Leadership Spotlight

Can you have too many cooks in the kitchen? Too many co-authors on a book? Maybe not. Taking a page from Wikipedia, Wharton is collaborating on an ambitious new book publishing project that could involve thousands, if not tens of thousands of authors and editors.

Starting in November 2006, more than a million business professionals and scholars, including faculty, students, alumni, and newsletter recipients from Wharton and MIT Sloan School of Management were invited to collectively write and edit the book, tentatively titled We Are Smarter Than Me (www.wearesmarter.org).

Pearson (the publishing company behind Wharton School Publishing), MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, and Wharton's SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management 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, wiki, and blogs can benefit the business enterprise. MIT and Wharton 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. 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 multichannel community and social networking for enterprises, will facilitate the collective publishing venture using wiki technology and Web 2.0 tools.

A draft of the We Are Smarter Than Me manuscript, and the book authors' key findings, will be presented at Community 2.0, a conference scheduled for March 2007 in Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007, We Are Smarter Than Me will be published in book form by Pearson's Wharton School Publishing, even as the online community continues to create and update new content for the book on the website. All contributors will be credited.

Israeli Likud party leader and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Wharton on September 5, 2006, as part of the SEI Center Distinguished lecture Series. Said netanyahu, "Global economy tells us we can reduce taxes now with tolerable pain or do it later with intolerable pain. if radical reform happens, spectacular growth can occur." as Finance Minister from 2003 to 2005, netanyahu boosted the israeli economy with pension reform, continued privatization, and cuts in both taxes and government spending.