I just read about this new initiative from Wharton through its newsletter, Knowledge@Wharton (which I highly recommend). From the blurb:
The project -- tentatively called We Are Smarter Than Me -- is an experiment to see whether a large community of business people can jointly author a book of the same name. Pearson will publish the book later this year. The book focuses on ways in which companies are learning to leverage social networks and the power of communities to improve their performance by allowing customers or others to take over functions typically performed by experts.
This is something to keep an eye on. Hopefully, we'll begin to see a lot more of this: A community puts forth its collective knowledge and a smaller group of editors culls the results into a manageable form that will then be redistributed to the community and beyond.
Follow this link for more information on We Are Smarter Than Me.
You raise a good point, Mark. We're still very early in all of this, so it may be premature to put high demands on outcomes. Particularly as it relates to understanding the creative process, this will be an interesting case study.
Posted by: Rob Fields | March 08, 2007 at 10:22
Nice stuff.
It is interesting but if the experience of Penguin books is anything to go by, the story of the collaboration may be more enlightening than the finished (?) product.
http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Posted by: Mark Earls | March 08, 2007 at 08:29