Two heads are better than one and thousands of intelligent, educated heads are better still.

This was the foundation for Wikipedia’s 2001 launch. Now publishing goliath Pearson PLC is joining forces with Wharton Vice Dean Jon Spector, Wharton Professor Yoram Wind and professors at Mit’s Sloan School to produce a new Wikibook.

The book will be called “We Are Smarter Than Me” and in a truly meta fashion will, according to the Wall Street Journal, “explore how businesses can use online communities, consumer-generated media such as blogs, and other Web content to help in their marketing, pricing, research and service.” While the founding authors will create a skeleton for the book, interested users can contribute content through the website www.wearesmarter.org.

User-generated business texts carry both great opportunities and potential flaws.

(wearesmarter.org)

On one hand, shared experiences are already hallmarks of business learning. From case studies to best practices, the idea that people should learn from each other already exists in the business world. We Are Smarter Than Me may thus fare better than the original Wikibooks textbook project, which sought to address the problem of expensive textbooks by building open-content texts online. That initiative has seen limited success and has not yet gained the authority to be assigned by teachers or professors.

Having already recruited some big-name academics and businesspeople as contributors, the We Are Smarter project will certainly provide interesting anecdotes and analysis. The oversight role of Pearson and the ghostwriters who will compile the text will also allow for more coherence and legitimacy than the original Wikibooks. As the Journal correctly identifies, the problem in this case will be managing competing egos.

If the project successfully jumps this hurdle, We Are Smarter Than Me will open new doors in academia. Somewhere between peer-reviewed journals, traditional textbooks, and case studies, open-content books can quickly collect information from different sources and offer competing perspectives on any given topic.

So long as they don’t bump into each other, many business heads really will be better than one.

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