Wikinomics in the IT Services Industry
January 5th, 2007 by adminLarry at “Sinu”:1, an IT Solutions Provider, wrote a great post about “Wikinomics”:3, talking about the web’s (especially Web 2.0) ability to reduce the costs of transacting in an open marketplace:
bq. The authors point out Ronald H Coase’s paper - “The Nature of the Firm”. In this paper he explores why firms form and why, at the time, they were more efficient than a free market of freelancers or small group of companies/individuals getting together to produce the same good…. It seems that these transaction costs have decreased dramatically as communication costs have dropped, The Internet has expanded and collaborative lingua-francas have evolved (TCP/IP, Wikis, XML, LAMP).”
bq. Overall I think Wikinomics is right, companies who don’t learn to open up and collaborate will struggle to compete and companies who learn to be agile, who embrace that change is inevitable - will have a fighting chance against them.
Larry’s point is an important and powerful one: collaboration, openness, and agility are the concepts that the new generation of internet technologies and successful companies are based on. And while big companies certainly can be agile (look at IBM’s movement from a big iron company to a services company), overwhelmingly the most successful companies of any size are those that are internally and externally collaborative and open.
OnForce is an open marketplace, and because we take an active role in helping companies develop as they buy services in our marketplace, we’ve become a collaborative partner for a number of our buyers. Last year, we opened up visibility into our marketplace through our “Explore the Marketplace”:2 feature (you can see all of the work orders completed in the last few months and view profiles of all of our 10,179+ providers). When we did this, we heard both complaints and encouragement from our buyers, but in the end, this openness has helped buyers and providers understand how our Marketplace works and increased their usage. By being bold, open and agile, we’re building an innovative and accelerating business.
And its not just us. One of the coolest things that the OnForce Marketplace does is allow VARs, Solution Providers, and IT Project companies do their work with fewer people and less overhead by collaborating with the providers available through OnForce. These companies that were once small local players are all of a sudden able to compete on a national scale with very little additional operational cost. We even hear stories weekly about companies that couldn’t exist without the resources provided by the OnForce Marketplace!
As a team and as a company, OnForce believes in the concepts Larry points out above. And as Larry says, those companies that learn to be agile and embrace that change is inevitable, are open and collaborative, are the ones that can be the most successful in the OnForce Marketplace and in business.
[1]http://sinu.com/sand/2007/1/3/wikinomics.html
[2]http://www.onforce.com/explore
[3]http://www.wikinomics.com
January 16th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Well said. The open source movement has embraced this idea for a very long time. Years ago, you’d hear ideas about “virtual” companies. No one really calls them that anymore, but in a sense that’s what OnForce allows small companies to do. It also allows providers much choice in deciding which workorder they’d like to take, while skipping others all together. OnForce is a beautiful example of the best that the internet has to offer.
Going forward into the future, I think it’s important that the system be constantly monitored, refined, and tweaked. There is also great opportunity here for people to be taken advantage of and exploited. It isn’t the fault of OnForce, rather there will always be those that seek to deceive. But if OnForce is to continue to grow and offer an open market such as this, there should be checks and balances in place to protect the honest, and run out the dishonest.
I personally am a small one-man company offering computer help and spyware/virus removal among other things, and I’m excited about the possibility of offering my services nation wide. Up until now, I’ve only be accepting work orders. I’m not rushing into anything either though. I’m taking my time and planning what will work best for me and my company in the long run rather than trying to make a quick buck.
To all OnForce providers and clients, and to the creators of the system we love. Thank you and God bless. This is truly history in the making and I’m proud to be part of something that will continue to grow and change. With the right kinds of communication, it’s possible that it can grow to fit us all. Best wishes in 2007, and much success.
January 29th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Working on the develoment side for OnForce, I can vouch for our agility. At first, the development pace even made me nervous. Now that I understand how quickly our business needs to evolve to support the Marketplace, I’m glad to know that we can develop and grow so quickly (thanks to seriously top-notch colleagues on the product development, software engineering, and infrastructure fronts).