Emergence in Enterprise 2.0 implementation

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.

Value of Enterprise 2.0 … debated

So I finally am ready to collect some of the loose ends of the McAfee/Davenport debate and comment:

My main point is, that it’s always a good idea to debate with the contrarians/heretics/opponents especially when they’re polite, well-spoken and -educated. And Tom Davenport surely is, so his arguing against the flow is a good thing: it forces us enterprise 2.0 proponents to think hard why we’re so into this stuff, and it makes sure that we think more about adoption issues and implementation paths than about (yes, cool) technologies.

And Davenport made this really good point that collaboration doesn’t depend that much on technologies, when already existing technology’s capabilities may suffice.

Still, I am now very sure that we’re not in for a fad or an extension of what’s gone before. Social software technologies are allowing for connectivity, adaptivity and emergence – and these are principles that govern these complex organizational systems we call corporations. And these are the ways they change how we collaborate, i.e. through changing context and information supply, through enabling flexibility and agility, through giving room for self-organization …

Moreover, enhancing competitiveness and productivity of knowledge workers is long overdue. Here, social networks are only one part of the equation: there are also other aspects of Enterprise 2.0 like e.g. mashups and “as a service” applications that go together nicely with other enterprise software trends like SOA. In fact, I think that asking whether Enterprise 2.0 is really something new is pointless, some will always highlight its revolutionary parts, others will point out its ancestors in CSCW and enterprise software and the traditional set of technologies for collaboration, interaction, and information sharing.

Anyway, Enterprise 2.0 is definitely going to impact corporate culture, (knowledge worker) productivity and startegic competitiveness.

Assemble Enterprise 2.0 with Open-Source

John Eckman points to an Optaros whitepaper on Enterprise 2.0 technologies, specifically open-source tools.

I like their take and view of technologies for supporting knowledge management 2.0 and their criticism of “One True Architecture”-thinking. No wonder, as I too argue that adaptivity, connectivity and emergence are essential ingredients to knowledge management concepts …

Here’s the Executive Summary:

Enterprise 2.0 promises a new approach to creating, managing, and consuming knowledge within the enterprise, allowing patterns and value to emerge out of relatively freeform, experimental, unrestricted exchanges. Unlike knowledge management systems of the nineties, which locked users into strict taxonomies, enforced rigid workflows, and reflected hierarchical management relationships, emerging social computing systems rely on lightweight, adaptable frameworks designed to facilitate knowledge creation across traditional boundaries, enable rapid change, and foster contributions from throughout the management hierarchy.

This new knowledge management paradigm needs to be supported by new technologies and approaches. It isn’t, however, just a matter of selecting the right set of applications or the right platform; there is no “One True Architecture” which includes all the features and functions users could ever desire.

Intranet Innovation Awards

Patrick Lambe of Straits Knowledge points to the Intranet Innovation Awards, that are searching for new ideas and approaches to the design and delivery of intranets.

I think he’s right to ask for innovation in the right places – tweaking and optimizing overcome work processes won’t help. And yes, corporate intranets are more important than most CxOs realize:

Intranets are – where they work well – environments that service a variety of working practices and activities, attract participation, and foster coordination and collaboration across the enterprise.
[…]
Since work focus, work patterns, coordination needs and organisation structure change on an increasingly frequent basis, big, highly integrated homogeneous environments are just not adaptive or nimble enough. Intranets are increasingly becoming more flexible, evolving environments, becoming much more like an interdependent ecology of open applications talking to each other – whether they be workflow applications, calendaring, web content publishing, document management, blogs, wikis, media libraries, podcasting, staff directories, you name it. Some areas of the intranet will be quite stable and structured, some will be much more experimental, some will provide current awareness and content marketing on a daily basis.

Still, I wonder why effective collaboration with partners outside the corporation (and thus outside the “intranet”) is seemingly no issue. This does not feel right, when we know that distributed work processes (in virtual networks, business ecosystems, extended value nets etc.) become yet more important. For me, “tuning” and supplementing internal oriented intranets with more outward-oriented (corporate) social software like wikis is a smart move, that should be pondered in intranet innovation projects …

Using collective intelligence and the wiki to improve how you work, as you work

Stewart Mader outlines wiki uses in “continuous organizational (team work/knowledge work/innovation work etc.) improvement”:

the wiki can help any group work better by adapting to how they work, and letting them see where they’re strong and weak. Because it doesn’t define the terms of interaction and collaboration from the outset, and allows structure to be created, modified and removed as needed, the wiki quickly becomes a desirable tool because it “learns” how people work as they work, not after the fact.

He’s just right, now I’ll try to elaborate:

One could argue that wikis offer space for emergence, i.e. organizational self-organization.

And one could further add that they are ideally suited to support complex adaptive systems (CAS), and that their inherent capacity for connectivity is fine too.

But all this sounds much too theoretical, and well, we’re running real enterprises – no fluffy complex organizational systems stuff – don’t we?

But theory can be useful sometimes, so calling on the theoretical background of complex systems and systems thinking is a good idea. And when we accept that organizations can be modelled and understood as a complex adaptive system, employing social software concepts and tools feels just right, exactly because they can deal with this complexity …