Entrepreneurial Learning Through Wikinomics

Wealth creation through Wikinomics

“Wikinomics” meaning the “economics of mass collaboration” is a phenomenon described by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams in their book “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.” “Wikinomics” is a word combining economics and Wikipedia. This model of wealth creation is based on collaboration and sharing between masses of people. With the advent of the internet, billions of individuals can stay connected, access to a wide range of information and given the collaborative tools to actively participate in wealth creation, innovation and social development in ways previously unimagined. These individuals have already join forces in large scale collaborations that produce innovative new goods and services that rival those of large corporations.

Wealth creation through Entrepreneurship

Let us take another look at a traditional form of wealth creation, entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs play a vital role in improving economic growth worldwide as key contributors to productivity and growth, employment generation and technological innovation. Governments, local communities and higher education institutions have implement dynamic strategies to nurture and cultivate entrepreneurs. However, even with all the external support, entrepreneurship is still often difficult to undertake and vast majority of new business fail. There must be a better way to impart aspiring entrepreneurs with knowledge, skills and motivation to enable entrepreneurial success.

Combine wikinomics with entrepreneurship

If we allow wikinomics and entrepreneurial learning to mix, can we nurture thousands of entrepreneurs through a single large scale collaboration? The best way for a person to learn entrepreneurship is by being an entrepreneur. Some things in life you can only learn by experience and entrepreneurship is a constant state of discovery. Can we encourage entrepreneurship by letting thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs to own and manage a business together over the internet?

Wikinomics embodies four powerful new ideas: openness, peering, sharing and acting globally. Using these four powerful ideas as the foundation, let us discuss the possibility of a global collaborative project to encourage entrepreneurship through business ownership, online participation, implementation of business ideas, social networking, decision-making, interacting with business mentors, managing businesses via a business excellence framework and getting explicit business knowledge of various industries. The project will allow thousands of entrepreneurs from all over the world to own and manage a single business entity which control various brick-and-mortar businesses and internet businesses.

Peering

In peering, masses of people and firms collaborate openly to drive innovation. Most entrepreneurs are adults and late teens. Adults learn best when they feel in control and have choices in direction of the learning process. The global project allows entrepreneurs to collaborate and decide on all areas of business dealings such as staff selection, sales approaches, product designs, business framework, business venturing, etc. Existing web 2.0 tools such as social networks, internet polls and forums will facilitate communications and collective decision-making.

Openness

Openness is associated with freedom, flexibility, engagement and access. The global project is highly transparent. A reliable operation team will carry out decisions collectively made by aspiring entrepreneurs and update daily business activities through blogs and twitters. Progressively, entrepreneurs will know how their collective decisions shaped the businesses. Entrepreneurs are given the space to come to their own conclusions based on evidence offered to them, in a non-pressured way which encourages learning.

Sharing

Sharing of information and opportunities from the business operations will allow entrepreneurs to gain explicit business knowledge of various industries. Entrepreneurs can communicate with other entrepreneurs and business mentors through a business networking platform with social networking capabilities. Through a friendly and informal learning environment, entrepreneurs will find future business partners and opportunities for their own business venture.

Acting Globally

The global project based on wikinomics will allow entrepreneurs to experiment with business ideas and fail cheaply. Failures and mistakes are kept to the minimum through the gathering of opinions and decisions from a large group of entrepreneurs. In the business world, there are many unforeseen risks and difficulties. Risks taking cannot be taught, however if we can face these difficulties together, our risks will be diversified and the valuable experience can be put to good use when we undertake the challenge of starting our own business.