Wikinomics
I just finished reading it a day or two ago.
It's an OK book. Overall there wasn't much new to me, as I read many
of the same sources as the authors (Don Tapscott and Anthony D.
Williams) on a daily basis. The book is full of rah-rah enthusiasm
about all things Web 2.0. I didn't find too many original nuggets
worth writing about, but the authors do make an interesting argument
for opening up internal data to potential collaborators via an API.
At the same time, there were several things in the book that were just
grating to me, and I largely disagree with them. Here's a gem (page
287): "The Apache web server, for example, would be nowhere if not for
the leadership and resources IBM dedicated to help establish the
Apache Software Foundation..." Come on ;) httpd had many millions of
installations before the legal formation of the foundation, with no
signs of a slowdown in adoption. IBM helped, but the authors go too
far I think.
The authors have issues with the natural limits on team size that
Malcolm Gladwell espouses in The Tipping Point, claiming that the
~150-person limit is outdated and useless, and that teams of tens of
thousands of people can be harnessed and organized towards a common
goal. But they don't say how... And I think Gladwell's book is far
better researched.
They also diss Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat ("an otherwise
helpful book", page 90), saying that "like many critics, Friedman is
not seeing the forest for the trees." I wonder if the authors have
spent all their time in the forest (aka The Ivory Tower, sometimes aka
Silicon Valley) recently, because I do think they've got it wrong here
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