Open kimono
I first heard about Don Tapscott in 2000 when his book - Digital Capital - was made mandatory reading at my previous company. This was the time when the hype around web services was accelerating and the mantra of the day was 'business webs'. His new book - Wikinomics - is (again) a fairly accurate snapshot of the current business milieu (the Web 2.0 era) and how it affects companies.
If you're already familiar with collaborative software development (e.g. Linux), collaborative editing (e.g. Wikipedia), tagging (e.g. del.icio.us, flickr) and the general Web 2.0 buzz, a lot of this book will be feel like old material. What's was new (and interesting) to me was the application of the principles of openness and collaboration by established companies (e.g. P&G). In fact, the first chapter describes how a struggling mining company (you can't get more old economy than that) turned the tide by using the intellectual power of people outside the company. Don's premise is simple: use the power of your customers, partners, suppliers to co-design, create, market etc. In short, he urges companies to follow an open kimono policy.
His argument is compelling when he talks about success stories such as Amazon and eBay. It's easy to see how Amazon, for example, adds value to its platform by allowing its customers to review books, maintain wishlists etc. It's in fact one of the main reasons I prefer Amazon to other online stores when searching for my next read ("Customers who bought this item also bought..").
What this book doesn't do however is provide a compelling playbook for companies looking to follow an open kimono policy. Take an example of a mortgage company. How would customers add value in processing a loan? Can one see customers co-creating financial products? The answers are not so clear. What's lacking is a methodology for judging what activities truly add value and what activities don't in an expanded value chain. Companies simply cannot open up their secrets to their competitors willy nilly without a strategy for how the value chain would work. Although I don't buy all of Don's hype, I do agree that companies need to start thinking about how they would operate in the Web 2.0 era. Innovative companies are emerging (witness the rise of social lending companies such as Zopa and Prosper in the lending space for example) that potentially threathen existing business models.
