First published at CloudAve

It’s not often I agree with Dennis Howlett. The two of us have a history of going at it hammer-and-tongs in the defense of our own perspective on an issue. Sometimes it gets messy but that’s all part of the *fun*.

Recently however, in something of an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment, Dennis posted the not-too-subtle notion that Enterprise 2.0 is a crock (of what he didn’t elaborate).

Most people interested in the space will have read the post, but the central thesis Dennis takes is that;

…business has far more pressing problems. The world is NOT made up of knowledge driven businesses. It’s made up of a myriad of design, make and buy people who -quite frankly - don’t give a damn about the ‘emergent nature‘ of enterprise.  To most of those people, the talk is mostly noise they don’t need.They just want to get things done with whatever the best tech they can get their hands on at reasonable price.

It’s a theme that, despite the historical acrimony between Dennis and myself, I find refreshingly honest, and one I want to reflect on here. Bear that thought in mind - business is full of real people doing real stuff without the time, inclination or need to wax lyrical on “the new paradigm”.

I reflected on this thought, especially given the post written by Enterprise 2.0 thought leader Stowe Boyd in response to Dennis’ polemic. In his response Stowe says that;

those things called Enterprise 2.0 form only one bit of this bigger whole. The world in which work exists has changed fairly drastically in recent years, and so we are seeing a fundamental reset in the nature of work.

And this is the point I want to come to - yes the world is changing, a fact most of us accept. But enterprise, at least at a granular, man-in-the-cubicle level, is (for the most part) not changing. And the main reason for this is not technological, not financial but rather cultural.

I occupy an interesting space in that my background is very much SMB (I own and/or manage half a dozen different businesses in different sectors – technology, property, manufacturing, professional services). Added to this background is the fact that I’ve also had a number of consulting roles for large businesses. I am therefore able to compare and contrast these two very different beasts, and parse the differences in terms of “Enterprise 2.0”.

I never cease to be amazed at the commonality between different large businesses – no matter the industry they’re involved in, no matter which part of the world they’re based, they seem to share similar traits. The people within the organizations are focused on compliance, they’re fearful of making decisions lest they be seen to be putting their head above the parapet and they’re invariably exceptionally poor at communicating – no matter how many whizz-bang “Enterprise 2.0” tools their organization has invested in. (Disclaimer - this a general comment and doesn’t reflect on current clients ;-) )

In his original post, Dennis asks what the problem is that Enterprise 2.0 is trying to solve. This question misses the point in my view – most people accept that the world is changing, that instantaneousness, collaboration, organic structures, open standards and agile development are the themes de jour and will continue to be so going forwards. This change however fails to take into account the nature of big business - despite the rhetoric and the hand waving by the select few organizations that have bought into this new way of doing things - enterprise is, for the most part, resisting change as strongly as is humanly possible. It’s almost entirely a cultural issue that Enterprise 2.0 is up against – and it’s a formidable barrier indeed.

I wrote a paper over a decade ago, in part inspired by Ricardo Semler, his book Maverick and his work within Semco, the large business he inherited. In part motivated by the belief that it is almost impossible to be innovative and proactive within a large enterprise, he set about tearing Semco apart, creating autonomous sub-organizations where the workers were often the business owners, able to sub-contract both to Semco but also to their competitors.

It’s a solution to the problem that Enterprise 2.0 is trying to solve – that is the sheer terror within large businesses of opening the floodgates, and the general trait of enterprise workers to be focused on creating a silo for information in effort to protect their own patch and, as Dennis puts it, “a protectionism on [their part] hoping they won’t be pink slipped any time soon”. Enterprise 2.0 is an incredibly valuable tool but, as yet, it doesn’t have much raw material upon which to work.

So… Enterprise 2.0 isn’t a crock at all, but until there is a new kind of enterprise that is able to leverage it, it may as well be.

I’m thrilled to announce that Bert Sandie (@bsandie) from Electronic Arts is going to present a case study at E2 San Francisco. Bert is Director - Technical Excellence (cool title) and is tasked with driving EA’s internal social networking, knowledge management solutions, collaboration and innovation. Bert spoke on a Microsoft customer panel at our Boston event and got great reviews.

Our agenda of case studies and customer speakers is growing and now includes:

• Electronic Arts
• Nike
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• Kaiser Permanente
• Medtronic
• Metlife
• Eli Lilly
• CSC
• EMC
• Alcatel-Lucent

Here is the session Bert will present in November:

Collaboration 2.0 inside Electronic Arts
The presentation will provide insight into EA’s internal social collaboration strategy, successes and failures, solution, insights, best practices. Specifically, we will look at our integrated social networking, knowledge management, community and search solution.

Bert Sandie, Director - Technical Excellence, Electronic Arts, Inc.

Congratulations Bert!

A couple of interesting data points:

• A new Pew study notes that the Interent isn’t really changing who participates in politics, but Pew notes that blogs and social networking sites are seeing growing political activity.
• Brendan Nyhan on his blog points to efforts underway to leverage social computing to improve political polling

There’s all sorts of implications here from the Enterprise 2.0 perspective, not only the potential to use social computing for data gathering, but also the potential risks of employees using their public social networks to promote political views that may be contrary to their employer.
I’m curious to hear if any companies are implementing any guidelines on how employees use their personal social networks?

First published at CloudAve

OK – I’ll agree that the title to this post is a little too declaratory – something I try to avoid but bear with me for a minute. Today at the Government 2.0 Summit, the Washington Post will announce the WhoRunsGov.com ‘Moderated Wiki’ a wiki that gives readers the chance to contribute to profiles of Government policymakers.

Aaron Fulkerson from Mindtouch, whose product the Washington Post is utilizing for this site, flicked me an email and told me that he feels this announcement will have fairly large implications for media companies, in his words “not only striking the best balance between open/closed content, but allowing them to monetize the hyperlocal content they’ve already produced (paid for) that currently sits dormant in their archives.”

First a little bit about the site. WhoRunsGov.com is a “moderated wiki,” a site open to readers to contribute to the 700-plus profiles of the most influential people in Washington. The site has been live since January but what is happening today is a different story - the “moderated wiki” allows users to both write new profiles and edit existing content. Unsurprisingly before any user-generated content is published, it will be reviewed and may be revised by an in-house editorial team for factors including accuracy, relevancy to the profile subject, and appropriateness.

In his email to me, Fulkerson sent me the following diagram to articulate where this site lies on the dual axes of opinion vs fact and institutional vs de-institutionalized information;

Let me say from the outset that I like this initiative – it seeks to democratize contributions, unlock siloed and archived data and find a sweet spot on the axes. But I’d also like to parse this announcement in another way.

Recently ZDNet blogger and general hype-slayer Dennis Howlett wrote the not-too-subtle post “Enterprise 2.0 – What a Crock”. In his post Howlett sought to separate the wheat from the chaff, and bring the evangelists back down to earth and reality. As he said;

Regardless of what you’re told by the E2.0 mavens, business has far more pressing problems. The world is NOT made up of knowledge driven businesses. It’s made up of a myriad of design, make and buy people who -quite frankly - don’t give a damn about the ‘emergent nature‘ of enterprise.  To most of those people, the talk is mostly noise they don’t need.They just want to get things done with whatever the best tech they can get their hands on at reasonable price. That doesn’t mean some wiki, blog or whatnot. More likely they’ll be investigating sensor tech.

Now what does today’s announcement have to do with Enterprise 2.0? Well the fact of the matter is that Government 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are different sides of the same coin. They both seek to expose data to the stakeholders, leverage collective wisdom, utilize the wisdom of the crowds and drive better results for the respective organizations.

Now I can already hear the howls of derision from Howlett who will call it simplistic to draw this parallel between potential Government 2.0 gains and the theoretical gains to be wrought from Enterprise 2.0. I’m happy to take that attack however – as I said before, the issues facing Government and Enterprise are very similar. Solutions for one can often be parsed in terms of the other.

I’ll accept the fact that this new Washington Post site will not end world hunger or create global peace. In much the same way that deploying a collaborative platform within an enterprise will not solve core problems, suddenly create newly profitable products or stave off a commercial threat. However I do contend that tools like this start to shift the earth upon which organizations (public or private) are built. It is through this shift that real change, the change we’ve all been promised for years, is built.

The following session proposal identifies the “dark side” issues that can undermine the productivity gains we’re trying to achieve with Enterprise 2.0 efforts.  The abstract reminds us that the relationship between people and technology is tricky business and requires careful consideration.

The community have spoken and would like to hear more.  Congratulations to Kathleen Culver-Lozo and Greg Lowe (greg2dot0) from Alcatel-Lucent on their session proposal:

The Dark side of Enterprise 2.0 - The potential of seamless contact with anyone anywhere at any time seems to promise improvements in productivity, most ROI calculations overlook the hidden costs to this ubiquitous access. A growing body of research is showing the already overly interrupt-driven, multi-tasking work environment can be detrimental to productivity and even the quality. Further, on-line access and collaboration is still less effective than in-person meetings. Finally, these technologies align better with some individuals’ personalities. This session will explain how to look into the psychology of the individual and the organization to anticipate where these misalignments lie and provide strategies for mitigating them.

Kathleen Culver-Lozo, Program Manager - Enterprise Transformation, Alcatel Lucent

Greg Lowe, Social Media Architect/Program Manager, Alcatel-Lucent

Jakob Nielsen, who has been writing about Web usability for about as long as the Web has existing, has posted some analysis of Intranet usability best practices around data organization and personalization. It’s worth a read: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/social-intranet-features.html

Yesterday, I did something that suggested to me that we are at an important tipping point in the psychology of Web 2.0 adoption. Within an hour of hearing the news of Facebook acquiring Friendfeed, I signed up for the latter, using my Facebook login info. I’d known for a year that Friendfeed is a great dashboard service that integrates your social media presence, but I had not joined. Apparently I wasn’t alone. Friendfeed was at one point described by TechCrunch (I think) as ‘a great service nobody will ever use.’  So how do you interpret actions like mine?

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Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco’s Call for Papers closed on Tuesday after receiving a mind blowing number of submissions - 446 to be exact. It’s great to see the community is as enthusiastic about the San Francisco show as we are, and really reinforces the need for Enterprise 2.0 on the West Coast.

Some highlights and prevalent topics include:

• Tons of case studies and tales of adoption
• Mobility
• Cloud computing
• Micro-blogging & emerging platforms in the enterprise
• Driving the social media bus
• Building an Enterprise 2.0 culture
• Internal & external communities

A big thank you to all that took the time and effort to submit an abstract. Steve and the Advisory Board have got some reading to do.

The Enterprise 2.0 team is gearing up to build the the program for the first annual San Francisco conference coming this November and we’d like to hear your success stories, case studies and the valuable lessons you’ve learned working with E2 tools and technologies in your organization. Submit your proposal through the Call for Papers, open until July 31. We’re looking for sessions and workshop proposals in the following topics:

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Implementing Enterprise 2.0 technologies and approaches can be a key driver of competitiveness and profitability.

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Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur,keynote speaker, strategy advisor, andbestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-upRepyoot.