 "Wikipedia Inspires Book Publishing Project")
Taking a page from Wikipedia, publishing giant Pearson, under its Wharton School Publishing imprint, has embarked on a new book publishing project with two innovative collaborators that could involve thousands, if not tens of thousands of authors and editors.
Starting this week, more than a million business professionals and scholars, including faculty, students, alumni, and newsletter recipients from, the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, will receive messages inviting them to collectively write and edit the book, tentatively titled We Are Smarter Than Me .
Pearson, MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence, and the SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania will collaborate to produce the first community-driven ’networked’ book on business best practices.
The book’s content will examine how Web 2.0 technologies such as social networks, wikis and blogs can benefit the business enterprise. Additionally, MIT and Wharton will also have access to the contributions, and expect to conduct and publish primary research on whether collective projects like this can help guide the future of industry in the areas of customer service, product innovation, market research, and sales.
Contributing authors will be asked to provide real examples of companies that are trying to harness the power of communities. We Are Smarter Than Me will then explore why certain approaches have worked while others did not, and suggest best practices for companies to follow to make more effective use of collaboration. The book will encourage contributors to offer their thoughts on such areas as community-based market research, selling items on eBay or other similar sites, and raising capital via the Internet on peer sites like Prosper.
Already, more than a thousand contributors have initiated the project by registering at the We Are Smarter Than Me website. This ’networked’ book collaboration will allow all registered members of the community to edit, add, and delete content from the website. Shared Insights US, LLC, a Woburn, MA-based company that provides multi-channel community and social networking for enterprises, will facilitate the collective publishing venture using wiki technology and Web 2.0 tools.
“Like Wikipedia, and with core contributors initially comprised of many of the world’s leading business thinkers, We Are Smarter Than Me may usher in a new model for how book publishers can acquire, create and market their content, as well as how their books can be distributed and used,” said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and member of We Are Smarter Than Me’s Board of Advisors. “I look forward to reading this work in progress.”
Born with the sole aim of correcting people, Sharon took to copy-editing at an early age. In the olden days her methods of correction were rather unorthodox. Don't believe us? Ask the intern who lost two of his er.... Oh ok, I guess we don't talk about that. Now after she got a kid, things have relatively mellowed down. Besides handling the plethora of content that comes out of Tech2, Sharon also handles our sister site, CompareIndia where you can well compare prices of pretty much every electronic item under the sun and CHIP magazine as well, if things weren't heavy enough. She handles a team, all of who seem real happy as long as they're not chained to their desks.