We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business

I had the exciting opportunity to participate in this "wik-experiment" of the book by being one of the authors. It was a fascinating experience to visit the site and to see my thoughts and writings reconfigured by another author who may have been coming at the material from a different direction. Sometimes I found new insights consistent with my own thoughts or elaborated through the inclusion of someone else's experience. However, another occasions I found that my writing has been transformed into something that I did not intend, and with which I might even disagree. I also enjoyed my frequent discussions with Jon Spector, a close friend and one of the people conceived the idea for this book. The evolution and final publishing of the book took much more effort than meets the eye. Overall I am pleased with how the book came out. It is a little light for my taste, but a great outcome for this noble experiment. Maybe there is some wisdom in crowds. Mitchell Weisberg

Not since 1440 when Guttenberg made it all possible has a printed book had thousands of contributors, who acted as peeroneers (pioneers) in the conceptual open source Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everythingframework this book covers. MIGHTY WE BOOK is the first of a new genre of books to follow in this new internet era, and they will alter the world knowledge base in ways we can not imagine. Plus, this book is a collector's item - buy your hardcover while you can - or miss the collector's library. Kudos to Wharton, the authors and their exceptional perception to understand the difference between Egonomics and Wikinomics - WE will forever supplant ME in bee-hive fashion. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you had better read MIGHTY BOOK, or resign to your old world model of doing things - anything.

Drawing on their social networking ideas and research, authors Barry Libert and Jon Spector drew upon more than 4,000 people to help write a book on how to make money from the wisdom of crowds. Writing a book is hard enough, but coordinating the contributions of thousands must be a massive effort. Surprisingly the resulting effort is readable and insightful. The primary and secondary authors argue adapting social network to your business will drive decision-making and greater profitability. The book shares case studies on product development, manufacturing, marketing, customer service, finance and management. After completing it, I had greater insights into business functions that can best be supported by social networks and communities; moderating the process, balancing structure with independence. I particularly enjoyed the authors' thoughts on managing risk and effective metrics. I loved James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds and still highly recommend it. This book takes the next logical step. If social collaboration is going to infiltrate our personal and professional lives, there will have to be profit in it.

The book We Are Smarter Than Me is the first product from the website initiative with the same name. The folks at Wharton School Publishing launched the We Are Smarter Than Me website project last year and invited everyone the world to participate in community development of a business book. Although the community effort played a role, this particular book was primarily written by Barry Libert and Jon Spector. Writing a book via wiki is pretty challenging given all the coordination efforts required, not to mention the various egos that undoubtedly get in the way. Developing this book "the old fashioned way" while sprinkling in plenty of community perspective sidebars was the right formula for We Are Smarter Than Me. This book is a very quick and enjoyable read. You could almost think of it as a Cliff's Notes version of Don Tapscott's Wikinomics. In fact, Tapscott wrote the Foreword for We Are Smarter Than Me. You'll definitely find more in-depth coverage of the various community tools and platforms in Wikinomics though, so if find yourself craving more after reading We Are Smarter Than Me you should definitely read Wikinomics as well. Libert and Spector provide an excellent overview of communities, social networking, the wisdom of crowds and much more, all packed into a book that's barely 150 pages long. If you're looking for an easy way to get street smart on the world of communities you can't go wrong with this one. I'm also looking forward to reading the next book from this community initiative which is currently at the case studies stage.