Everything Based on Communities

The core operating and organizational assumptions used by Wikipedia, Google and their counterparts are numerous; I have chosen five to focus on. In the corporate cultures of these “Peer Pioneers” (2006, Tapscott and Williams, p. 32) one of the basic principals is the assumption that making money is less important than making information more accessible to society. A second principal is an almost libertarian trust in human beings to rise to the occasion of intelligent participation on the whole. The third assumption I will discuss is the belief in the dominance of ideas above all other commodity. The fourth is the observation of how quickly the business and social world is changing due to technology, and that it is better to be a leader in the change than to be left behind. And the fifth core assumption these peer producers share is the observation that consumers enjoy being involved in co-creating their products and their information (p. 70), and that the more minds that are involved in a project, the better.
Perhaps the most baffling thing about this shift in thinking is the change in paradigm regarding money. The classic cliché from the 80s, “do what you love, the money will follow,” has become ever more real in this information age that is fed on creativity. Wikipedia founders are criticized for their lack of a plan to make money, yet in Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Tapscott and Williams point out that not only may Wikipedia end up making huge profits on publishing books of the compiled thoughts of their many users (p. 77), but that many such companies have created economic profit in collective rather than individual benefits (p.91) There is also a shift in where value is perceived to come from, and the time frame it takes to “harvest that value” (p.92). In The Google Story (2005, Vise, p.50) the founders’ professor Dennis Allison is quoted, saying, “they are really driven by a vision of how things ought to be, and not to make money” (p. 50). Both Wikipedia and Google shared this vision of a world where information is accessible to everyone for free, and in a counterintuitive process, this vision became profitable.
A core operating principal that Wikipedia relies on is the belief that with a few geniuses at the steering wheel, mass participants of humanity can come up with a collectively intelligent product or service, and even will be able to self-regulate (2006, Tapscott and Williams, p.73). In The Google Story founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page relied on a core operating principal of collective intelligence when they assumed that the websites that the most people had visited were the most desirable websites in a search (2005, Vise, p. 55). They used the same reliance on collective competence when they refused to advertise other than word of mouth and in-group buzz (p. 95), trusting that the word would get around.
The third core operating assumption is that ideas are the most valuable resource a company can gain. Some of these ideas come from the public, as in the Goldcorp example on page 9 in the introduction of Wikinomics (2006, Tapscott and Williams). In Google’s corporation, employees are expected to spend 20% of their time developing theoretical ideas (2005, Vise, p.7) and Google’s dominance in the field has relied on numerous employee innovations in the world of ideas ( p. 101).
Fourth, these organizations are aware of the end of an era in terms of how human structures have typically been arranged. In Wikinomics (2006, Tapscott and Williams), this fall of the old forms is referred to as “the perfect storm” (p. 34), and is seen as a thing to be celebrated rather than feared. The founders of Google (2005, Vise) summed up their forward thinking attitude with their key phrase “a healthy disregard for the impossible” (p. 10). What has been impossible is now possible, and the possibilities in that are endless. There is a brand new playing field, and the winners will be the ones making up the games. The companies who are to be considered peer pioneers are leading the changes rather than responding to them.
Fifth, these companies have learned that consumers like to be involved. People like word of mouth; people like to be part of the buzz. Unlike the past when consumers were considered passive people that simply buy merchandise, consumers are now “pro-sumers” by the new business paradigm, and their ideas and participation are valued on every level of business, from brainstorming to execution to marketing.
Corporations that work with these core operating and organizational assumptions are growing, and most touch our lives every day. An example in my field of work is an article I read recently in The Toledo Blade in which the author asserted that health care will soon be dominated by website oriented, participatory communities of patients and people seeking wellness. It is that understanding that community is more powerful than isolation that drives the new Wikipedia and Google corporations. What has seemed idealistic is now capitalistic, and the world will never be the same.








References

Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony (2006). Wikinomics; How Mass Communication Changes
Everything. New York, New York: Penguin Group


Vise, David (2005). The Google Story. New York, New York: Bantam Dell


Landro, Laura, “Social networking on the Web Comes to Health Care,” post_gazette.com, 12-29-06, http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06363/749317-96.stm