The Success of Wikipedia. Models and Concepts

Scientific Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2.1, language: English, abstract: It is not possible nowadays to imagine the Internet without Wikipedia, which is the prime online information source for millions of people. It is undoubtedly one of the most popular websites in the world and accommodates a crucial number of readers and contributors. Beutler (2014) compares the Wikipedia to "the passion project of a volunteer community committed to developing a universal knowledge base". Wikipedia has grown to be the sixth most popular website worldwide behind websites such as Google or Yahoo! (500 Global Sites Index, 2013). The infrastructure of Wikipedia enabled the contributors to build the largest and most up to date encyclopaedia in the world. Wilson &Likens (2015) pinpoint the accuracy of the website, which is similar to the traditional reference sources like for instance Encyclopaedia Britannica. By using different models and concepts, this paper tries to find out the feasible reasons for its ultimate success. Based on the Harvard Business Review Case Study on Wikipedia, the Resource- Based View model is utilized, where the strategic capabilities of the Wikipedia are analysed. Also, this paper argues how Blue Ocean strategy can provide a sound explanation of the apparent strategic success of the most popular online encyclopaedia.