Special Report September 28, 2010, 4:49PM EST

Book Excerpt: Macrowikinomics (Part 1)

(page 2 of 2)

SPECIAL REPORT

Macrowikinomics

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…[M]any of our institutions are stalled, lacking vitality, leadership, and dynamism. It's like every last ounce of oxygen has been squeezed out, leaving a mess of deflated expectations and chronically underutilized resources. This apparent paralysis, in turn, begs some pretty fundamental questions: if the knowledge, leadership, and capability required to solve the really tough problems can't be found in the corporate headquarters and national capitals around the globe, will it be found at all? And if so, where will the new insights and leadership come from? Indeed, if our problems are not solvable by fine-tuning existing institutions, what new models and structures should replace them? Are you, wearing your various hats as an employee, manager, learner, teacher, entrepreneur, voter, consumer, community member, or citizen of the world, prepared to take on a larger role in reinventing our beleaguered institutions? What must be done to reboot business and the world and how can you participate?

These are just some of the tough questions we tackle in this book…. As citizens, and as leaders within our organizations, we need to look beyond the borders of nations and think about society in broad, global terms. If our problems are global in scale, then we need to come together as global citizens to solve them. A system erected around the primacy of national and corporate self-interests just isn't going to cut it for this century.

The good news is that while many institutions are in various stages of decline, for each we can now see the clear contours of fresh thinking, new approaches, and rebirth. To be sure, collaborative innovation can have downsides—including tough adjustments for industries whose business models were based on scarcities that no longer exist.…

The growing prominence of collaborative endeavors also raises a number of tough questions about the roles and responsibilities of different actors in society. Can we really rely on the self-organized masses to deliver criticalvservices such as compiling life-and-death information in a crisis? What happens if the funding dries up or people lose interest and move on to something else? Who will take responsibility if something goes wrong, or claim success when things go right? And who's ultimately accountable when everyone is on everyone else's turf?

In the old paradigm, there were clear roles and responsibilities. In the new world of wikinomics, the lines between sectors and institutions are blurring. Nonprofits increasingly act like entrepreneurial start-ups. Businesses are taking on some of the functions of government. Governments are caught in a network of powers and counterinfluences of which they are just a part. And though most people recognize that problems get solved more quickly when governments, businesses, nonprofits, and citizens work together, there is still a dearth of understanding about how to make partnerships across sectors work at the pace of wikinomics. These are just some of the genuine concerns that we will return to throughout the book.

Excerpted from Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams by arrangement with Portfolio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., Copyright © Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, 2010.

Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World, is the founder and chairman of nGenera Insight. Other books he has authored or co-authored include Wikinomics, Paradigm Shift, The Digital Economy, and Growing Up Digital. Anthony D. Williams is an author, researcher and former lecturer at the London School of Economics. He is vice-president and executive editor at New Paradigm and co-author of Wikinomics.