wikinomics –collaborative workspaces google the phrase google documents watch the video what is...

Wikinomics

– Collaborative Workspaces• Google the phrase Google Documents

• Watch the video

• What is the main problem that Google Docs is trying to solve?

• Work in groups of three and sit near each other.

• Have one person sign up (or use an existing Google login)

• invite your two other group members

• Create and upload a collaborative Word document

• Create and upload a collaborative Excel spreadsheet

• Have all three group members contribute to these documents

Wikinomics

Digital Collaboration

• breaks traditional hierarchies• groups become self-organized and collaborate

For use with Strategic Electronic Marketing: Managing E-Business, 2e

Copyright 2003 South-Western College Publishing

Chapter 1 Slide: 3

Wikinomics

Digital Collaboration • Geek Squad

– Robert Stephens recognized that many people would pay for relatively simple computer issues (home networking, virus problems…)

– by 2002, 60 employees and $3 000 000/year

– acquired by Best Buy and now 12, 000 service agents and $1 billion in services with 700 locations

For use with Strategic Electronic Marketing: Managing E-Business, 2e

Copyright 2003 South-Western College Publishing

Chapter 1 Slide: 4

Wikinomics


– Stephens is now leading Best Buy in an employee collaborative revolution based on his Geek Squad model

– has acted as a launch pad for a national computer services business with a Geek Squad in every Best Buy

Wikinomics


– Geek Squad attracts and keeps talent largely because of fun work environment

– employees are allowed to drive and develop innovation

Wikinomics


– Stephens set up an elaborate Wiki system for collaboration

– however, employees weren’t really using it– he later discovered that they had been collaborating

instead through an on-line game (Battlefield 2 for the geeks in the class)

– this could be considered a bottom-up communications strategy

Wikinomics


– Stephens then enlisted the Geek Squad employees to design Geek Squad products based on their experiences in the stores

– came up with an innovative, award-winning, cap-less memory stick

Wikinomics

Bottom-Up Digital Collaboration • Xerox

– Chief Technology Officer decided to create Executive-Level Technology Strategy Documents via Wiki

– normally controlled from the top of the hierarchy

– she opened up the document to all researchers in the R&D group

– expects to get more robust input and a competitive advantage

– bottom-up collaboration challenges the notion that lower-level employees need extensive structure and direction

Wikinomics

Digital Collaboration Effects • Teams

– Traditional corporate teams tended to be fixed and long-term

– new self-organized approach is developing– many employees now work from home or on the

road and collaborate from a distance – now teams are often more temporary, forming

around certain projects

Wikinomics

Digital Collaboration Effects • Time Allocation

– Google insists that its employees spend 20% of their time on personal projects

– Company believes in collaboration and self-organization

– boosts creativity– tracks projects that employees work on– creates unplanned business ventures

Wikinomics

Digital Collaboration Effects • Decision-Making

– large companies (HP, Siemens, Microsoft…) have set up internal prediction markets

– set up questions such as sales forecasts– invite collaborators to buy stock in the question and

have them trade based on their confidence in the answer

– often better at predicting than experts– taps collective intelligence in and out of the

organization

Wikinomics

Digital Collaboration Effects • Resource Allocation

– similar internal markets are being used to trade organization resources

– HP has tested this using computing power and conference rooms as commodities

– like an eBay for resources that prices and allocates internal resources on demand

Wikinomics

Digital Collaboration Effects • Corporate Communications

– Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz– communicates to all levels of the organization via

his blog