Medicine looks for a cure online

A couple of weeks ago I attended a launch for business writer Don Tapscott's latest book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Co-authored with Anthony Williams, the 300-plus page tome provides an in-depth examination into how the Internet has "revolutionized" the way companies do business. Although Web 2.0 technologies such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook were originally intended as places to swap videos, stories and pictures online, Tapscott and Williams argue they have since evolved into tools that can also prop up an organization's bottom line.

One of the guests in attendance was Rob McEwen, founder and former chairman of Toronto-based Goldcorp Inc. McEwen also plays a starring role in Tapscott's book, by serving as the opening case study detailing how the Internet helped him find gold. In 2000, McEwen launched the now well-known Goldcorp Challenge, an online call-to-arms to anyone and everyone with ideas on how to get six million ounces of gold out of the company's Red Lake mine in northern Ontario. In an unprecedented move, McEwen posted Goldcorp's proprietary mining data on the company's web site and invited potential prospectors to submit their own mining targets. It worked - of the 110 submissions that were considered semi-finalists, 50% of these proposed targets, and Goldcorp reported it had an 80% success rate. Not surprisingly, McEwen thinks the power of the Internet to do business is enormous. And now he's setting his sights on the medical field, one McEwen believes could see remarkable advances by harnessing the collaborative power of the web.

Read the full article at CanadianBusiness.com >>