Collaborative Business - The effects of Wikis on collaboration practices in organizations

Abstract: Wikis and other web 2.0 technologies are increasingly used in business. In this sense, the overall purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of wikis on collaboration and the impact of collaboration on organizational innovation. Four interviews have been conducted with IS managers as well as regular Wiki users in different organizations to show how can wikis affect collaboration and exploit innovation. The results showed that the Wiki is used as a shared platform for collaboration and the ability to participate in the process of knowledge creation in an iterative manner helped in generating more ideas which leads to more innovation. We concluded that the Wiki affects the nature and context of collaboration. The research showed that the use of the wiki for internal collaboration purposes helped organizations to benefit from collective intelligence through allowing everyone within a team or a project to contribute and share ideas and experiences. Also, it showed the use of wikis for external use might be associated with problems such as the reluctance of collaborators to participate in the group work and other problems related to data quality and organizations won’t use it for more open use where information is opened for people outside the organization.