Wikitecture - Radical Collaboration in Architecture - O'Rei. Many of the precepts that began with Open Source (collaboration, shared IP, crowdsourcing etc.) are migrating from software development into a series of ever more surprising disciplines. Today old-school institutions like Proctor and Gamble go outside of their own R&D teams to innovate new products while Best Buy opens APIs to allow outside developers to build on their catalog data.
Now here comes “Wikitecture” applying these precepts to the very complex process of designing buildings. I want to dig into some of the details of Wikitecture and summarize what I think it has to teach us about collaboration. My friend Jon Brouchoud is the co-founder of Studio Wikitecture, a group dedicated to bringing collaboration into the architectural process. He and Ryan Schultz have been pioneering “Wikitecture” for the past two years using Second Life as a proving ground. Recently Studio Wikitecture won Architecture for Humanity’s Founders Award for their submission; a health facility in Nepal. Getting Web 2.0 right: The hard stuff vs. the harder stuff&# I had a powerful conversation recently in Europe with one of the top executives of a major industrial company. They have 100K+ employees in over 50 countries. When he joined five years ago their business was struggling and in need of major transformation; their stock was at two dollars a share, they had ethics issues and product quality problems – you name the malady, they were suffering from it… Fast forward to 2008 and now they are one of the most extraordinary success stories in Europe – stock is over $28 a share, great profits, growing operations, well regarded in the business community etc.
When you fly through a European airport they are everywhere. I asked him how they were able to turn such a large, multinational ship around. He told me most executives talk about “the hard stuff” vs. “the soft stuff”. This is an apt description of the problems we face in bringing Web 2.0 into the enterprise. 5 Enterprise 2.0 solutions for the workplace. Enterprise Social Search » SlideShare. Podcast: Mashable Conversations: Kaltura.