Command and control and the Wikiworld

The book Wikinomics presents some original and insightful takes on the big picture of where we’re heading with the unfolding information revolution . This is from the introduction :

“…four principles – openness, peering, sharing and acting globally – increasingly define how twenty first century corporations compete. This is very different from the hierarchical, closed, secretive and insular multi-national that dominated the previous century.”

“…the organisational values, skills, tools, processes, and architectures of the ebbing command-and-control economy are not simply outdated; they are hadicaps on the value creation process.”

“In an age where mass collaboration can reshape an industry overnight, the old hierarchical ways of organising work and innovation do not afford the level of agility, creativity and connectivity that companies require to remain competitive in today’s environment.”

It strikes me that this is especially true of large, globally dispersed organisations.

I’ve worked in small to medium enterprises / organisations, often under limited funding and it always struck me how much we could achieve in that environment on limited resources; compared to large well structured better funded multinationals. Maybe the emerging “wikinomics” will enable large multinationals to incorporate some of this agility and light footedness.