The other day I overheard a few people, working in the technology domain, talking about a new Wiki in their workplace. Good initiative, but I don't think its going to work in the corporate environments of today.
HBS has this nice interview between Professors Karim R. Lakhani and Andrew McAfee at the end of an article on how Wikipedia works. I have just taken a few snippets that are pretty much my arguments on why Wiki's wouldn't work in corporates.
- Value: "How valuable is the corporate encyclopedia" or collaboration or open discussions for the managers and top bosses? In corporates, decision making is usually top down.
- Incentive: "How much enthusiasm or incentive do we have to contribute to the corporate encyclopedia." By the way, how many senior people do you think are technology enthusiast or early adopters and willing to contribute to a Wiki?
- Openness: In corporates, knowledge and information is power and is the one thing that counts in keeping you where you are. You open up information and people a little more smarter can critique you and worst still, upstage you. Its "a technology that enables self-selection, transparency, openness—how does a manager or management deal with that?"
- Peer Wisdom: In corporates superior and boss wisdom is what counts! In Wiki's "peer review is critical. A challenge for firms that are used to managing employees and allocating the resources in a very top-down kind of way."Can the boss take a subordinate editing and correcting his comments?
- Freedom: "Wikis rely on the foundation of free expression. But can employees feel free to express their opinions to everyone in the company as Wikipedians do in their world? The CEO might be reading it, after all."
- Boundaries: "There's lots of knowledge in the outside world". Will the corporate "enable the outside world (suppliers, consumers) to interact with them?"
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