Novartis is the latest pharmaceutical company to throw some wikinomics at its approach to research and development. After investing millions of dollars trying to unlock the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes, the company released all of its raw data on the Internet, for free. To some, this will sound peculiar. After all, type 2 diabetes and related cardiovascular risk factors — including obesity, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol — are among the most [...]
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The jury has weighed in on the Alcatel-Microsoft case, forcing Microsoft to fork over $1.5 billion to Alcatel for violating two audio patents held by Lucent Technologies (which merged with Alcatel). Ironically, the patents cover standards for converting audio into the open MP3 format that spawned the digital music revolution back in the early 1990s. But the irony goes deeper. While Lucent did have a hand in developing the MP3 format along with the Fraunhofer [...]
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Further to the whole Apple-Cisco saga, New Paradigm colleague Paul Barter has an interesting piece in the Financial Post that recounts Apple’s long history of intellectual property snafus. Paul goes back to beginning where Apple ran into trouble with Beatles’ record label over the Apple trademark. He then goes on to discuss Apple’s run-ins with Microsoft over the GUI for Windows and a litany of other events. One thing Paul didn’t mention was Steve Jobs’ [...]
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An Apple customer, only known as APPLENEWBIE, sent in his sons computer for repair (the computer wouldn’t turn on) but when he got the computer back it had someone else’s hard drive inside with all their personal data still on it. The resulting story, the timeline for which I have laid out below, is a testament to how Web 2.0 and the concepts of Wikinomics are shifting more power to the consumer. Thursday Feb 15th [...]
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More Google news, this time with a Canadian connection. Turns out Google just bought Adscape Media for US$23 million. Now headquarted in San Francisco, the company was founded in Ottawa and its R&D and design operations remain in the capital. Google’s angle? Like Microsoft, its sees online gaming as a largely untapped venue for marketing and Adscape has developed technology to serve up advertising in online games and virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft [...]
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Presidential hopeful Barack Obama is set to expose politics and possibly the next election to the world of social networking. On January 16th 2007 a group called Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack) was started on Facebook. Today the group has grown to almost 260,000 members and hopes to reach 1 million members by mid March. Various celebrities have tried a number of strategies to increase voting by youth, so it will be interesting [...]
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Virgin’s Richard Branson has joined forces with Al Gore to launch an innovation challenge to find new approaches for reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The goal is to find an efficient way of removing one billion tones of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually – for ten years. Innovators have 5 years to make a submission. The winner will receive $5 million up front with another $20 million after the ten year period. [...]
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Another Wikinomics reader Stacy Becker wrote in to alert us to a Minnesota-based citizen’s project called Map150 that is working to reinvigorate local democracy. Becker rightly argues that “citizens have tons of really important information that never finds its way into expert-driven policy-making processes.” “This information is critical,” she says, “if we are to solve the complicated problems of today.” Here’s a clip from the Map150 site. When citizens are “co-producers†in the public good, [...]
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One of our readers, Martin Kunert, wrote in to point out an “omission” in Wikinomics: You mentioned the wikiized film created by the Beastie Boys in 2006. The first wiki-based film was in fact mine – VOICES OF IRAQ – made in 2004, where sent 150 DV cameras into Iraq and had Iraqis film their own country. Several hundred Iraqis participated, passing cameras from hand to hand, and sending us the resulting video tapes. The [...]
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In their 2007 bestseller Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams taught the world how mass collaboration was changing the way businesses communicate, compete, and succeed in the new global marketplace. But much has changed in three years, and the principles of wikinomics are now more powerful than ever. In this new age of networked intelligence, businesses and communities are bypassing crumbling institutions. We are altering the way our financial institutions and governments operate; how we [...]
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