3 posts tagged “enterprise 2.0”

Interesting post on the Fastforward blog reporting on Tom Davenport and Andrew McAfee's disagreement over the scale of impact that Enterprise 2.0 will have.

I think it's true that some organisations are simply not well suited to using these kinds of tools, or at least not yet - but for those that are ready, and have the culture to support it, they can't fail to see the benefits. And frankly, if I worked in an organisation that was happy to empower its employees in this way, I don't think I'd want to then go backwards and work for someone else that didn't.

I also agree with the comments that the next generation of managers, who've grown up using these types of technology, will take these ways of working for granted. My recent experience of working with people who are still at university is that they've no fear at all of new tools, they just want to know 'how can I use this to make my life easier?' - and if there isn't a way, then they'll invent one.

I'm not a big fan of February, so I would have been more than happy to spend part of the month in the San Diego sunshine at the Fastforward conference. Sadly it wasn't to be, but in the meantime, the Fastforward blog has continued to provide some very thought-provoking posts, including:

• Euan Semple on understanding that yes, social media is social. This really interests me because I suspect that the fear factor of this social/personal aspect is one of barriers that will stop organisations adopting Enterprise 2.0, and for those that do make the leap, many of them may end up stifling the use and adoption of the tools by trying to make them too stiff and formal

• Kathleen Gilroy on why using a diverse selection of Web 2.0 tools might be a better bet than using Sharepoint

• Phil Wainewright on why you've got to work with the 1% rule when it comes to user participation
  

Both posts from the Fastforward blog, which is giving me a lot of food for thought. Too bad I won't be able to join them in San Diego...

•    Thought-provoking post from Bill Ives on whether Enterprise 2.0 will transform Enterprise KM. He points out that although the productivity gains are potentially enormous, systems won’t be enthusiastically adopted whilst people fail “to see any benefit for themselves from the transparency” and fear being “spied on”. I think this neatly encapsulates two of the main barriers to people adopting new ways of working – ‘What’s in it for me?’, and the fear factor.

•    Rod Boothby on how using blogs and wikis as ‘worksites’ might increase adoption and solve a raft of business problems. I think the benefit that might hit home most for many CIOs is point 3 – Radically reduce email. It seems to me that more and more ‘corporate knowledge’ is buried deep in people’s email accounts, never to be retrieved or shared. Between that, and the problem of ever-growing email accounts, requiring ever greater amounts of storage, why wouldn’t an organisation want to cut down on email and make people’s information and knowledge more visible?