More on emergence as a principle behind enterprise 2.0 concepts (add this to my post here) in Miguel Cornejo Castro’s take on the McAfee/Davenport debate (Davenport’s pov):
Integrating this “emergence” paradigm into the management methods of modern business is darn hard. It will take time, it will take experiments and failures. It’s not just a technology awareness issue (as the previous implementations of e-business and other disruptive technologies), it’s a cultural issue. A business-practices issue.
Web 2.0 is just another enabler for a cultural change that was already under way with Web 1.0. Witness forums, online collaboration tools (not invented with tags et al), and the emergence of the idea of the knowledge worker. Witness the whole latest generation of Knowledge Management as a discipline.
Now I wouldn’t define emergence as a paradigm, but rather as a principle (building upon an underlying paradigm of “complex adaptive organizational systems” and in line with principles like connectivity and adaptivity). Hence, it becomes clear that we must not focus solely on culture – yes, organizational culture is playing an important part, but it is neither the only adoption and implementation lever nor the only thing to mind when bringing web 2.0 to the enterprise.