Mass Collaboration at the RSA

Don Tapscott & Antony D. Williams

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Portfolio, 2006, 658.046 TAP

A wiki is a website that allows visitors to add, remove, and edit content, opening up new opportunities for mass collaboration. The full implications of this new method of exchanging ideas and information are still emerging. Some leaders are sceptical of the ability of large and interchangeable online communities to create value, and are also weary of the challenge they may present to traditional forms of business and government in terms of ownership and control of information and services. However many groups, the RSA included, are excited by the possibilities wiki's create. Wikinomics is a book that makes a major contribution to our general understanding of the potential of Wiki's, and is based on a $9 million research project lead by co-author Don Tapscott. The RSA itself will be hoping to publicise the potential value of mass online collaboration and discuss some of the issues surrounding it through a lecture taking place on Friday 25 May entitled The Social Impact of the Web: Society, Government and the Internet.

With 26,000 Fellows dedicated to supporting our work, and each able to contribute their own individual ideas and perspective, the RSA is currently making every effort to get fellows talking and working together both in person and via the Internet...

Our Programme Department is currently running its very own Ideas Wiki, through which any Fellow can contribute to the development of ideas for future RSA projects.

The RSA Fellows Forum is another more general means by which any fellow can start or contribute to a debate. The current question being posed in our Fellow2Fellow feature is 'Is yours a responsible workplace?’. Why not log in and get involved?