Sony takes the wiki way

Hello!, Sony is one of the leading corporations that have smartly incorporated social technologies in enhancing their business. Last week, I posted about Sony’s use of social technologies in sales and marketing. This week I will focus on how Sony benefited from implementing Wikis.

What is Wikis?

Linguistically, the word is originated from Hawaiian term " wikiwiki" which means fast. Technically, wiki is a collaborative server program where content is created by anonymous users unlike blogs(Rouse,2007). And because we are talking about wikis I thought it is appropriate to include Wikipedia's definition "wiki is a web application which allows people to add, modify, or delete content in collaboration with others". Wikipedia is the most popular wiki, however there are many different types of wikis created for public or private uses.

Examples of Wiki (Rouse,2007) 

Below, watch CommonCraft’s (2007) video explains Wikis further.

Sony’s experience in implementing Wiki ?

In a Sony conference that was held in Tokyo back in 2008, Edward Lerner, the director of tools and technology at Sony Entertainment, America, took his time to explain to everybody on the importance of using Wikis in the development of new products and their introduction to the market (Gardner, 2008). One reason as to why Sony has done so well in its adaptation of the Wikis is that its management is knowledgeable on the use of different social technological avenues (Read more about Sony's uses of social technologies). Moreover, Lerner was keen in introducing wikis especially in the gaming department, because this would make coding a lot easier. The implementation was a bit challenging, as it was hard convincing “older” managers in this new technology. However,It helped that some of the game department was aware of the technology impact. Lerner found that the key to successfully implement it is to find a person "champion" who has good leadership qualities so the department can get influenced by them (Claburn, 2008). Also, hiring experts in such technology because when other employee sees their success that will encourage them to learn and get on track.

Why implementing Wiki ?

Other than increasing  the game department productivity , Sony has employed the use of Wikis  in the production of its products is to boost its sales and marketing efforts. Sony also implemented Wikis in order to see to it that all its collaborative working processes with other organisations that majored in the production of technical innovations were improved. The Wikis made it easy for Sony to write, edit and comment on information written by analysts and affected them directly (Claburn, 2008).

What are the outcomes of this implementation ?

There are of course a lot of advantages that came with the implementation of Wikis and some of these advantages included:

• The improvement of the team interactions.
• A ready access to intelligence and expertise capabilities.
• Dissemination of information became faster than it ever was.
• The emails that were clogging up their systems were reduced.

To sum up, Wiki's implementation has proven many success among many companies, Sony’s case is a great example because of the company's business nature and its many social technologies experiences.

Please comment below, tell me what kind of companies you think could never adopt Wiki?

Also, do you think wiki will continue to be used in the coming 5, 10 years?

Thank you for passing by xo

REFERENCES:

Claburn, T. (2008, May 29). Enterprise 2.0 Conference Preview: Sony Gets Wiki With It - InformationWeek [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.informationweek.com/applications/enterprise-20-conference-preview-sony-gets-wiki-with-it/d/d-id/1068333?

Common Craft. (2007, May 29). Video: Wikis in Plain English  [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

Deutsch, N. (2013). Wikimedias [Image]. Retrieved  from http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/empower-with-wikis/

Gardner, D. (2008, November 6). Enterprise 2.0: Sony, CIA, Pfizer Strategize On Boosting Enterprise 2.0 Adoption - InformationWeek [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.informationweek.com/applications/enterprise-20-sony-cia-pfizer-strategize-on-boosting-enterprise-20-adoption/d/d-id/1068793?

Rouse, M.(2007).wiki [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/wiki