Wiki in corporate environment - summary

In the previous 5 chapters I have described wiki in terms of its features, which might be interesting for business. I have also provided some case studies and finally I proposed five ways of using wiki in corporate environment. This chapter will by the summary of all my knowledge about wiki and suggestions for wiki implementation in busienss.

Summary

Wiki is definitely something! Althought it is quite young technology, it is widely used for collaboration and cooperation especially on internet. It does not surprise it is very popular amoung internet communities, but can it be used as a business tool? I strongly belive so and in the following list I propose main areas where wiki can be successfully used:

• Wiki as a tool for communication and collaboration within a project team and/or within whole business - managers and employees are overwhelmed by emails. If you use wiki for communication instead of emails it can help you solve this problem - all project communication will be stored in one place and will be easily searchable.
  
• Wiki as a tool for communication and collaboration of the business with its surroundings - it might be very useful to build up a knowledge base for users of your products or services. Wiki is especially useful if you want your customers to participate on the creation of a such knowledge base.
  
• Wiki as an intranet software - do you find your intranet static, difficult to use and expensive? Most of the wikis are free, user interface of wiki is easy to use and it allows you to create lively intranet, that will support information sharing among employees.
  
• Wiki as a knowledge base and documentation tool - wiki is an ultimate tool for knowledge management - just look at the huge success of wikipedia! Since knowledge is the only resource that might give your business competitive advantage it is neccessary to have efficient tools that would allow you to extract, store and share knowledge within the whole organisation and wiki is one of them.
  
• Wiki as a CMS for your web presentation - wiki might also be used as a regular web presentation, especially when you need to update it often and when your web pages contains lots of text and more people should be included in the creation of this text.
  

Further studies

Here is the list of literature about wiki, that might be interesting:

• ANDERSEN, E. Using Wikis in a Corporate Context. Norwegian School of Management
• BOYD, S. Are You Ready for Social Software?
• EVANS, P. The Wiki Factor. BizEd
• GONZALEZ-REINHART, J. Wiki and the Wiki Way: Beyond a Knowledge Management Solution. University of Houston
• KLOBAS, J. Wikis: Tools for Information Work and Collaboration. Chandos Publishing (review here)
  
• KOSTER, L. Wiki-collaboration in a Corporate Context. University of Passau
• LEUF, B., CUNNINGHAM W. The Wiki Way. Addison Wesley (review here)
• MAJCHRZAK, A., WAGNER, C., YATES, D. Corporate Wiki Users> Result of a Survey.
• McAFEE, A., SJOMAN, A. Wikis at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.
• SPEK, S. Knowledge Management by Wikis. Technology University Maastricht
• WILLIAMS, T., WILLIAMS, R. Too much e-mail!. Communication world

I don't privde links because some of the documents I found in Harvard Business Review which is paid. But I guess you can google out most of them.