Forum:Will collaborative tools change everything?

The Association of Independent Consultants (AIC) wants to create a wiki to explore the premise that’s floating about in the business world that the world of consulting and its relationship to business is undergoing a significant change.

If true, this change will have a profound impact on the way businesses and consultants work. This premise is touched upon in the book by Dan Tapscott called Wikinomics, in which he claims that mass collaboration changes everything.

This new world of collaborative tools ( wikis, blogs, etc.) is allowing some businesses to go beyond traditional outsourcing for expertise. These businesses are using an “open source” approach to hiring the expertise they need. In the same way that Linus Torvalus opened the source code for Linux (and thousands of programmers add value to it, along with dozens of companies), there are many businesses taking the same approach.

These same businesses once either did it all in-house, or hired outside consultants to achieve their goals. Now they are using these tools to attract solutions to themselves, without an initial outlay of cash.

While these businesses are the exception today, will they become the norm? Under this vision of the future, consultants with good ideas and input still get compensated, but the ground rules are radically different from what we have today.

What might be the consequences of this future? How will it affect consultants and consulting firms? How will it affect our clients? Is it even a real possibility or is it all smoke and mirrors?

How powerfully Wikinomics influences our economy depends, in large part, on the ogoing creativity and energy of the volunteer contributors. Does this special class of people contribute now because of the novelty? Or will their generous service continue to be a growing free resource that the business community can use?

We're going to look for practicing consultants and the businesses that hire them to get involved in the discussion.