| Wikinomics
Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Atlantic Books, €22, ISBN 9781843546368  This is a deserved bestseller it has become, but the authors remain strangely mute about the irony of having themselves indulged in a business model that their thesis derides: a hierarchical, closed and proprietary channel to market known as the old-fashioned book.
The point about this book is that despite a certain breathlessness about the capability of Web 2.0 to change everything, it results not from fantasy scribbling but from several multi-million-dollar research projects by Canadian think-tank New Paradigm. As you wade deeper into Wikinomics, it becomes clear that “peer-produced” phenomena such as MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and, of course, Wikipedia, all of them attacked by conservatives for producing immense quantities of nonsense, are unleashing astonishing productive forces elsewhere in the global economy – forces that have only just begun to take hold. Wikipedia is the best initial example because no one thought that ordinary people would be able to write their own encyclopedia without it becoming corrupt and therefore useless. Yet the authors claim, citing an article in Nature, that with just five full-time employees, Wikipedia is already 10 times the size of Encyclopedia Britannica and roughly as accurate, with a 5% margin of error. The reality is that Wikipedia has all but eclipsed published encylopedias for sensible, intelligent readers. Pierre Bayle, French author of the first encyclopedia in 1697, would be amazed. Perhaps the most strikingly non-fluffy example of how peering can help hard, seemingly hopeless business sectors is the example of Goldcorp, a Canadian gold mining company on the verge of bankruptcy. Chief executive Rob McEwen decided to throw open all of the company’s geological surveys, offering a reward for anyone who could pinpoint where the gold might be, his own geologists having drawn a blank. Within weeks, very serious reports came flooding in from “virtual prospectors” all over the world and the company subsequently found the gold. This book celebrates McEwen’s epiphany, or the principle of Wikinomics, defined by the authors as “openness, peering, sharing and acting globally”. Most companies are still run on the opposite model, and they are doomed. The book applies this paradigm across the whole economy, including manufacturing, and throws up many astonishing insights to tantalise and inspire entrepreneurs in every sector. RL How Rich Countries Got Rich …and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor
Erik S. Reinert
Constable, €35, ISBN 9781845293260  This reviewer remembers asking the Egyptian economics minister a year ago whether he saw himself as a Thatcherite. The minister’s wise reply was that despite stimulating Egypt’s economy through private sector investment and vigorous privatisation of hitherto state monopolies, Egypt remained a third world country and he would use any means at his disposal to help it become more prosperous.
In How Rich Countries Got Rich, Erik Reinert says the same while never wasting an opportunity to fire large mortars into the orthodox free-market camp – in other words, the generation of broadly Thatcherite economists who witnessed the “bad” 1970s, the “good” 1980s following a dose of monetarist smelling salts, and then the fabulous 1990s and 2000s, when pension funds filled out considerably and all seemed well with the world. Meanwhile, Reinert reminds us, a bus driver in Nigeria still earns one 16th the real wage of a bus driver in Germany while not underperforming his German peer in any significant way. Why, then, does crippling poverty persist despite so much economic growth? There is no “invisible hand” and Adam Smith was wrong, argues Reinert. In place of theory, Reinert, who once opened his own manufacturing business, wants to place the reader firmly back in the realm of reality with a ‘“bottom-up” view of economics. The answer to world poverty unfurls chapter by chapter, with a curious (some would say mischievous) blend of history and theory, in particular using Voltaire’s Enlightenment text Candide as a means of lacerating those pesky laissez-faire folks, literally asking us to compare them to catholic priests before 1789. At the heart of Reinert’s thesis is the view that “the best arguments for globalisation are also the best ones for preventing poor countries from prematurely entering the world economy”. That’s a huge idea with many sub-components, but think of the book as resting its case on 500 years of history (rather than economic theory) and then consider that all Western economies today espousing free trade first went through sustained mercantilist phases that gave them certain advantages as free traders. The resulting prescription for poor countries is not aid, and not even the destruction of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (for that would be too “free market”); rather, Reinert suggests some sort of reciprocal deal whereby French farmers would still be protected but so would the manufacturing and service sectors of emerging economies. How Rich Countries Got Rich and Wikinomics (see left) are two of the most original books of the year, and are well worth reading back-to-back. RL What were they Thinking?
Jeffrey Pfeffer
Harvard Business School Press, €23, ISBN 9781422103128 Professional educators write better business books than business professionals who suddenly develop a penchant for writing.
Authored by a business school professor of long standing at Stanford, this book is ostensibly nothing more than boiled-down, Warren Buffett-style nuggets of wisdom for harassed managers. But whereas 95% of such titles are instantly forgettable, this one is written so well that Harvard University Press might have a winner on its hands. RL |  | Project Management Survival
Richard Jones
Kogan Page, €40, ISBN 9780749450106 What’s useful about this book is that it assumes that most projects have already gone wrong before they’re off the ground and that resources and time are not just limited, but inadequate – welcome to real-world project management. There’s a strong emphasis on the tools of the trade such as matrixes, Gantt charts and algebraic formulae for resource management, yet the book is highly readable and lacking in tedious jargon. Jones has a technology background, and it shows; project managers outside of the tech/construction industry may find the book less useful. SH |  | Adland: A Global History of Advertising
Mark Tungate
Kogan Page, €28, ISBN 0749448377 This book isn’t really a global history of advertising at all, but a history of the world’s leading ad agencies.
Consequently it is useful for students who need to know the names and lineage behind the company initials, but readers who do not quite share Tungate’s fascination with the industry might feel they have been oversold. Big subjects of more interest to the general reader, such as how advertising has shaped popular culture or how it has altered business practices, are barely mentioned. BF |  |  London, England
Oshki-bawaajige - New Dreaming
October Gallery, until 27 October, 2007
www.octobergallery.co.uk
Presenting extraordinary new work by three leading artists of Ojibwe heritage: Frank Big Bear, Andrea Carlson and Star Wallowing Bull. Works range from studies of history and identity to surrealist fantasies inspired by dreams of the spirit world. Don’t miss. Barcelona, Spain
Be-Bomb: The Transatlantic War of Images and all that Jazz, 1946–1956
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), until 7 January, 2008
www.macba.es An intriguing exhibition on the period between 1946 and 1956 when New York replaced Paris as the nerve centre of modern art. Venice, Italy
Rosso: The Transient Form
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, until 6 January, 2008
www.guggenheim-venice.it The underrated and little-known Impressionist artist Medardo Rosso exerted a profound influence on late 19th-century sculpture as a precursor to modernity. Twenty-two sculptures are exhibited along with 50 photos that explore the relationship between photography and sculpture. Vienna, Austria
Late Titian and the Sensuality of Painting
Kunsthistorisches Museum, until 6 January, 2008
www.khm.at An intricate study of Titian’s luxurious late style, characterised by freer brush strokes and use of colour. This exhibition focuses on the newly restored Nymph and Shepherd and similar works such as St. Sebastian and Pietà. Paris, France
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877)
Musée d’Orsay, until 28 January, 2008
www.musee-orsay.fr An impressive examination of Gustave Courbet’s ouevre between 1840 and 1877, with a particular emphasis on his work’s relationship to early photography, his influence on early impressionism and his examination of human suffering through the hunting motif. |