Wiki in corporate environment - Introduction

During my last year of university studies I had to write thesis. The topic was "Wiki in corporate environment". I decided to present main ideas I proposed in the thesis in my blog. I have divided my thesis into 5 main parts:

1. Introduction (What is wiki; Wiki concept)
   
2. Wiki features (What can wiki do and how it can be used within business)
   
3. Case studies (4 detailed case studies)
   
4. Detailed analysis (5 areas where and how can be wiki used)
   
5. Consulsion (Summary of the most important facts)

I will keep this division when writing these articles. This text will NOT be technical - I am not interested in what code you have to change in order to achieve specific functionality. I will focus on the question why and how should be wiki used in corporate environment.

What is wiki?

First wiki was developed by Ward Cunningham in 1995. It was used for supporting collaboration of software developer and was called Portland Pattern Repository. However, wiki concept was not widely used until 2001, when Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia. This open encyclopedia became very popular despite disputes about reliability of the information included. What is more important is that Wikipedia showed ordinary people how powerful wiki concept is. What is wiki concept? I would define it this way:

Wiki allows anyone to edit any document or create new on any topic. Furthermore, it allows to connect documents using hyperlinks very easily.

Since 2001 lot of wiki implementations are being developed and not just by fans of wiki technology, but also by many companies. These companies like JotSpot, Atlassian or Socialtext are focused on development of wikis for corporate environment. And here it comes. Why do they do it? Is it possible to use wiki in companies? And if yes, then what for? These are interesting questions and to answer them we have to look at the functionality of wiki and what this functionality can offer companies. Functionality of wiki and its connection to corporate environment will be discussed in the next chapter.If you are serious about corporate wiki, you should have this book (I am working on a review).