All too often, Enterprise 2.0 advocacy gets bogged down in a futile side issue: change.

To those that feel out of step with a large organization, change may seem appealing, like aloe vera for the sunburned. But for the great majority of people caught up in the everyday frenzy of day-to-day operations, change may be as welcome as a skunk at a picnic.

Euan Semple recently made the argument that change for change’s sake may alienate those whose support is most needed: senior management and those in change of the most central business processes.

[The secret to success with Enterprise 2.0 ...]

Don’t try to get your powerful people to behave differently - they have everything to lose. Don’t try to improve your existing processes - you will be seen to be breaking something.

Focus instead on the things that are desperately trying to happen but aren’t and the people who are desperately trying to connect but can’t. Do things that make the impossible possible and your success rate will soar.

So there is a very pragmatic allure to propose the use of Web 2.0 technologies to rapidly start making inroads on things that haven’t been done at all, or in areas where a tiny bit of push could have big impacts.

I interviewed Lee Bryant of Headshift (now Dachis) last spring and he made a similar point, although specifically he said the conventional wisdom that people resist change is simply wrong:

[Open Enterprise 2009: Lee Bryant Interview]

Lee makes the case that the meme about people being resisting change is a bit off the mark. People are open to adopting new things if they actually help, and will resist various vacuous arguments about ‘you need to change or die’ or psuedo-mystical mumbo-jumbo about emergent values and so on. He has found it best to position these tools in the simplest most straightforward and business-oriented way.

So, avoid arguments in favor of change as an innate good, and focus on practical and obvious areas where Web 2.0 technologies and business practices can quickly offer real and tangible benefits without disturbing mission-critical business processes or rocking the political boat.

I had hoped to interview Dion Hinchcliffe, of Hinchcliffe & Co, back at the recent Web 2.0 Expo, but he turned the tables and interviewed me instead. But I tracked him down this week, and spent some time talking through some issues in enterprise 2.0.

Some highlights:

1. Dion is a treasure trove of case studies, starting with a great story about wiki use spreading in AOL years ago, at the very outset of Web 2.0 adoption in large companies.

2. Regarding adoption of Web 2.0, he quotes Euan Semple, “the easiest way to do this is to do nothing,” meaning that the millenials will pull these technologies into the enterprise. He also points out that since web 2.0 tools are more conversational you have to wait for people to warm up before joining, as opposed to point-and-shoot tools like email.
3. I asked if the specific culture of companies influences adoption. He responded that we should see things that we didn’t expect to see, since these tools lead to emergent benefits. We will see a broad range of responses, since “organizations are unique, and operate in very different ways.”
4. Dion agrees that there is a bimodal division in adoption because of the Econolypse: either companies “circle the wagons” and do nothing new, or else they embrace the crisis as an opportunity to explore lower-cost, web 2.0 alternatives. He cites the Transunion case study published by Socialtext, as an example.
5. Most requested: new ways of collaborating with partners outside the firewall. He thinks that these needs for extra-enterprise collaboration are still unmet, but working “better, faster, better” within the walls of the business is still the fundamental driver for adoption.

A great discussion, and very good advice for tool vendors thinking about positioning their products in this space, as well.

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.

Over the past few weeks, Oliver Marks and I have been working on the first stages of a new research project, called Open Enterprise 2009. We will be working for the first half of 2009 to research the state of Web 2.0 tools, architecture and techniques in the enterprise, their adoption, application and impact.

We are now working closely on the study with the team here at Enterprise 2.0, and we will be posting our interviews, research insights, and findings here over the next months. To see the archive of the work we have done to date, check the Open Enterprise 2009 archive to see interviews with a list of luminaries, including Euan Semple, Ross Mayfield, Jeff Walker, and JP Rangaswami.

If you want to track the study, the RSS feed is here.

The study will be based on an open research model, involving this community in the discussion of the study’s major questions, the companies to be profiled, technologies to be investigated, visionaries to be contacted. We will be combing through those contributions, and studying them for ideas and themes.

Along with an on-going stream of research notes, interviews, and preliminary findings, Oliver and I are planning to distill what we have learned in the form of a comprehensive report which will will make available in late summer 2009.

We will be distributing an executive summary of the report — as well as a final presentation (and perhaps an executive seminar) at the Enterprise 2.0 conference 22-25 June 2009 in Boston.

We have also agreed to an interim report at the end of March at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

I had the chance to talk to Euan Semple, and old and dear friend, and get his perspective on what’s happening in the enterprise. Since his years working at the BBC, and now as an independent consultant, Euan has developed a deep understanding of the barriers and benefits of adopting new web technologies.

Euan Semple from stowe boyd on Vimeo.

I was particularly struck with his belief that IT people are not necessarily the wellspring of innovation in this uptake. “It would take an almost complete reinvention of themselves.” And that things might be more difficult now that it has become “Enterprise 2.0″ and not just some experiment. But at the same time he thinks it needs to “grow up” if it is going to do something big for the enterprise.