 How did Wikipedia eclipse all commercial encyclopedias except Britannica?
These two features−the global scale of interdependence of human action, and the systematic acceleration of innovation, make contemporary life a bit like a slow motion disaster, in one important respect. That is why we have seen many more systems take on a loose, human centric model in the last decade and a half: from the radical divergence of Toyota’s production system from the highly structured model put in place by Henry Ford, to the Internet’s radical departure from the AT&T system that preceded it, and on to the way Wikipedia constructs human knowledge on the fly, incrementally, in ways that would have been seen, until recently, as too chaotic ever to work (and are still seen so be many). This approach was widespread and influential; it still is.
 They built an open and inviting system that lets people learn together.
 They engaged the human and social.  They built an open and inviting system that lets people learn together.  They hired the smartest guys in the room.  They issued a large IPO.