Managing Wikis in Business

Penny Edwards, who primarily contributes at his Wordpress Blog, did a study in 2007 about the acceptance, usability and popularity of Wikis in business environments. We are two years beyond the date that he first published his report. Now, (in agreement with Penny!) Wikis have gained remarkably more acceptance - take for example, the site for Startup Saturday Bangalore http://network.headstart.in/projects/startup-saturday-bangalore/project-home.

To quote Penny,

The study investigates how businesses can manage wikis to facilitate collaboration in the workplace. In doing so, it describes a process framework for managing wiki implementations and analyses how ‘learning organisation’ themes can aid in that process. It also considers whether a wiki can act as more than a mere technological enabler for wider information dissemination, by providing an independent mechanism whose management and widespread use can encourage organisational learning.

and later,

It also indicates that wikis have provided platforms for collaborative and emergent behaviour, enabling people to work/communicate more efficiently and effectively, learn from past experience and share knowledge/ideas in organisational contexts that are not averse to collaboration. Whilst it has not been possible to conclude whether changes to organisational learning characteristics have resulted from wikis’ fostering of such collaborative/emergent behaviour, or will become more pronounced as wikis mature, it does highlight scope for longitudinal research in this area.

Today, many organizations use wiki engines for anything you'd use a content management system for - more than likely in their intranet. Wikis are an excellent entry-level content management system because they are easy to edit, require very little training and no specialized software (other than the browser and web server). Wiki is also being used for document version management in many organizations.

"Wiki" (/wiːkiː/) is a Hawaiian word for "fast". "Wiki" can be expanded as "What I Know Is," but this is a backronym. Wikimapia, Wiki Mind Maps, MediaWiki, Educational Wikis, Social Wikis and Corporate Wikis  - we have a lot of proof that people have understood the evolution of wikis.

                                    

Penny Edwards has done a good job reviewing wikis in business - you can access the report published by him at Final Report – Managing Wikis in Business – September 2007.

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