Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 visualizations

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.

FirstPartner Enterprise 2.0 Market Map

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).

enterprise20mememap_klein.JPG

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:

web 2.0 framework

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 …

Organisatorische Effizienz via Social Software

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.

Leading and Creating Collaboration in Decentralized Organizations

Partly note to myself, partly note to those readers who don’t abhor a good research paper now and then: This looks interesting, in HBS First Look (of May 29):

Leading and Creating Collaboration in Decentralized Organizations” by Heather M. Caruso and Todd Rogers with Professor Max Bazerman

From the introduction:

Many employees note that, in decentralized organizations, it is harder to deal with other divisions or departments of their organization than it is to negotiate with outside suppliers or customers. In ordinary cases, this intraorganizational coordination failure which can cost substantial sums of money. […]

Often, instances of coordination failure stem from the failure to appropriately structure the organization around the key interdependencies within the organization – whether that suggests organizing by function (e.g., sales, marketing, manufacturing, engineering, etc.), by product group, or by region. Yet, even when organizations are able to design divisions around the appropriate dimensions, there will always be a need to integrate information across the resulting units. We focus this paper on improving information coordination across these organizational units to maximize organizational effectiveness.

While social software is not explicitly mentioned, I think that it has potential for the described kinds of organizational problems and tasks: Effectively supporting an organizational design thinking that envisions emergent, boundary-crossing and adaptive collaboration.

Here’s the full pdf of the article.

Do only young people get Web 2.0?

One might think yes when reading this report in TechWeb (“Younger Workers Demanding Web 2.0 Tech On The Job”).

I am not sure what to think of this line of reasoning, because I’ve seen both enough “old” people who get Web 2.0 and vice versa. Physical age is a dumb metric, especially when it is applied to knowledge workers etc. So judging employee’s ability to get Enterprise 2.0 by their age, is just like, well, judging books by their cover …

Moreover I am not sure whether I like this article for the analysis and the actions it recommends. While I am all for respecting IT governance, social software in the enterprise must be approached differently (as it’s not so much a technological than a social shift). So asking for …

IT managers better start preparing to deal with Web 2.0 technologies, like wikis, blogs, mashups, and social networking sites, because sooner or later — and it’ll probably be sooner — they’re going to have to deal with it.

And that means adopting technologies, managing them, and securing the network from the people who use them.

… is leading the wrong way.

For one, it’s not sooner or later, it’s now.

And it’s not about technology.

And “securing the network from the people who use them” sounds weird, they’re your employees not your enemies.

Web 2.0 Goes Corporate

Web 2.0 Goes Corporate is an article full with good cases of how Web 2.0 technologies are making inroads into corporate IT. Coverage like this is good, as it will further fuel experiments in adoption …

While concerns and limits are present, like e.g. …

[…] about security, governance, IT support and integration of Web 2.0 applications with existing systems. And the very nature of Web 2.0 — distributed and egalitarian — makes some managers nervous. “Web 2.0 is decentralized,” explains Schmelzer. “There’s no centralized authority to mandate or control.”

and

Despite the benefits of Web 2.0 tools, smart corporate users realize that they can’t effectively replace face-to-face and phone contact between people. […] managers have so far decided against them, reasoning that Web 2.0 tools might actually impede good communication with customers.

… the overalll take is positive (and not only because it argues that the Big Boys are also entering the enterprise 2.0 space). So it’s small wonder that it ends upbeat:

Whatever you ultimately decide, the time to start considering Web 2.0 is now. “We’re at the stage where it’s so easy to experiment that it’s almost a liability,”

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.