Wiki Workplace Changes Information Industry
Ideas behind the wiki workplace are not really new. Organizational bureaucracy impedes innovation, agility, and success. Long rows of desks, regimented in army fashion under a managerial ethos that borrowed heavily from the military’s command-and control structure. Electronic workstations could augment the thinking and communications abilities of knowledge workers. The theme of teamwork was big in the eighties, and empowerment and networking were big in the nineties. Corporations have become networked in the sense that they build business webs with partners on a platform of information technology. For fifty years various people have speculated about how the advent of computers was going to change the workplace—the distribution of information would delayer and decentralize organizations and management. The new business environment, the Net Generation, and the rise of the new Web are finally beginning to change the old workplace. Most large organizations today are geographically dispersed. Networking technologies allow companies to run cohesive yet decentralized operations by linking employees in virtual teams and communities of practice. Competitive pressures, meanwhile, are making organizations leaner and more agile, more focused on the customer, and more attuned to dynamic competitive strategies. But it also means that they will be less likely to provide lifelong careers and job security, and more in need of continuous reorganization to maintain or gain competitive advantage. At the same time, the nature of work itself is changing. Work has become more cognitively complex, more team-based and collaborative, more dependent on social skills, more time pressured, more reliant on technological competence, more mobile, and less dependent on geography. Many employees are already given far more autonomy to decide how and where they want to work. A growing number of firms are decentralizing their decision-making function, communicating in a peer-to-peer fashion, and embracing new technologies that empower employees to communicate easily and openly with people inside and outside the firm. The continuous flow of new technologies into the workplace has been a key source of change in the way that we work. E-mail enabled employees to share information far more efficiently than they could with typewritten memos. Client-server computer architectures gave them access to company data that used to be guarded jealously by senior managers. Cell phones and BlackBerrys gave staffs the ability to work on the move and spend more time out of the office. Finally, today, a younger generation of workers is embracing new Web-based tools in a way that often confounds older generations but promises real advantages for companies that adapt their style of working. Tools such as blogs, wikis, chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks, and personal broadcasting are putting unprecedented power in the hands of individual workers to communicate and collaborate more productively. This in turn is driving a new revolution in workplace collaboration of a qualitatively different nature[1].

Wiki Workplace changes Information Industry which I was working in. The information and communication technologies that are transforming media, culture, and the economy are also reshaping how companies and employees function. New social computing tools such as wikis and blogs put unprecedented communication power in the hands of employees. Some companies worry about the risks of uncontrolled communications leaking out. But a growing number believe the new collaboration tools are good for innovation and growth—they help employees connect with more people, in more regions of the world, with less hassle and more enjoyment, than earlier generations of workplace technology. Geek Squad is a case in point. Many thousands of Geeks are using a growing suite of collaboration technologies to brainstorm new products and services, manage projects, swap service tips, and socialize with their peers. Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson says empowering employees to collaborate in unorthodox ways is all about "unleashing the power of human capital." As the retailer continues to crush its competition, it would seem that Anderson is onto something. Already North America's largest consumer electronics seller, the profitable company plans to open more than 100 new stores this year, while ailing competitors such as Circuit City are shuttering locations. Much of this is due to a younger generation of workers who embrace Web-based tools in a way that often confounds older workers. Nourished on instant messaging, blogs, wikis, chat groups, playlists, peer-to-peer file sharing, and online multiplayer video games, the Net Generation will increasingly bring a heightened comfort with technology, inclination toward social connectivity, more emphasis on creativity and fun, and greater diversity to the companies they work for and to the companies they found themselves.

Working at Wiki Workplace, you can sue wiki. Thanks to the Web, and networks in general, the cost of publishing and sharing information has diminished substantially — which makes wikis the killer app for corporations. Prior to wikis, an expensive enterprise application would have been required for sophisticated information management. But because most wikis are based on open-source code, they're free for companies who opt for an open-source distribution, or relatively cheap for companies willing to pay for their implementation and support. Wikis are designed to facilitate the exchange of information within and between teams. Content in a wiki can be updated without any real lag, without any real administrative effort, and without the need for distribution — users/contributors (with wikis, they're one and the same) simply visit and update a common Web site. Wikis can centralize all types of corporate data, such as spreadsheets, Word documents, PowerPoint slides, PDFs — anything that can be displayed in a browser. They can also embed standard communications media such as e-mail and IM. A wiki's functionality is limited only by the programming skills of the person who implements it. It's important to note that placing a document in a wiki does not necessarily make it editable by everyone with access to the wiki. For example, the marketing department can make a PowerPoint slide available to the sales team or the company at large without letting them change or overwrite it. What's more, wikis have built-in version control even for those who have edit privileges. No changes can be made without creating a record of who made those changes, and reversion to an earlier version is a matter of a few clicks. Wikis are cheap, extensible, and easy to implement, and they don't require a massive software rollout. They also interface well with existing network infrastructures. Furthermore, wikis are Web-based and thus present little or no learning curve in the adoption cycle, and they allow the user to determine the relevancy of content rather than being dependent upon a central distribution center or a linear distribution chain.[2]

International Management will become less difficult when working at Wiki Workplace within the global village, especially in consulting. I graduated from the University of Sciences and Technology of China with a bachelor degree in information technology in 1984, and from the Harbin Institute of Technology with a master degree in electrical engineering in 1984, I wanted to start a business consultancy. I had the name for a long time-Yuan Health Information Consulting. But the various difficulties impede me from setting up. Working as a researcher in the institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, an associate professor at universities and a senior engineer in China Telecom, I am planning to start up my own company, working at a Wiki Workplace. Wikis, blogs, and other tools will arrive in the workplace whether companies are ready or not. Increasingly these employees will be capable of interacting as a global, real-time workforce. Indeed, if Linux, Wikipedia, and other collaborative projects are any indication, it will often be easier and less expensive for workers to self-organize productively than to squeeze them into more traditional business units.
[1] http://www.socialtext.com/files/Wikinomics_Chapter9.pdf
[2] http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167600331&pgno=2

千里之外

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