The earlier point about how P&G has increased its productivity speaks to another new mechanism that can increase productivity: wikis. Established on the premise that all of us together are smarter than any of us individually, wikis provide a powerful tool for helping companies collaborate on projects, manage group information, and incubate ideas on an accelerated basis.
The concept has grown so popular that even the process of writing of books is being wiki-fied. In the fall of 2006, I accepted an invitation to participate in the writing of a book entitled We Are Smarter Than Me, which attempts to demonstrate that a community can write a more compelling book than an individual expert.
I can’t say I contributed anything terribly profound, but I did add the following example to the chapter on open-source ideas:
Scott Adams and Dilbert. In 1998, Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, became the first cartoonist to publish his e-mail address in his carton strip. Whether it was by strategic intent or dumb luck, Adams now regularly supplements his comic strip–which chronicles bureaucratic absurdities, management ineptitude, and bouts of corporate stupidity–with poignant insights and stories from his legions of fans who send him more than one thousand e-mails a day. From this pool of ideas, Adams has been able to augment his own extraordinary creativity to create more cartoons strips, and he also draws on the public’s input to provide better content for his books, Web site, and blog.
Whether it will be accepted, modified, or deleted is now in the hands of the community. The more intriguing result will be if the project works and the community creates a compelling book. My hunch is that it will because wikis offer an easy-to-use mechanism for tapping into a wider base of knowledge. Wikis also allow ideas to be shared, modified, amended, and otherwise improved on a faster basis than any conventional system.
One company that is employing a wiki with some success today is GlaxoSmithKline, which uses one to allow employees to share information during clinical trials for its new drugs. By providing people with the opportunity to supply their colleagues with more context, updated information, and even advice, the company’s management is using the wiki to help GlaxoSmithKline successfully avoid traps and pitfalls that have hindered it in the past. The net impact is that faulty drug candidates are being pulled quicker, and successful ones are reaching market sooner because regulators’ questions and concerns are being addressed in greater detail at an earlier stage. The former outcome saves the company money; the latter helps it make new money.
Exponential Insight
It is often hard for employees to be productive when coworkers constantly interrupt them with questions. A wiki can minimize such disruptions by allowing employees to create an ongoing database of common information. Questions and answers can be posted directly to the site where they can even be given more contextual depth. For instance, comments can be left and related Web sites and documents can be hyperlinked into a wiki. As more people begin contributing increasing amounts of information to the wiki, the utility and value of it will increase proportionately.
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