BOOK REVIEW: MacroWickinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams

DON TAPSCOTT and Anthony Williams have the zeal of evangelists. Wikinomics, their 2007 ode to collaboration, openness and sharing facilitated by the web, was a surprise bestseller.

It tapped into the zeitgeist and was one of those rare business books that breaks out to a wider audience and can claim to have influenced world leaders in business, politics and economics.

Given the ultimate impact of the credit crunch brewing on the horizon at the time that book was being written, Wikinomicsmay as well have been written in a different universe.

So the Canadian management consultants have turned the theories of Wikinomicsto the bigger picture of global politics and society rather than simply running an effective business.

The book starts with a short recap of Wikinomicsfor the uninitiated. The theory is that the web, and the business, social and governance models it has popularised, allows for mass collaboration that humanity has never experienced before.

On the macro level, the web is enabling an era of “networked intelligence” which is characterised by collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity and interdependence.

The theories of MacroWikinomicsare falling on fertile ground because the book addresses some of the world's most pressing issues, including the financial crisis, climate change and healthcare.

Rather than continue with our present approaches to these challenges, Tapscott and Williams hunt out examples of how they are being addressed in new and innovative ways that embody networked intelligence.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy comes in for criticism for suggesting that by simply strengthening the institutions that oversaw the implosion of the financial system, we can prevent a repeat of it.

Rather than a “patchwork of national financial regulators”, they propose a web-based model of regulation which would allow a global network of experts to “pool their tips, risk models and analyses in a wiki-like fashion”.

For example, to address climate change, they see carbon taxes as simply a first step.

They want to “rethink transportation, adopt new manufacturing and shipping practices, pull off a dramatic shift toward greener products and lifestyles, and retool our energy system”. No danger of small thinking here.

Nor do they shy away from addressing the “dark side” of Wikinomics – that for many people, particularly in the creative industries, the web is destroying value and destroying their ability to make a living.

The authors' backgrounds as management consultants might suggest MacroWikinomicswill be a dry and clinical read, but in fact as with its predecessor it is an extremely readable affair.

A real strength is that for every theory put forward, there are solid examples of how it is already being applied in the real world.

But their passionate belief can also cause them to make pronouncements like “10 years from now . . . television will no longer exist. The internet will swallow television, and today’s programming will become just another application on the web”.

There is little doubt that the web is having a huge impact on television consumption – from the ability to time shift programmes to view at your own convenience to programme makers having to interact with viewer comments from Twitter – but no one can seriously suggest that the medium beloved of billions will be eaten alive by the web in the next 10 years.

To be fair to the authors, they admit that their theories are not a panacea or a cure for all the world’s ailments.

But they rightly point out that in the face of the “new age of networked intelligence”, many of our traditional models are insufficient and even inappropriate.

But ultimately Tapscott and Williams are not revolutionaries. The book comes with plaudits from pillars of the business world including “Mr Davos”, Klaus Schwab founder of the World Economic Forum, Nike chief executive Mark Parker and Google’s elder statesman Eric Schmidt, who recommend the book as a “must read”, “masterpiece” and say it “hasn’t come a minute too soon”.

MacroWikinomicsis a well-written and thought-provoking follow up to its predecessor, but I would hold back from lavishing it with the praise heaped on it by Schwab, Parker and Schmidt.

While it points to ways that the web can be harnessed to more efficiently tackle the problems facing modern society, it does not ultimately deliver on the promise of “rebooting business and the world”.

Maybe I just haven’t found religion yet, but Tapscott and Williams will have made plenty of more converts on the strength of their latest offering.

John Collins is assistant business editor