BusinessWeek zu Wikis im Unternehmen

Wikis are now making their way into corporations where they are used as collaborative software to handle such tasks as project management, tech support, research and development, event planning and customer relationship management

Hier die Übersichtsseite (“CEO Guide to Technology”), darin u.a. das:

    Wild About Wikis
    Intel, Motorola, Sony—they’re among the companies using Web-collaboration tools to promote products and foster teamwork among employees
    Tip Sheet: Wiki Etiquette
    This short primer may help you through the perils and pleasures of collaboration on intra-company wikis
    Corporate Wikis Go Viral
    Two European companies [frogpond: Nokia und Dresdner Kleinwort] show how the collaborative practice spreads from early adopters of wikis at work to become mainstream business tools

Nicht zu vergessen ein Podcast-Interview mit Andrew McAfee von Rachel King (mp3), in dem er neben verschiedenen Einsatz- und Anwendungsszenarien auch Aspekte der Einführung anspricht.

Sind Sie am Einsatz von Wikis in ihrem Unternehmen interessiert? Sprechen Sie mich an.

Knowledge Management Champion

superkmchamp2_klein.jpg

Via Patrick Lambe, this hilarious picture of a knowledge management champion. Yes, this seems to be no easy task, and is true for social software activists in the enterprise as well. But as one commenter noted this nice little creature bears some resemblance to Ganesha, the God of success and victory, he who removes obstacles …

Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge Management Archetypes

… or so Forrester Research holds in this report:

When knowledge management (KM) practices, tools, and architectures burst onto the scene in the mid-1990s, they looked a lot like the old economy businesses that built them, hierarchical and workflow-driven. Now, Social Computing tools are flattening those architectures and extending the reach of KM well beyond the walls of the conventional enterprise to touch customers and business partners. Information and KM professionals are becoming knowledge facilitators, and they must get smart fast to capitalize on this trend. Although disruptive, Social Computing will transform KM, shifting the emphasis from repositories, which are hard to build and maintain, to more intuitive, tacit knowledge sharing. Social Computing is becoming the new KM, moving it from an often too academic exercise into the real world of people sharing knowledge and expertise with each other naturally, without even thinking about it.

Overall I am glad that Forrester Research is pushing this specific application of social software, as this is good news for social software and knowledge management consultants like frogpond.

But I would elaborate on their argument, basically because when many past knowledge-management projects and initiatives did not work out as planned, they did so rarely because methods or tools lacked.

For social software to turn out successful, it can’t be sufficient to ponder, propose and promote (new) methods and tools.

What is also needed is appropriate groundwork and background, i.e. paradigms and principles that guide the selection and usage of methods and tools, and insight into the nature of complex organizational systems. Emergence, connectivity and adaptivity are traits of organizational systems that are supported and leveraged by social software – good for organizational knowledge management but not restricted to it.

If you’re eager to know more and are looking for social software support and consulting assistance, contact me.

The Next Wave of Enterprise 2.0

M.R. Rangaswami, of Sand Hill Group interviews
Web 2.0 pioneer Ross Mayfield of SocialText on what’s going to define the next few years in social software for business.

Enterprise 2.0 technology is revolutionizing the knowledge workplace. And despite debates over the name and definition, experts agree that the core concepts and business-driving power of Enterprise 2.0 will only continue to grow.

Organization, ad-hoc or well-defined?

Jack Vinson has some thoughts on an issue Jeffrey Philipps brought up (and that was discussed yesterday evening in a local meeting of enterprise 2.0 folks I attended):

People don’t bother defining their processes because they can’t see how it matters. Maybe they don’t believe they have an impact on the overall business. Or they are trying to protect their “turf” by being purposefully opaque. Or they’ve had a dozen other improvement efforts come through and there has been no real impact on the bottom line.
[…]
Understanding processes is helpful, but it is just as important to know which processes need to be understood. This is a common complaint of flavor-of-the-day programs: the idea is applied to everything in the hopes that it will do some good. It makes much more sense to look at the business and find the few places to apply an improvement that will actually make a difference to the business.

I’d add that
– neat orderly processes are not that ubiquitous and
– that they aren’t as important as most people think.

Especially knowledge (or innovation) work processes can’t be standardized (granted you can support parts and pieces of these processes with standard workflow gear), so trying to manage them into (computerized) workflows and all is not feasible and no worthwhile goal, whereas more freeform tools and concepts like wikis can be easily adapted to variable requirements – and even allow (process) solutions to emerge from within the organizational system.

If you want to know more and are looking for social software support and consulting assistance, contact me.

Crossposting again …

Some more posts in my Business Model Innovation and Design blog that are worthy of being noted in this blog as well, same procedure as always.

Again, only posts that relate to innovation work, web 2.0 innovations, knowledge work and consulting:

The innovation fad is over … ah, not yet.

Payback on Innovation is what we need, listen to a podcast

Where the Coffee Shop Meets the Cubicle on co-working and here on the virtual workplace

Wikinomics @ brand eins german post, pointing to a german language interview with Don Tapscott

What is wikinomics? … learn more in a podcast

Innovationsmanagement @ Yahoo! german again, but some links to english language posts of interest

Storytellers make up the skills gap on storytelling (in knowledge work)

The Greatest Innovations of All Time on innovation management (and narrow-mindedness in innovation processes)

Teqlo zum zweiten on mash-ups, pointing to a nice screencast by Rod Boothby

Craig Burton in IT conversations … on the Enterprise of One, a discussion of how new technology has stripped the old business models away

A pointer to Henry Chesbrough on open innovation business models

It’s the strength of your business process versus those of your competitors … while implementation is hard

And last but not least, Russ Ackoff interview and some f-laws …

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 …