Wikinomics is about a new economic model that leverages the power of collaboration.  It is a concept that is built on the premise that openness is better than secretive platforms; that having partners is a better business proposition than having suppliers; that products designed by the consumers themselves are better than products dreamed up by engineers in a closed lab; that tapping resources throughout the world through a loosely-coupled collaboration infrastructure leads to better solutions and more innovation that a formal hierarchical structure with a limited number of resources.

In the article “Global Mass Collaboration – The Next Frontier” we started to explore the idea that global collaboration is changing the economic landscape and discussed how globalization, the open source movement and the world wide web were the catalysts to this revolution.  We also introduced the book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, where many of these concepts are discussed in detail.  In this article we will continue to explore ideas around wikis and review two start-up businesses that are starting to ride the wikinomics wave.

But before we go any further, let’s try to answer a fundamental question: What is a wiki?  The technical definition of a wiki is a software platform that allows people to openly create and edit web pages.  More broadly defined, it is a community that comes together to collaborate in order to achieve a common objective. Most people are familiar with Wikipedia, the global, multi-language online encyclopedia that was built by and is managed through volunteers.  Wikipedia is a great example of how this wiki concept can be applied.  But there are many other ideas that are built around the wiki theme, such as:

• InnoCentive – A web-based community that matches scientists with Research and Development projects.
• The Human Genome Project – A global collaboration to identify and map the genes in the human DNA.
• OpenWetWare – A forum for sharing information and know-how about biology and biological engineering.
• Scorecard – An open platform for sharing information about pollution in local communities.

As the power of wikinomics catches on, entrepreneurs are busy getting ready to serve this upcoming market.  A number of start-ups have emerged to supply social-networking and wikis to enterprises and to end-consumers in an effort to profit from this promising trend.  We will highlight two such companies here:

 

Socialtext

 

Socialtext provides enterprise social software for collaboration.  They have captured the best capabilities of blogs and wikis and brought them to the enterprise so that people can collaborate in a natural way.   As Socialtext CEO, Ross Mayfield, says, "Simple tools with simple rules yield the best results."

 

Mayfield makes the point that personal productivity tools like the ones developed by Microsoft have been centered on the individual users.   Other enterprise systems tend to be highly structured and rigid in nature.  Users don’t like these types of tools so they circumvent the systems and collaborate on email instead.  The problem is that email was not designed to be an efficient collaboration tool, and as a result the entire enterprise becomes less productive.

 

One remarkable aspect of Socialtext is that Mayfield has created a virtual company where everyone works from home, creating zero overhead.   “Every single thing we do is tapping into the network that we’ve been able to create, and then also eating our own dog food using a combination of Socialtext, Skype and FreeConference to run our entire company”.

 

Since 2002, over 2,000 organizations have joined the Socialtext network.   I think these guys have the right model and are on to something with huge potential

 

PBWiki

 

PBWiki stands for Peanut Butter Wiki.  The idea behind the name is that creating a wiki on the PBWiki site is just as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.  PBWiki was founded by three Stanford graduates, David Weekly, the CEO; Ramit Sethi, VP of Marketing and author of the popular I will teach you to be rich.com blog; and Nathan Schmidt, the chief technologist.

 

Just recently PBWiki received $2 million in VC funding as announced by Ramit in the post PBWiki raises $2 million.  The site caters to educators, businesses and any individual who can benefit from the power of easily setting up a wiki.

 

Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures is using PBWiki to get new ideas for a book.  You can contribute by adding a title and a brief description in the book ideas page of his wiki.  He is also looking for input to his next book as he explains in his blog post My Next Book: Letting a Hundred Flowers Blossom.  You can contribute by adding a chapter in the How to Change the World page of his wiki.

 

Wikis seem to a great way to build a community.  I would like to experiment with this concept and have therefore created a Worldwide Success wiki.  Currently there are two things this community can do in the wiki:

 

1. Provide suggestions on topics they would like to see discussed on this blog
2. Define success.  This will be a great experiment to see what definitions the wisdom of crowds can come up with

I would also like to hear from you on other ideas for the wiki.  You can access the Worldwide Success wiki using the password ‘mysuccess’. 

I am looking forward to your contributions.