I like this short visualization, I agree with Rod and think that this is also a helpful starting point for (IT-related) Social Software discussions, especially when they concern ad-hoc processes and knowledge work …
The IT Flower is […] is designed to help explain developments in enterprise IT.
Mindquarry have devised a nice visualization, aka the “Periodic Table of Collaboration” differentiating four categories: People (Roles), Productivity Software, Collaborative Software and Methods.
The aim of “Elements of Collaboration” is to give an overview about current collaboration techniques and technology and to show how better collaboration can lead to improved workflows and higher productivity.
This aim is ambitious – while providing an overview is cool and I really like this approach it surely does not show how workflows can be improved or how productivity may benefit – besides, any concept that presents IE and Outlook under the hood of productivity software is seriously flawed in my mind …
Joking aside, there are a lot of clever ideas and concepts collected and refined, it may serve very well as starting point for (collaboration-oriented) discussion, more than e.g. the other enterprise 2.0 visualizations I’ve pointed out here, summing up then:
This framework provides a concise view of the nature of Web 2.0. While one can debate whether all important issues are collected, this visual approach lends itself to kicking off discussions (where one can elaborate further on). It provides a nice starting and reference point, and this is essential: When advising on the ideas and concepts of Enterprise 2.0 in the corporate world, I’m experiencing that it’s best to explain both instruments (methods and tools, i.e. the “how”) and goals and visions (paradigms and principles, the “why”) intertwined …
Ich war schon länger nicht mehr in München, das könnte eine Gelegenheit sein, sieht schon sehr interessant aus. Das Pricing ist im Gegensatz zu anderen Veranstaltungen “down to earth”.
Beim Workshop “Web Collaboration in Unternehmen” des deutschen Chapters der IEEE Engineering Management Society am 28.9.2007 in München stehen substantielle Informationen aus der Unternehmenspraxis im Mittelpunkt. Profitieren Sie von den fundierten Erfahrungen profilierter Referenten von der Technischen Universität München, von BMW, Bosch, Rohde & Schwarz, SAP, Siemens und Vodafone. Erfahren Sie, wie diese Unternehmen Blogs und Wikis in der Entwicklung, in der strategischen Planung und für unternehmensweite Anwendungen einsetzen.
Shiv Singh of Avenue A | Razorfish detailed some of their mediawiki customizations. While he starts off questioning whether enterprise wikis are more apt than customized open source based solutions (which can be debated and argued for both ways, see the comments there …), another point caught my eye:
Furthermore, enterprise 2.0 as coined by Andrew McFee is not about cost but about what the software does for its users and how they shape the software themselves.
Well, this is an aspect of McAfee’s SLATES concept that often goes underestimated: Freeform, adaptivity and emergence. We need to prepare for these up-front, we need to design for emergence, so that usage patterns can evolve over time and to allow for easy tweaking and adapting of solutions over time. Then, scalability of social software in the enterprise does not simply equal more users/pages/page impressions/organization units involved/etc., it also implies a high level of adaptivity for a variety of tasks/organizational settings/security requirements/etc.
And yes, this (more holistically interpreted) scalability is a hard requirement for (pre-)packaged solutions … too often the need to prepare for all possible kind of tasks has led to bloated (complex and costly) software, that’s all but lightweight.
Hier die Folien zu meinem Vortrag am FZI in Karlsruhe gestern:
Im Anschluß an den Vortrag hatte ich mit verschiedenen Teilnehmern noch einige Gespräche rund um die Potenziale von Social Software in Unternehmen. Es ergab sich ein sehr anregender Abend mit interessanten Gesprächspartnern – vielen Dank ans FZI, insbesondere Prof. Studer und Dr. Abecker, für die Einladung!
Over the last months I noticed a couple of cute visualization takes on the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 space. Now, as I’m putting together the materials for a presentation I am holding next week I thought I’d share some of them …
Here we go, first up there’s this Web 2.0 in a Chart by the Sunlight Foundation, connecting a lot of trends related with web 2.0 (real big pdf, hence there’s no useful thumbnail).
Then, there’s FirstPartner’s take on the Enterprise 2.0 market. I appreciate how it tries to integrate and employ value-chain thinking, but I am skeptical if it’s really useful. Anyway, it’s a cute effort, found via SocialComputing Magazine:
Welcome to the FirstPartner Enterprise 2.0 Market Map. Enterprise 2.0 is a term which many struggle to define and understand. We have therefore developed this market map to articulate the different attributes of this emerging sector.
and
[This shows] the flow from the end-customer through the complete value-chain – covering blogs, wikis, collaboration tools, social networking and bookmarking through to RSS readers and Open APIs/Mashups.
An Enterprise 2.0-sided take on visualization comes by Stephen Danelutti, who proposed an Enterprise 2.0 meme map (building upon the well known O’Reilly web 2.0 meme map).
This I must say is my last favourite, as it mingles and mixes terms and concepts and lacks clear structure (but that is true for the O’Reilly meme map and others as well).
And finally, my favourite, is by Ross Dawson of the Future Exploration Network who proposed a Web 2.0 framework, that nicely captures what Web 2.0 is all about and collects the variety of players in the Web 2.0 ecosystem:
This framework provides a concise view of the nature of Web 2.0. While one can debate whether all important issues are collected, this visual approach lends itself to kicking off discussions (where one can elaborate further on). It provides a nice starting and reference point, and this is essential: When advising on the ideas and concepts of Enterprise 2.0 in the corporate world, I’m experiencing that it’s best to explain both instruments (methods and tools, i.e. the “how”) and goals and visions (paradigms and principles, the “why”) intertwined …
Via Robert Basic und der Arbeitsgruppe Kooperationssysteme: “Social Software in Unternehmen auf dem Vormarsch”, siehe Transkripts (.doc)/Podcasts (.mp3) vom halbjährlichen Lotus-Update (“Lotus Executive Panel Session”), u.a. mit Ed Brill. Ein paar gute Zitate, eines davon stammt von Mike Rhodin (Lotus GM and Key Lotus Executives) und dreht sich um die Einführung und den ROI von Social Software im Unternehmen:
I get into this particular question on the cultural transformation aspects of social software in the enterprise quite a bit with senior executives that I talk to. What I’m finding is actually a bifurcation of interest here, where, in the senior executive ranks, they get it. The understand it. In many cases they get it and understand it because they have teenage children or college age children that are using these technologies in the consumer space. I’ll tell you that when I first brought forward the idea for Connections inside IBM, the first person that jumped all over the promise of this was Sam Palmisano, right, so it was jumped on from the top down. He’s got teenaged kids. He understands what’s going on. He’s intrigued by it. This concept of community, the unlocking of ideas across an organization, is viewed by CEOs across the globe as one of the most important strategic imperatives for them to deal with, right.
There are cultures in organizations, around the world that are heavily process laden that are based on information secrecy and (compartmentalization), as opposed to openness. What I believe and what many senior business leaders, around the world, believe is that that business model is going to come under increasing competitive pressure in the future. That way of doing business is going to become very difficult as environments in the competitive world change and these social networks start to unlock the power of ideas, within organizations, so that companies can truly be innovative regardless of where the ideas come from, within the organization. It truly flattens the organization, brings the ideas forward and enables true collaboration in ways that we’ve never seen before in organizations.
Robert dazu:
[…] Viel interessanter ist das mit den organisatorischen Effizienzüberlegungen, die sich iW auf die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit beziehen. Ist das bei einem von Euch Thema im Unternehmen?
Ist zu oft (noch) kein wirkliches Thema, sollte es aber sein. Eine Quantifizierung der Vorteile oder eines “Return on Investment” (ROI) ist natürlich nicht leicht – entsprechend reserviert sind viele Entscheider noch gegenüber dem Einsatz von Social Software / Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 / Office 2.0 u.a. Instrumenten.
Es stellt sich die grundsätzliche Frage, ob es überhaupt sinnvoll ist, ROI-Analysen und -Begründungen anzustellen, wenn die (positiven) Auswirkungen der zu beurteilenden Instrumente noch nicht abzusehen sind. Social Software ist eine disruptive Innovation, deren Effekte auf die Produktivität von Unternehmen und ihren Wissensarbeitern noch nicht zu überblicken sind. Eine alternative Argumentation setzt daher mehr auf Fallstudien, Erfahrungsberichte und “Lessons Learned” um Einsichten in die positiven Effekte und organisatorischen Änderungen zu fördern.