A Different View

For those of you who have read the last couple of posts you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this guy and what rock did he crawl out from under”? I admit that some of my writing over the last couple of days appears to condemn technology, mass collaboration, and everything that has to do with Wikinomics; but that is far from the case. I simply have questions on how all of this is really going to work from the common person perspective. We have had many problems with the economy over the last several months, and now we are on the verge of a major economic bailout by the federal government. All this because of a new economic revolution where we saw cheap variable interest rate mortgages, and 125% mortgages that allowed millions of consumers who could not afford a home to own one. Good in principle, but bad in reality.

The same could be true of this thinking. Mass collaboration is great as long as all the equity in intellectual property is shared with everyone. However, what I see is large corporations taking advantage of mass collaboration as a way to acquire new inventions worth millions of dollars for little investment. Good for the corporation, but potentially unfair to the creator. One of the examples in the book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams outline the practices of Proctor & Gamble. Companies can create ways to reward inventors for new creations, and in there example one chemist was paid $25,000 for his creation. But how much has the company made on the invention? Many could argue that the payment satisfied the chemist, and was what he accepted reasonable for his work. But whether or not it was fair compensation was never discussed, and thus my questions about this new way of doing business.

In contrast to all the questions I have about Wikinomics, there are many advantages to acting globally. There is no way around the fact that the world is closing in, and it just gets easier and easier to communicate with people throughout the world. The days of where a persons’ sphere of influence at work and home was bound by the number of people he or she knew from face to face interaction is a thing of the past. This new environment provides a great environment for teams from around the world to participate in projects, become close, and create trust without ever meeting in person.