I am still in the process of reading these books, so I can't comment on them all first-hand at the moment (but I'll update this post accordingly). This list comes from a mash-up of several marketing/media/Internet courses I've taken, from professors' lists of recommended/required texts. Some emphasize marketing, some emphasize economics, and most deal with the idea of Web 2.0, or the Internet's ability to facilitate communication between large groups of people.
James Surowiecki - The Wisdom of Crowds
Like the jellybeans story in the About Me section, Surowiecki's book deals with collective vs. individual intellegence, and how to harness the power of group knowledge. On Amazon.com, the book review summarizes Surowiecki's elements of 'wise crowds': (1) diversity of opinion for different information; (2) independence of members from one another to avoid opinion leaders; (3) decentralization for errors to balance out; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions so that a single expert isn't skewing the results. This is the hypothesis for Click! - is a crowd as wise in curating an exhibit as a professional?
Seth Godin - Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us
I'll have to update this one, as I am in the process of reading it. According to the review on Amazon.com, Godin's main thesis is that "lasting and substantive change can be best effected by a tribe: a group of people connected to each other, to a leader and to an idea. Smart innovators find or assemble a movement of similarly minded individuals and get the tribe excited by a new product, service or message, often via the Internet (consider, for example, the popularity of the Obama campaign, Facebook or Twitter)."
Chris Anderson - The Long Tail
Chris Anderson is an editor at Wired; the book below is also by a writer there, Jeff Howe. The long tail is based on niche markets - that with the Internet, the ability to find and access niche markets is so much easier and cheaper to do, that one can capitalize on the long tail of offerings. For example, in 2008 the best-selling digital album on Amazon was by Nine Inch Nails, an arguably niche rather than mass market band. While record stores ten years ago might not have even stocked such a CD, it obviously has a market. The long tail offering, rather than the blockbuster, mass market offer (like a Justin Timberlake CD) had the largest market in this scenario. Interesting opportunities for arts organizations, whose offerings are often niche rather than mass.
Jeff Howe - Crowdsourcing
Another 'power of the crowd' one, this deals with some examples from the art world, including the acquisition of iStockPhoto by Getty Images (some of the same issues in this book can be found in the comments exchange regarding the Met's 'It's Time We Met' marketing campaign). I find this book interesting, but it focuses on the benefits for the amateur or semi-professional without addressing the other side of the coin (what happened to all the professional stock photographers with Getty?).
Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams - Wikinomics
From Amazon.com: "methods for exploiting the power of collaborative production are outlined throughout, an alluring compendium of ways to throw open previously guarded intellectual property and to invite in previously unavailable ideas that hide within the populace at large"
As Wikinomics takes its title from Wikipedia, the biggest example of crowd participation in the creation of the world's largest encyclopedia, this book deals with the issue of control in opening an idea up for crowd input. Control regarding intellectual property is very much related to the creative process and product; this book contains several examples that may seem very unrelated to the arts and entertainment industries but really are quite similar.
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