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Wiki and collaberation
I found this article interesting written in Newsweek online byRachael King, "No Rest for the Wiki, The online tools for building collective info banks are making deeper inroads in corporations and rewriting the rules of collaboration" . What are the pros and cons' of the Wiki? Is our society ready for this much collaberation in the coorporate world?
Culture Shock
Over time, as wikis begin to get a critical mass of information, they tend to sprawl and become unwieldy. "You need some kind of person who sees the long-term consequences of not organizing," says the Marshall School's Majchrzak. Most often, individual contributors are not the people who will restructure existing content. Instead, that task is left to someone Majchrzak dubs the shaper—an employee who is willing to take time synthesizing information so it's easy to read. Executives need to encourage shapers as much as individual contributors. Otherwise, the wiki can become so unwieldy that nobody will use it, she says.
Others question whether large corporations are ready for wikis. "Most people and most companies don't really have a culture of collaboration and never have had one," says Alan Pelz-Sharpe, principal at CMS Watch, a research firm in Silver Spring, Md. "If you don't have it, all the software in the world won't give you one."
Intel's Moriarty says the tools themselves can be the catalyst for change. Intelpedia, for instance, is bringing people together and slicing through a ton of bureaucracy. "People are working on things independent of what they're told to work on," he adds. "It's connecting people globally." That's the best outcome possible in the wiki world.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc20070312_740461.htm
Culture Shock
Over time, as wikis begin to get a critical mass of information, they tend to sprawl and become unwieldy. "You need some kind of person who sees the long-term consequences of not organizing," says the Marshall School's Majchrzak. Most often, individual contributors are not the people who will restructure existing content. Instead, that task is left to someone Majchrzak dubs the shaper—an employee who is willing to take time synthesizing information so it's easy to read. Executives need to encourage shapers as much as individual contributors. Otherwise, the wiki can become so unwieldy that nobody will use it, she says.
Others question whether large corporations are ready for wikis. "Most people and most companies don't really have a culture of collaboration and never have had one," says Alan Pelz-Sharpe, principal at CMS Watch, a research firm in Silver Spring, Md. "If you don't have it, all the software in the world won't give you one."
Intel's Moriarty says the tools themselves can be the catalyst for change. Intelpedia, for instance, is bringing people together and slicing through a ton of bureaucracy. "People are working on things independent of what they're told to work on," he adds. "It's connecting people globally." That's the best outcome possible in the wiki world.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc20070312_740461.htm
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