After reviewing the impressive submissions and internal deliberation, Enterprise 2.0 is pleased to announce the Launch Pad 9 quarter-finalists from Round One’s Twitter submissions. They are, in alphabetical order…

Ally Software

allysoftware: @e2conf #e2conflp Managing complex projects is stuck in Web1, too many emails & meetings. Harmony simplifies complex project & schedule mgmt

Covisint

MikejMorley: Connect employees to the purpose of the org, allow emp’s to see what eachother are working on&realize the Harvest of human capitol #e2conflp

thegarlandgroup: @e2conf - RiskKey, our real-time compliance mgmt tool for banks, promotes transparency, collaboration, and trust. They need us. #e2conflp

HashWork

@e2conf #e2conflp @Hashwork provides a social presence on web for any company and its community of custo - http://bit.ly/YlnGk by @wlansford

IncentiveLive

incentivelive: #e2conflp An enterprise wiki, blog, social network and widget platform? Great GUI & .NET? Well you’ve guessed right, it’s not Sharepoint :)

Image via Wikipedia

Cross-posted from CloudAve by Ben Kepes.

Gentry Underwood, the head of Knowledge sharing at design house IDEO claims that designing solutions that work requires finding the triggers that drive individual motivation. Designing simplicity and intuitiveness into the UI and building the solution to integrate into existing workflows.

The very structures we use to handle scale as organizations grow inhibit collaboration and knowledge sharing while the hierarchies inherent within organisations encourage silos. Many organizations that try to use technology to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration don’t see much ROI and a thought that is close to my heart, think about the people - it’s not just about the technology. In the past IDEO experimented with always-on video conferencing, called “wormholes”.

Continue Reading »

I had the opportunity to talk with Joe Schueller of P&G several times in the past weeks, and I found the experience extremely rewarding.

We talked about the Econolypse, and it’s impact of businesses like P&G. JOe makes some great points:

1. P&G had already been working to damp the cycles of oscillation, and impacts based on things like the rise in gas prices in 2008. The new downturn has just sharpened focus.

2. Joe believes that P&G has grown intolerant of duplicative work, for example.
3. He quotes the CEO of P&G who stated recently that the company has many, many networks of smart people, and the trick is to get them to find each other and dream up new ways to deliver great products.
4. P&G is 170 years old, so there is a long legacy: the company is deep and wide. Joe points out that the hierarchy is still relevant, but that may not be the best way to share information across the world.
5. Leadership at P&G is getting attuned to the horizontal spread of information through networks, and ‘close the loop’ by participating in open conversations within the company’s communities of practice.

Every word is worth listening to, since P&G is so large that nearly every issue crops up.

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.

In his presentation entitled “Working in the Cloud: How Cloud Computing is Reshaping Enterprise Technology,” Rishi Chandra, Product Manager for Google Enterprise discussed why he believes cloud computing will drive innovation for the next generation of enterprise computing. The pace will be set by consumer driven innovation, the early adopters of cloud computing.

Traditionally, consumers go directly to vendors. In an enterprise environment, choice isn’t that easy. There’s a layer of business and IT that separates the vendor from the end user. It stifles creativity and innovation for the enterprise.

To create that creativity in the enterprise environment, employees become “power collaborators.” You need to connect with people to get information and to get things done. People have to work across groups. Because of this readily available access to information, through others, expectations have changed.

That collaboration, that communication, will all happen in the cloud, argues Chandra.

The cloud eliminates the need to know a variety of unnecessary elements previously needed for collaboration such as geography, computer, operating system, or even the language you speak. The cloud can be completely agnostic to all these issues, cutting through barriers for collaboration providing that idea that you have a single repository of data that anyone can access at anytime from anywhere. And since it’s based on open systems so you don’t need to know about what each user physically has at his or her desktop or mobile device.

Scale drives unit costs toward zero. He argues that if your environment doesn’t support that, you have to get to that point, and cloud computing can help you get there. And cloud computing can provide a capability your organization doesn’t have, unlimited scalability.

Barriers to cloud adoption are falling away:

• Connectivity - most companies have fast access. Customer expectations have changed.
• User Experience - People have accepted it and use it as evidenced by applications like Web-based email.
• Reliability - Google can’t be down, our customers will leave us if it does. Which is true because there are many alternatives. But if consumers are locked into a service that they’re dependent on because that’s where your network is, you’ll put up with downtime. I point to Twitter on this one. It’s been going down like crazy, yet users still hold on tightly.
• Offline Access - There are certain places you won’t have Internet access. Need to still have an offline experience within the browser. Chandra claims Google Gears answers this problem. They recently launched this with Google Docs and they will be launching it with their calendar and email application.
• Security - Have to prove that it will be strong with a Web application in the cloud. How secure are you today? It’s a misnomer. With all data on the cloud you may not have to worry about laptops or thumb drives getting stolen or misplaced.

Last thoughts from Chandra:

• On premise software is not going away.
• Even so, Google feels all innovation will happen in the cloud.
• There will be lots of competitors because the cloud is based on open standards.
• Your new employees will be the cloud generation. Under 30 crowd grew up with cloud services. They were using Web mail first.
• Google needs to earn your trust.

Make sure you check out the summary of all coverage from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference 2008 in Boston.