John Newton - How Web 2.0 will change the face of business

In the article "How Web 2.0 will change the face of business", John Newton does a really good job at describing what Web 2.0 is essentially about and what impact the driving forces behind Web 2.0 have to businesses and software vendors (such as Alfresco themselves):

Web 2.0 is explained more by example than by defining the technologies that make it up. A collection of brands provide the metaphors for what exactly is different in the way we use new web technologies, such as Google for search, YouTube for video, Flickr for photos, MySpace and Facebook for social networking and Wikipedia for wikis...//...These brands as metaphors become the nouns and verbs of describing Web 2.0 as a new way of socializing, communicating and sharing with each other in huge, consumer-scale markets.

Web 2.0 is not really so much a revolution in technology, but in how people use technology and how people interact with each other as a result of that technology.

As a result of the introduction of the internet, rapid infrastructure build-out and
the new generation of Web 2.0 sites, we have seen one of the most dramatic
democratizations of technology since at least the PC, if not the telephone. Through universal access, users discovered that computers could be used for far more than information; that they could be used as a medium of expression, sharing and revelation.

Software vendors are now jumping on the bandwagon with social software and collaborative features smelling a bit opportunity. Many are repackaged capabilities from another era of enterprise software. Some are looking at their portfolios and asking whether this is what they were doing all along. This misses the point. Web 2.0 has so far outstripped enterprise software as we know it in usability, accessibility and empowerment, that it causes mass rolling of eyeballs at its mere sight of not just the new generation, but most others as well. Those who are familiar with the ease of use and empowerment of Web 2.0 sites like YouTube, Wikipedia and Facebook are aware of what is possible and have much higher expectations. It will take a few years, but eventually they will figure out that Web 2.0 is not just a few new collaboration features and highly interactive web technologies, but empowerment of their users and the ability to draw in a critical mass of users from outside the trusted circle.

I could not agree more. I persistently argue that easy access and easy of use is a key part of Web 2.0 (as it is a key to empowering users). In the post "MOSS 2007 is missing the point with web 2.0" I take Microsoft as an example of a software vendor that seem to think that Web 2.0 is just a bunch of features, but I also conclude that it is a misconception that most of the old software giants have:

Web 2.0 is more than a bunch of new technologies – it represents a new paradigm in how people think and behave in how they use information technology. Much that was said about the web in the dotcom days (“the Internet revolution”) are actually happening today. Technology-wise, not much is new since the dotcom years. What is new is that the masses have adopted modern information technology and the Internet and practically made it to their own. Today, people are often faster at adopting new technologies than companies. They bring consumer technologies to work, they want to choose their own productivity tools (and do so) and see IT as a business thing rather than an IT department thing. To most people, IT is no longer an obscure thing.

In the hands of the old enterprise software giants, web 2.0 easily becomes a complex thing. Their ambition to extend and modernize their feature-packed software suits with web 2.0 applications and technologies might cause them to miss the whole point of web 2.0; the ease of use.

I have previously described some of my experiences from using SharePoint for collaboration, but I won't go into another argument whether or not SharePoint / MOSS 2007 is a good platform for collaboration or not - because it both is and it isn't. But it is not Web 2.0.

This week in links - week 26, 2008

From an article in AdvertisingAge called "Social Networking Will Go Mainstream" by David Armano:

I like to think of my multiple networks as my "social system" (see diagram). The ones that add long-term value are the ones I maintain.

As social networks become mainstream, it will be business as usual. We'll log onto our network of choice, just as we log onto e-mail and sift through the spam. And we'll be making up our minds about brands and people along the way. Those who spam us will become a nuisance, something to tolerate. And those who make it worth our time will be rewarded with our trust and maybe even loyalty. As marketers and individuals, the choice to add value or generate more noise is ours to make.

"Can Cloud Computing Actually Save the Internet?" by Ron Miller:

Given that all the transactions are actually crossing the internet, however, it would make sense that it would simply add to the increasingly clogged byways of the internet. But when I spoke to representatives from Google and Salesforce.com at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston last week and asked them about this (in separate conversations, I might add), I was surprised to hear them argue the opposite—that Cloud computing could actually *reduce* traffic.

Both argued in separate conversations that it would actually reduce traffic because instead of moving large files around many times, you are actually moving around references to the files sitting on their back-end servers and most of the heavy lifting would not be on the internet itself, but on the company server infrastructure.

If you buy this argument, you could see where increasing use of the cloud actually reduces the pressure on the internet pipes as people stop moving large documents around using email and instead point to a file on cloud vendor’s servers.

"How Web 2.0 creates value" by Ross Dawson:

Web 2.0 for business
The many applications of Web 2.0 in business include increasing employee productivity with collaboration tools and better access to information, gaining insights into consumer attitudes and behaviours, engaging customers in personal relationships and providing personalised customer service.

Web 2.0 for consumers
Some consumer uses of Web 2.0 tools are to communicate with their friends and family, find out what products and services others have liked and manage their lives more effectively.

Web 2.0 for creators
Creators of art, video, photos, music, writing and more can share their creations, collaborate with others in developing them and get rewarded for their creativity.

Web 2.0 for investors
Through Web 2.0 start-ups, investors can access the fastest growing sector of the economy, establish low-cost trial ventures and reach global markets.

Web 2.0 for innovation
Web 2.0 tools help innovators to collaborate across boundaries and connect their ideas to the global marketplace.

Are bloggers polluting cyberspace?

From a report by The Committee on Culture and Education in the European Parliament:

The emergence of new media has brought more dynamic and diversity into the media landscape; the report encourages responsible use of new channels. In this context the report points out that the undetermined and unindicated status of authors and publishers of weblogs causes uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits. It recommends clarification of the legal status of different categories of weblog authors and publishers as well as disclosure of interests and voluntary labelling of weblogs."

Yet another sign that politicians are not in sync with the times, or with the people for that sake? I wonder how they are to make it happen...

This week in links - week 25, 2008

Midsummer is coming up (this Friday) which means that I will stay away from the Internet and this blog for a few days to celebrate Swedish midsummer in Kivik, so here are already my links for this week:

"Telco 2.0: The Future Of Telecoms" by Gerd Leonhard from Robin Good's MasterNewMedia, an inspiring read:

Telecoms: Will they be the owners of all future content distribution channels?

In a networked ecosystem that wants to serve and empower those pesky ‘always-on’ digital natives, telcos and operators have no choice but to branch out into adjacent or even completely alien sectors - if they don’t, other players such as device & handset manufacturers, web portals, social networks and search engines will feel compelled to fill the gaps and push the pipe & network guys further and further down to the bottom of a digital ecosystem that has only just now begun to flourish...//...Imagine a Facebook Mobile Network, a Samsung Mobile Video Platform, and (of course) a Google eBook Reader?

For telcos, it’s about time to get into a new game, and it’s called Media2.0...//... Deutsche Telekom, Orange or Telefonica should have bought Last.fm, not CBS!

"Enterprise 2.0: Three Thoughts on the State of Social Software in Business" by C.G. Lynch at CIO.com:

IBM enjoyed good media reviews for the look and feel of Lotus Connections, while Microsoft had many of its customers display the use of SharePoint's social software features in the enterprise. In addition, Microsoft announced a series of partnerships that allows Enterprise 2.0 vendors (including smaller start-ups) to hook their "best of breed"products, such as a wiki or blog, into SharePoint more easily.

Forrester Research has predicted that these two vendors, armed with deep pockets, will dominate the Enterprise 2.0 and collaboration market. In addition, because both Microsoft and IBM have built their products to integrate with existing systems they built (such as Exchange and Lotus Notes), customers with those products might find their social software more attractive than offerings from start-up vendors.

"Is SharePoint the end of (portal) history?" by Shawn Shell, Contributing Analyst at CMSWatch:

SharePoint has clearly caused a disruption in portal conversations in many organizations. The real question is whether SharePoint deserves this kind of attention. I think it does. Just exercise suitable caution: all portals, regardless of vendor, raise tricky issues of data integration, identity management, and application usability. (Some conversations, it seems, never go away.) In the end, you must truly understand SharePoint and your needs before dismissing other solutions in the portal space.

"Harbors in the Ocean of E-mail" by Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School:

The problem with using e-mail for all communications is that it gets used for, well, all communications, even those that aren’t time-critical, personal, private, or salient. It also gets used to coordinate the multi-person creation of documents, presentations, and spreadsheets, a task at which it’s abysmal. I often ask audiences how many people execute multi-person collaborations by attaching the (hopefully) most recent version of a file to a group e-mail again and again. Most hands go up. I then ask how many people are happy with this mode of collaboration; very few hands remain in the air.

Being close makes a difference

Efficient communication - when people communicate and understand each other - is the most important ingredient in any enterprise where people get together and need to collaborate to achieve a common goal.

To be able to communicate something to someone directly whenever you need to by using the most appropriate communication tool - anything from your voice and body language to drawing or writing - in the current situation is essential for communication to be efficient. It is especially important that the persons who are communicating can give each other instant feedback and have an dialogue. The ideal situation is that they are located in the same room or space, talk the same language, share a common conceptual horizon, know and trust each other and have the most appropriate and convenient communication tools at hand. Being close makes a difference.

Being close is also important for innovation to happen. Have you ever wondered why so many successful enterprises are born in a basement or in a small college room? Being close creates room for spontaneity and ideas to flow freely. No structure or constraints need to be imposed to the communication processes. Ideas can be articulated with simple and even primitive means and they can be exchanged immediately as they pop up in our heads. In addition, if we know and trust each other, we are more likely to share our ideas with each other instead of keeping them for ourselves. Being close forces you to get to know each other.

So, being close is the ideal when it comes to collaboration. But this does not mean that we should always be close physically. The main reason is that it is often not practical or economical. There are always costs associated with being close unless we are not located closely to each other from the beginning. The most obvious is the costs associated with traveling - unproductive traveling time, monetary and environmental costs of traveling, mental stress and exhaustion due to time zone adjustments and lack of sleep, loss of calendar time due to the problem of finding space in calendars for traveling, social consequences of being away from our friends and family, and so forth.

All these things and more make traveling something most organizations like to avoid unless it is absolutely necessary. Still, we cannot escape the fact that we live in a globalized world where we need to be able to collaborate with people distributed all over the world.

What I just described here is the overall business case for helping people to communicate and collaborate more efficiently with the use of various collaboration technologies. This does not mean that you should start with looking at collaboration technologies. What is more important is to articulate efficient communication and collaboration over time and space with all relevant stakeholders as the overall guiding principle for all IT initiatives - even though the objectives of a specific initiative might be contradicting to this principle. The point is that this principle should never be compromised unless absolutely necessary. Even when a comprimise is needed, the business case for such an initiative should also include costs related to decrease in communication and collaboration efficiency. These kinds of costs are of course hard to quantify, but the cost of innovations not happening is even harder to quantify. That is also a reason why this guiding principle must exist and never be excluded from a business case just because it is hard to quantify in monetary terms. The consequences must be analyzed regardless.

When I start talking to customers about Enterprise 2.0 and associated technologies, I am always trying to do so from this angle. For example:

• Social networks help to bring people who are separated in space and time closer to each other. They make it easy to connect with persons you have never met physically or not for a long time. They make it possible to get in contact with people in your own and extended personal and professional networks. They keep people together in-between collaborations and also make collaborations happen easier.
• Blogging makes it possible for virtually anyone to distribute information to any stakeholder who might interested in it. The information can be made accessible over time and space via one easy-to-use communication point (hub). Team blogging works as a catalyst for communication and collaboration, increasing the numberof interactions between team members as well as helping to supply each other with consistent information.
• Subscribing to and reading RSS feeds puts the control in the hands of the user. The user can it passively tap into a lot of information flows and filter out information that is useful. Instead of spending time on browsing and searching for information (including trying to find the source again), users can passively monitor the information flows from sources they trust and consume and act on information immediately after it has been made available from the source.

And so on.

Web 2.0 technologies have already proved to simplify and increase communication and collaboration over time and space for non-business users. Being easy to use, encouraging open communication and sharing and putting emphasis on people instead of technology are some of the success factors. It is time to take these success factors into enterprises, putting efficient communication and collaboration as the overall guiding principle for IT initiatives and introduce new solutions and tools that leverage this principle.

Top Challenges Information Managers Must Master In 2008

"Top Challenges Information Managers Must Master In 2008" as seen by the Editorial Staff at DM Review:

Moving content management throughout the enterprise. If you concentrate on some facet of enterprise content management (ECM), you know the challenge of getting business people to actually use the content system instead of relying on the old way of doing things. And now it’s getting more complicated as business people’s expectations continue to change through their use of new technologies that can store content in the cloud.

Evolving collaboration strategies to reflect the way people work. If you focus on collaboration, there’s not only the constant issue of Microsoft versus IBM, but now the ante has been raised with questions like “Should I bring Google into the picture?” or “Should we use wikis instead of document management?” coming from all corners within the
enterprise.

Dealing with a changing data management landscape. If you concentrate on data management and decision support, then recent consolidation in the BI market created more work for you. Plus, data governance issues continue to grow, driven by increasing interest in data warehousing appliances, metadata management, and master data management.

This week in links - week 21, 2008

"EMC's Documentum and eRoom gets a 2.0 make over with 'Magellan'" by James Dellow:

EMC's Documentum and eRoom are already widely deployed enterprise content and
collaboration tools and their new proposed client platform, Magellan, could provide an alternative to Microsoft SharePoint (for collaboration) and IBM's Connections/Quickr. From the end-user perspective, Magellan will provide Web 2.0 collaboration features, such as Wikis, blogs, RSS, and tagging.

"It's Not The Data, It's The Flow" by Fred Wilson:

Social web services need not fear data portability. They need to fear others providing a better experience. Because when others do that, the flow of data moves and they aren't in the middle anymore. They might still have your data but they won't have you. And that's where the value is.

"Why change management is critical to Web 2.0 success" by Neil Davey:

A survey of 1,800 executives worldwide by McKinsey last year, for instance, revealed that a fifth of them were already using blogs to improve customer service or solicit customer feedback. It’s a sure bet that 2008 will see firms not only exploring blogs, but also peer to peer networking, social networks and podcasts.

But rolling out social software in an organisation isn’t akin to buying another version of Oracle. There is a certain degree of organisational readiness that needs to be achieved in order to successfully deploy and absorb the changes associated with implementing social software. And the change management necessary to precede such a Web 2.0 strategy has caught many businesses unaware

Web 2.0 practitioner and author of 'Winning by Sharing' Leon Benjamin is in agreement with the findings. "To participate in a network, a company must itself be network-centric," he explains. "Unfortunately this means taking a conscious decision to dismantle hierarchical organisation. Democratising decision making (crowd sourcing), creating openness and transparency is a big step for large organisations in particular. For most of them, this is still a step too far. That is where you get the major resistance. People suddenly worry about being more transparent, anybody can talk to anybody. And that is a really big problem for some people high up in some organisations."

Google Sites finally open to everyone

Google have now made Google Sites available to anyone, which is very exciting. From the Official Google Blog:

A few months ago we launched Google Sites exclusively as part of Google Apps for companies and organizations that wanted to use the service on their own domains. Now we've made it easy for anyone to set up a website to share all types of information -- team projects, company intranets, community groups, classrooms, clubs, family updates, you name it -- in one place, for a few people, a group or the world. You can securely host your own website at http://sites.google.com/[your-website] and add as many pages as you like for free:

I've already set up my first site and invited my fellow bloggers so we can evaluate how it performs as collaboration tool. It is certainly easy to set up a site.

This is a smart move by Google, to let the users drive the adoption of Google Sites as collaboration tool and eventually bring it to their workplaces if they like it. But maybe that is just the way I would think if I was in the driving seat at Google.

If you have missed out on these reports...

...then you find them here:

The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe
"In this EMC-sponsored white paper, IDC calibrates the size (bigger than first thought) and the growth (faster than expected) of the digital universe through 2011."

AIIM Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0: Agile, Emergent, and Integrated
"This study of 441 end users (performed in January 2008) found that a majority of organizations recognize Enterprise 2.0 as critical to the success of their business goals and objectives, but that most do not have a clear understanding of what Enterprise 2.0 is. This 80+ page report, which contains over 70 figures, covers Enterprise 2.0 from all perspectives including technology, business drivers and market dynamics."

Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory
Found via Bill Ives, who describes it as follows: "...the Canada School of the Public Service has crafted a good overview of knowledge management (in the context of organizational demographic changes) and has some useful examples of common approaches/techniques...//...The focus is on public but the report provides a good introduction for fairly broad consumption."

Future of Media Report 2007
This report describes the evolving convergence media landscape. Michael Pick and Robin Good provides you with a short overview.

Open Source Web Content Management in Java
"...provides an in depth analysis of seven of the leading open source Java web content management platforms. Written for technical decision makers, the report breaks down the open source marketplace and describes various categories of open source software and where they are most effectively used. The report also provides a framework for understanding the cost and risk implications of selecting an open source platform over commercial software"

...and here are some online readings:

IBM Social Computing Guidelines
"In the spring of 2005, IBMers used a wiki to create a set of guidelines for all IBMers who wanted to blog. These guidelines aimed to provide helpful, practical advice—and also to protect both IBM bloggers and IBM itself, as the company sought to embrace the blogosphere. Since then, many new forms of social media have emerged. So we turned to IBMers again to re-examine our guidelines and determine what needed to be modified. The effort has broadened the scope of the existing guidelines to include all forms of social computing."

Sun Guidelines on Public Discourse
"Many of us at Sun are doing work that could change the world. Contributing to online communities by blogging, wiki posting, participating in forums, etc., is a good way to do this. You are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first, but we expect you to read and follow the advice in this note."

Facebook becoming less social and thus less innovative?

"Throughout the primate world, social networks provide a fast conduit for innovation and information-sharing that help the group as a whole to adapt to its environment."

The quote above is from the book "Glut - Mastering Information Through The Ages" by Alex Wright that I am currently reading. Wright provides many examples on how innovations happen in social networks and that the density of the network (how close the individuals are to each other) is correlated to the probability of innovations to happen. In the book, Alex Wright also reasons about how networks and hieararchies "not only coexist, they are continually giving rise to each other". Definately interesting reading.

As I am apparently influenced by what I am reading, an item from the WebWare.com RSS feed caught my interest. In "Facebook to discontinue Network Pages", Harrison Hoffman ponders on the news that Facebook will soon discontinue Network Pages:

"In a warning message to users, Facebook has said that they will soon be discontinuing Network Pages. Network Pages is a feature which allows members of a particular network to view and interact with a variety of data, such as Wall postings, marketplace listings, statistics on the most popular things in their network, and popular groups. In the same message, Facebook then goes on to suggest that you should use Groups in order to connect with people around you."

"This is a pretty interesting move and I'm not really sure why Facebook is going in this direction. Groups are a fine method of communication between people who share specific interests, but Network Pages, on the ther hand, are great for seeing what's popular in your network, which probably includes people that you would not otherwise be in a group with. It is a good consolidated view of things that are of direct concern and interest to people in that network."

My reflection on the news article above is that Facebook might be fundamentally misunderstanding the power of social networks and their own reason for success if they see groups and networks as interchangeable.

The value of Enterprise RSS

I personally often argue for the potential that Enterprise RSS has for the purpose of improving decision making within an organization. The reasoning is as follows: By encouraging conversations between people in different initiatives and making them explicit as RSS feeds and by making it possible for anyone within the enterprise to tap into (subscribe to) these conversations and passively observe them, managers as well as any stakeholder can get valuable information to make better informed decisions, as well as getting signals about things starting to happen and react on them before it is to late.

When I manage a project, I usually ask each member in my project to write a diary (either as text stored stored in a document or send via an e-mail) about what they have been doing, what they are currently doing and what issues and risks they see. This way I have been able to stay on top of things and resolve issues before they become real problems. I also get information telling me if we are on schedule or not. The problem has been that these diaries have been hard to access and that anyone who wanted to read them had to actively look for them on a file share or in their inboxes. As a result, the only one who have read them has been me. Occasionally. I have also had to remind and motivate each and everyone to write their diaries, which is hard to do when they know that the only one who is reading their diaries is me. Hopefully.

But things are changing as technologies such as blogs and RSS are becoming more common even for enterprise use. With a project blog which every project member can contribute to and an RSS-feed that all stakeholders can subscribe to, the whole process of informing each other within a project as well as informing externa stakeholders becomes so much more simple and powerful. When the effort to inform yourself is small enough, then you find it worthwile. The value is simply so much higher than the cost. When that happens, then you also see a value of sharing information with others. If you know that someone reads what you are writing, then you get the motivation needed to continute writing. And then it becomes a positive spiral.

In the post "How Corporate RSS Supports Collaboration and Innovation", Dennis McDonald advises his readers to read the post "RSS: Underappreciated Web 2.0 in the Enterprise" by corporate IT manager Jim MacLennan. So I did and here is an excerpt:

"We added RSS capabilities to our internal PMO systems this past month, and traffic & content is already building up to become a valuable resource. Some have [correctly] noted that this increased visibility puts a bit more pressure on project managers and team members, to keep updating project blogs with pertinent information. This "time shifting" of communication should develop into the most effective way to let the rest of IT know what is happening in all areas"

"These spontaneous, organic, and very impactful "conversations", between people still experimenting with a new technology, show me real potential for spontaneous innovation and idea sharing. More evidence of the value of [judicious] experimentation with new technology - no silver bullet, but just enough spark to start a few fires."

Dennis McDonald makes a summary of Jim MacLennans findings:

"RSS feeds make it easier for people to kee up with what a lot of different projects are up to.

This has led to better communication as well as innovation.

Email is still the most ingrained communication platform.

Upper management still expects PowerPoints for reporting purposes."

He then continues by addressing the problem to quantify the costs and benefits of Enterprise RSS:

"Simply put, a generally available RSS feed creation and subscription capability can increase the number of projects any one person can remain abreast of for the expenditure of a given unit of time — just as it can increase the total amount of time a person devotes overall to managing — and responding to — the monitored RSS feeds."

"Granted, taking such a quantitative view does not tell the whole story about what might be gained by making RSS subscription features generally available across projects and the people they interact with. There’s no way to predict, for example, when an innovation or improvement will occur as a result of a communication that might not have otherwise taken place."

"That’s a disadvantage of taking a “beancounter” approach to implementing social media within an organization. While you might be able to quantify the time, effort, and technology associated with impacted processes, you can’t necessarily predict when and where the benefits (such as innovations or new ideas) will occur."

If you want to know more about Enterprise RSS, the ChiefTech blog by James Dellow is a good starting point.

Increasing collaboration, knowledge sharing and innovation

In "Questions to Ask Before Replacing Corporate Email", Dennis D. McDonald addresses the problem of using e-mail as "the one and only" collaboration tool:

"For me a bottom line issue is understanding the costs of introducing new technology and replacing old technology, given that the old technology — email — is not going to disappear (nor should it)...//...How long these extra costs will need to be incurred will depend upon the organization and the speed of adoption, and complete adoption won’t occur overnight ...//...These additional costs need to be weighed against the savings of time that emerge when it is found that efficient use of collaboration software actually reduces not only the number of (inefficient) emails associated with certain types of activities but also the meetings associated with certain types of tasks."

In "Build It (and they won't come)", Marc Solomon debunks some myths about "knowledge hubs" and shares his insights about how to get your users engaged as participants (to make them share their knowledge).

"The perennial, time-tested truth is that people who love to learn don't share that love for what they learn (or care to share). How do we make it worth their while?...//...Turning users into contributors requires that we architect searches that highlight who the contributors are along with the volume and nature of what they're contributing."

"No 12 step program can move forward until the addict admits that they have an addiction -- in this case relying on email to provide a dashboard-like visibility into what's fresh and noteworthy on an organizational level. How can the addict be weaned from the isolation of 1:1 asynchronous communication so that their comfort zone includes RSS readers, search alerts, and subscription feeds for staying on top of their priorities and moving targets."

"Enterprise systems are saddled with the tags we force on them to label their content baggage. But the more control we exert on our metadata the more pressure we put on our producers to execute our elaborate coding schemes. At what point can we introduce commonly accepted web 2.0 fare as folksonomies, tag clouds, and ability to aggregate these terms by their popularity?"

"One of the self-fulfilling failures of expert-finding deep dives is that when you ask for volunteers your most sought-after domain leaders are already snowed under -- why would they volunteer their protected time to be officially pegged for all to see on your corporate radar? One of the many benefits of connecting metadata to search is that the engine can quantify thought leadership based on business need -- not based on who volunteers for guru status in a given topic."

In an article in BusinessWeek, "Life on the Edge: Learning from Facebook", authors John Hagel and John Seely Brown argue that "social network provides important lessons for executives—and a key forum for innovation and experimentation":

"Dismissing Facebook as irrelevant to business would be dangerously shortsighted. Yes, it is on the edge of traditional business activity, but it is an edge where new approaches to business are being tested and refined. Like most edges in the business world, it may look marginal at the outset, but has the potential to redefine business more broadly over time...//...So what lessons should more traditional companies take away from the early Facebook and SocialMedia experience?"

• "Create more edges. The decision by Facebook to open up its platform to third-party developers unleashed a torrent of innovation that continues to expand...//...By offering application developers easy access to millions of potential users, Facebook spurred broad innovation in a short period of time."
  
• "Provide better ways to connect at the edge. Brokers like SocialMedia attract diverse participants at the edge and provide mechanisms to catalyze new insight and share knowledge. "
  
• "Demographic edges are fertile grounds for business innovation...//...Younger generations can be important catalysts for business innovation, both because they often uncover unmet needs earlier than older customers and because they are more willing to try a new product or service."
  
• "Experiment and iterate rapidly. The power of Facebook as an innovation platform is that it costs so little for an application developer to introduce an application and generate quick market feedback. This environment encourages lots of experimentation and accelerates learning."
  
• "Social, technologic, and economic are inextricably intertwined. Facebook succeeds because it satisfies profound social needs to connect and be acknowledged via an easy-to-use technology platform. It also carefully manages the economics of its business to avoid upsetting the social order."

This week in links - week 15, 2008

"Most Users Are Unhappy With Enterprise Search" By W. David Gardner:

"Separate U.S. and U.K. surveys released this week found that search engines are failing workers."

"...keyword searches don't work for most employee searches and the search 'monster' is becoming a growing problem for businesses and organizations."

"In its report, Sinequa said many employees in the London study are struggling to find even the most basic information, and their travails are negatively impacting their productivity. Just 8% of the workers have a tool that permits them to search across their own company using key search terms, Sinequa said."

"A world without Enterprise RSS" by James Dellow:

"Enterprise users are lacking some of the tools and features available through the Web 2.0 consumer RSS ecosystem. And Enterprise RSS users want their RSS "when and where they want it" too!"

"The problem is that without Enterprise RSS this is hard to achieve, as most basic enterprise approaches to RSS use a simple Web content publishing approach - i.e. RSS content is published like any other Web content but consumed through an existing application or a desktop reader. However, the RSS content has no idea if anyone has actually read it and if a user wants to consume RSS feeds on different devices or even from different reading applications on the same device, well... bad luck."

"Enterprise Twitter – or how to tap social networks for expertise without using email" by Ross Dawson:

"In organizational network analysis circles, an MIT study on how people find information is often cited. The research showed that in an organization, people were five times more likely to go to people than to databases to get answers to their questions. So knowledge workers’ productivity is strongly related to their social networks, in terms of who they know who can help them, and whether there is sufficient trust and reciprocal value in the relationship that they get a response."

"Effective professionals are already tapping their external networks using Twitter and other tools to do their work better. They should also be able to use the same tools inside the organization."

"Building relevant social ties based on trust and mutual understanding that enable focused, efficient questions and knowledge sharing will always be far higher value than broadcast mechansims. However there is definitely a role for light-touch queries inside organizations, and I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of that in the coming year or two. "

"Tips for Social Computing in the Enterprise" by Chris Howard, vice president and director of the Executive Advisory Program at the Burton Group:

"People form communities based on shared interests. Once the community is in place, it becomes a greenhouse for the development of ideas and the distribution of information, attracting all those who wish to participate."

"Chris Zook recommends searching for "undeveloped adjacencies," or unexploited capabilities in the organization that can be developed into new, repeatable processes. Successful corporate innovation capitalizes on existing assets and ideas combined in new ways. Use of social computing creates a new stage for innovation, where ideas are more easily exposed and patterns spotted. As communities work out the kinks of new ideas in public forums, innovative thinking coalesces and ownership/leadership emerges."

"The collective intelligence of the community leads to answers more quickly. As more questions are answered, repeatability increases. As new workers enter the company, there is a baseline of knowledge to get them ramped up more effectively. Much of that knowledge is available as content within the social computing infrastructure."

Organizations need to take consumerization of IT seriously

The consumerization of IT is about new technologies being introduced on the consumer markets before they are introduced on the industrial markets. This is a trend which Gartner says “will be the most significant trend affecting information technology (IT) during the next 10 years means”.

Imagine having only one calendar, one user account, one address book, one mobile phone, one computer, one external storage, one application of each kind, one version of each application, and so on instead of having different ones for different environments such as work and home. Wouldn’t that simplify some things? It sure would for me. I currently carry two laptops in my bag (one from my consultant firm, one from a customer) besides the one I have at home. What makes me stand this heavy burden is that I can access my online apps such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar (synchronized with my Exchange account at work) and Google Reader from any computer and also from my smartphone. Otherwise I would be in File Management Hell. I would have spend a lot of time and energy shuffling files between computers via different e-mail accounts or USB sticks, working with multiple calendars and converting files between Office 2002, Office XP and Office 2007.

As information technology is becoming an integrated and natural part of our entire lives (not just the work part) more and more people are getting a better and better understanding of how IT can be used to simplify, enrich and in other ways add value to their lives. They have clear ideas of what they need or want and how they want things to work. As a result, their expectations and what they require from their work environment in terms of IT support is increasing. Just as organizations are trying to break down their silos and integrate different units better to improve communication, collaboration and information exchange, employees are expecting their employers to make it possible and easy for them to integrate their personal lives (consumer applications and devices) with their work lives.

An important point here is that employees should not be expected to cut off their personal lives from their work environments while at the same time be expected to work “anywhere, anyplace, anytime”. Being always connected means that we should always be able to stay connected to every part of our lives – work, friends, family, and activities of various kinds. Being always connected enables us to make faster transitions between different environments where we operate – we don’t have to change physical environments just because we have a different kind of task at hand. If we are able to keep ourselves up-to-date and to control all parts of our lives “anywhere, anyplace, anytime”, then we are likely to reduce the stress that comes from not being able to control our lives.

Organizations who do not let employees access online apps such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Gmail are in fact building barriers for people instead of removing barriers. They make it harder for people rather than to simplify for them. They are disempowering them, control. That is why people bring their personal devices to work. And with the consumerization of IT, they have access to the latest technologies and tools.

What does this means for organizations? Well, management and IT departments should focus more on trying to empower the people within their own organization. They should trust them enough to provide them the mandate and tools to shape and control their own working environment and how they use it. One important part of this is to break down the barriers between the work part of people’s lives and the other parts. Doing so will empower the people and allocate more energy and motivation so they can contribute more to the well-being of the entire organization. It is my firm belief that people who have a rich social (online and/or offline) life are also open-minded and more willing to share things with others. As a result, they are also more likely to contribute to a richer, more collaborative and more productive work environment.

This week in links - week 13, 2008

"Networked economies require Services not Processes" by Steve Jones:

"Back in the 80s the "Value Chain" was key, this was the series of steps and links that it took to deliver the value. Now the Value Chain really suited a process mentality. It was a pretty linear thing, everyone did their own bits in it and handed on from one place to another...//...process made sense in this world, A was followed by B which followed C etc etc. People mapped out simple processes and it just seemed to make sense.

The problem was, and most assuredly is, that Systems Theory was making itself more and more known in the business world. This is where collaboration becomes more about units (services in SOA terms) working together in complex networks than simply a chain which hands over responsibility. This led to the Value Network approach that business schools started pushing out in the late 90s.

The current, and next, generation of businesses are about complex collaborations to deliver value, not simply about following a process. This collaboration approach requires a business service approach and a focus on interactions, objectives and KPIs. Its a much harder environment to be working in than simple Value Chains but the potential rewards, and dangers, are
much more significant."

Here are some excerpts from the post "The best way to sell SOA? Try Web 2.0 techniques" by Joe McKendrick about the convergence of SOA and Web 2.0:

"Web 2.0 addresses the same problems SOA is addressing...Enabling users to easily compose services that make calls to back-end systems will go a long way to helping businesses see the value in SOA"

"Web 2.0 and SOA also have different philosophies...SOA is about empowering the enterprise, and Web 2.0 is about empowering the individual...we want the user to become increasingly more familiar with in the broad Internet, and bring that experience into the enterprise...At the same time, allowing the enterprise to free up its assets, and empower the business user.”

"IT Execs Want More-Effective Collaboration" from PR-USA.net:

"The study, commissioned by Novell, surveyed 100 senior IT executives on their experiences with and plans for collaboration software. A full 80 percent said it is of critical or high importance that individuals in their companies have the ability to collaborate securely within and beyond organizational boundaries, but fewer than half said their current collaboration solutions are extremely or very effective in enabling collaboration among individual knowledge workers or among teams and virtual teams."

"'Providing employees with collaboration tools that enable them to work together effectively, no matter where they may be located, is no longer a wish-list or nice-to-have item – it’s a requirement,' said Kent Erickson, senior vice president and general manager of Workgroup Solutions for Novell. 'But it’s a requirement that is not being adequately addressed for most organizations."

The DNA of Enterprise 2.0

The need to be able to communicate and collaborate over time and space increases for most enterprises. To get this communication and collaboration in place, we need to have means to easily exchange our key resources - information, knowledge and experiences - with each other. Web 2.0 technologies and solutions such as wikis, blogs, RSS and social software have are certainly making this exchange easier than ever before. However, Web 2.0 technologies and solutions are still quite unproven when it comes to enterprise use (Enterprise 2.0) and their value for enterprises is sometimes not clear. Many enterprises seem reluctant to adopt them and might not even have assessed their potential uses. They might even see them as something that will worsen their content management problems and the information overload employees are struggling with. But they couldn’t be more wrong. To quote blogger David Weinberger:

“The cure to information overload is more information - the way to manage information overload is more information. That's what the doomsayers of the 90's — Information Anxiety! In