First posted on CloudAve

Andrew McAfee, from the Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, believes we’ve reached a tipping point in terms of the acceptance of the tools and techniques of enterprise 2.0.

McAfee sees some positive signs and some danger areas - “We have the opportunity to snatch defeat out of the jaws of success”. The way that’ll happen;

• Declare war on the enterprise
• Allow walled gardens to flourish – an interesting analogy to Napoleonic land division in Paris where smaller and smaller lots were created all divided with hedgerows – let’s not go there…
• Accentuate the negative – the risks aren’t quite as bad as people make out, don’t dwell on them
• Try to replace email
• Fall in love with features - “what’s the simplest possible thing that could work”
• Overuse the word “social”

Andrew is the father of the Enterprise 2.0 term – while his shtick is getting perhaps a little tired – he’s still got a valuable voice to add to the discussion.

At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, hear from industry experts and 2.0 early adopters, including -

Andrew McAfee

Associate Professor, Harvard Business School, will moderate Applying the Social Dimension to the Lockheed Martin Mission

Andrew McAfee is a faculty member in the Technology and Operations Management Unit of Harvard Business School. His research investigates how managers can most effectively select, implement, and use IT to achieve business goals. A recipient of a US Department of Energy Integrated Manufacturing Fellowship for his doctoral research, his current project is an exploration of how Web 2.0 technologies can be used within the enterprise.

Matthew Fraser

Co-author of Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World, will be moderating the panel: Enterprise 2.0 Reality Check - What’s Working, What’s Not, What’s Next

The book analyzes the impact of Web 2.0 platforms on society, business and government. At present Matthew is Senior Research Fellow at the INSEAD business school in France, adjunct professor at the American University of Paris, and lecturer at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris.

Previously, he was Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s national daily newspaper, National Post, and co-hosted a prime-time national television show, “Inside Media”, on Canada’s public CBC network. Matthew is also the writer of Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire.

Other keynotes and featured speakers include:

David Berlind (TechWeb), Joe Burton (Cisco), Alistair Croll (Bitcurrent), Shawn Dahlen (Lockheed Martin), Ross Mayfield (Socialtext), Laura “Pistacio” Pitton, Dion Hinchcliffe, Maggie Fox (Social Media Group)…

…and more from premier companies such as AT&T, IBM and Razorfish.

See some of the great conference sessions and special programs and join us this June in Boston for the annual Enterprise 2.0 Conference, a global gathering place for the professionals driving the enterprise 2.0 conversation.

Register with code CNACEB08 for 20% off a conference or workshop pass, or to receive your free Pavilion Pass.

I had the opportunity recently to catch up with Andrew, the person who coined the term “Enterprise 2.0″ a few years back. Andrew is a professor at the Harvard Business School, and he has just completed a book on the topic.

The takeaways from the talk with Andrew:

1. The spottiness of adoption is interesting. In some sectors — software development — wikis have become a commonplace platform. But elsewhere, it’s very uneven.

2. Andrew believes that leadership is very important, and often absent where Web 2.0 technologies aren’t being adopted.
3. Andrew believes that Twitter is being more widely adopted where the default is openness.
4. Great anecdote about Tivo, as an example as a better mousetrap that remained a niche tool. Many Web 2.0 tools fall into the 9X Effect, where the proponents overestimate the benefits by a factor of three, and those that haven’t adopted them underestimate by a factor of three.
5. He mentions Euan Semple as an exemplar (see his interview, IT Is Not The Source Of Innovation.)
6. Andrew asked me to look into how companies are exploring the “borders” of tools, how companies avoid (or don’t) building walled gardens.

I will certainly be speaking with Andrew many times in the coming months.