In January 2008, Cisco held the first worldwide Executive Collaboration Roundtable, a Cisco TelePresence event, hosted by Don Tapscott (author of Wikinomics) and Jim Grubb (Chief Demo Officer, Cisco), to engage senior business decision makers in discussions about opportunities their organizations can have to improve collaboration and positively transform their businesses.

The central message of the Wikinomics roundtable was that the knowledge, resources, and computing power of billions of people are self-organizing into a massive collective force, interconnected through blogs, wikis, chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks, and personal broadcasting. The roundtable sessions provided an overview of collaboration in this new Web 2.0 world and shared how Cisco is using Web 2.0 technologies to enhance its own collaboration efforts with customers, partners, suppliers and investors.

Don Tapscott is an internationally renowned authority on the strategic value of information technology. He consistently identifies and explains the next business imperatives and defines the business models and strategies that the new imperatives require.

He has authored or coauthored eleven widely read books on technology and business. His most recent book–Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything–is an international bestseller, has appeared on the New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller lists, and has been translated into 19 languages. Based on the largest investigation of strategic IT in business ever conducted, Wikinomics explains how businesses can tap the full potential of the emerging networked economy and its self–organized, mass–participatory communities.

Don is chief executive of New Paradigm and an adjunct professor of management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.