business model innovation design we're on a road to nowhere // on a quest to analyze and explore the design of business model innovations, i.e. 'hideous and hidden things' like organizational structures and capabilities, corporate strategies and all things related // on a yellow brick road with a girl, a lion and a straw-man wasting our time // …

Google’s acquisition of JotSpot is generating a lot of buzz.

Alas, the main point is not Google buying yet another company.

Rather one must reflect about the real core in this strategic move – which is timely, smart and in line with other Google apps and initiatives. I think that Google is envisioning a world where a nice chunk of applications (used by SME-businesses and consumers alike) will be web-based services and no longer out-of-the-box PC-software. So this is not a full-front assault on Microsoft but another well rounded move in a business model innovation game:

Jotspot as a wiki provider has integrated some amazing features and applications in their hosted wiki offering, CEO Joe Kraus demonstrated some of them a few weeks ago on the Scoble Show (here’s the corresponding interview).

I’ve helped myself to my very own (password protected) Jot Spot wiki a few weeks ago and have since then tested the ‘office’ features and (non-geek) usability.

JotSpot is not really wiki-ish, and more sort of an application platform for individuals, small groups and small companies that can use it as a hosted (intranet/extranet) solution. It offers ready-made calendars, spreadsheets and attachments, and add-ons like task lists, knowedge base, personal produtivity tools and more. The focus of JotSpot is collaboration, here it will add some cool features to Google’s portfolio.

If Google can deploy and popularize this ‘office-ish wiki’, wikis will become more mainstream. And this is good news for frogpond, my freelancing consulting venture, which offers companies help and advice in regard to wiki implementation.

Update: Jerry Bowles has good analysis on the wiki competitive space, as the competition isn’t sleeping (e.g. see these migration offers by Socialtext and Atlassian (Confluence)). Still, I think all this is good news for all the players in the wiki space because it demonstrates that wikis are hot