precompetitive information are now becoming key to success in the knowledge based economy.”

This book is very thought-provoking and provides great examples how the principles of Wikinomics poses threats to traditional business thinking and changes the “global playing field”. It highlights companies “peer-producing” success stories in great detail. However I wish it touched a little bit more on the business risks and social implications when opening your IP to the public and the challenges companies face on reaching an optimal ratio of internal to external innovation.

To learn how smart companies harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success, this is a good book full of examples.