The importance of electronic networks and information technology seems to be obvious wherever you look at. However, it has to be questioned in how far it substantially influences the way we are doing business today and in future. Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams recently published their book “Wikinomics" (2006) to examine the influence of digital mass collaboration on economy and society and to embrace a new art and science of collaboration they call wikinomics. 

“We are talking about deep changes in the structure and modus operandi of the corporation and our economy, based on new competitive principles such as openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally.”

By drastically reducing transaction costs, the internet has indeed high influences on today’s economy, but is the wiki principle really the best way for future cooperation leading to the best results as James Surowiecki (2004) has suggested by referring to the wisdom of the crowds? Cass R. Sunstein has recently shown (Harvard Business Review, September 2006), referring to Condercet’s theorem, that the crowds could not be always wise. It rather depends on the publicly available information whether the crowd’s opinion converges to right or wrong. Therefore, the internet may provide the technological infrastructure and may foster the development of new ways of communication between individuals, but does not seem to embody the solution to all problems itself. Instead it seems to produce new problems as well, probably misleading people who rely only on the aggregated competence of the masses.