How Will Enterprise 2.0 Transform The Workplace

A question that I often come across during my conversations with senior executives is “what is the impact of web 2.0 strategies and tools from an enterprise perspective?’  Many have difficulties providing a quick answer while they were quick to provide examples of how Web 2.0 innovation has been creating new applications for consumer uses. I believe these innovations are finding their way into the enterprises. Enterprise 2.0 doesn’t really exist today other than a few software companies (content management) renaming themselves. The question is why? There are many answers to that.

I think the term was first introduced by Prof Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School and being defined as “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers”, the broader global community has attempt to expand, reinvent, and co-opt Enterprise 2.0 with varying degrees of success. But the essential, core meaning has largely stayed the same: Social applications that are optional to use, free of unnecessary structure, highly egalitarian, and support many forms of data. IT folks have serious concerns about Enterprise 2.0 disruptions and the implications (distraction) of bringing this sort of content into their enterprises. Some think that it is about blogs and wikis and many only see chaos.

Many platforms that failed to make the cut as Enterprise 2.0 because they simply didn’t have the qualities that were believed to be important for business outcomes? Enterprise 2.0 takes most of the potent ideas of Web 2.0 peer participation and production and moves them into the workplace. I think we can expect Enterprise 2.0 trend will accelerate slowly over the next 2-3 years. Many big solution vendors are struggling to define what it actually means, not to mention figuring the business value and enterprise wide implications.

So why Enterprise 2.0 initiates gets stuck? Because they fail to answer many of the following questions: How does it help the organization to improve business performance? What does it mean for the knowledge workers? How does it contribute it support human capital development? What are the incentives to share? What are the core issues and does the business and IT teams see the same issues? Who owns the issues and is that a plan to resolve them? Are there agreements on the key risks and is there a plan to mitigate them?

There are also cultural, compliances and legal issues. And if free comment is allowed in a corporate blog or wiki, the company has to be alert to the dangers of libel or infringement of employee rights laws. There must be reasonable measure to ensure the content adheres to certain standard to balance the rights of individual opinion and respect for others. And from a technology standpoint, there's realistic concern about how 2.0 technologies interact with legacy systems and what it will cost to ensure that the IT project is appropriately staffed and resourced.

But the biggest idea is the “transformation of the workplace”. This new generation of social networking and collaborative software is transforming the workplace and starting to take on the very human characteristics of interaction and collaboration that will fuel a burst of productivity to rival the advent of e-mail. It will take 2-5 years and that’s what a typical corporation usage adoption curve will look like.

Talking about workplace transformation, here's a photo of what's the mobile workplace is like. Scott has been performing these dangerous act lately, I was actively ensuring cab drivers saw him crossing the street.

Comments

[Rory MacDonald]

In one of my very original comments on the Masterclass (on a consumer focused topic), I said isn’t what we are talking about here really free culture. At the enterprise level, unless we are just talking about Linked’in (and based on the previous level of debate, I would hope we aren’t), I think we are also talking about the impact of free/open source culture for the corporation. Only here, the majority (although by no means all) enterprises simply are so ill-prepared they will find themselves actively fighting it (Just look at microsoft). They will grip harder and harder before the eventually either die or realise that true power and control comes from influence not manipulation. This is not a technology change, this is a complete revolution (the diametric opposite of the status quo) in corporate culture which most current enterprises simply aren’t going to get for years.

Feeble attempts at introducing intranet participation and collaborative knowledge management over the past 10-15 years show us exactly what the issue is. Current Anglo-Saxon corporate culture is too egocentric, it is about holding onto things, hoarding information in a feeble attempt to garner power push yourself up the bureaucratic ladder. Regardless of the potential for increasing the benefit to both the group and the individual through sharing, the whole 2 dimensional, “rational individual” prisoners’ dilemma thing is at its most abhorrently obvious within the corporation.

A perfect example here is when you see a corporate style manager try and take over the job of running an open source project.

I think it would be patronising to say that the vast majority of enterprise workersdon’t understand the bigger pie theory (essentially a localised public good argument), I think they just don’t want to “get” it, they are scared and therefore tell themselves it is naïve. And what we are talking about here are the major barriers to internal collaboration. “Enterprise 2.0” will be about external collaboration/co-opertition. There are some companies out there that get it already. But on mass I would say this is at lease a decade off.

I am tempted to expand on this for ages, but this is Idris’ blog and a group discussion.

Idris once again a very interesting topic and a great post.

[Flavio Azevedo]

Culture changes much slower than hardware, cables and such.

If a company never had a culture for open-minded collaboration, better forget technology in phase one. And probably, in phase two.

There are companies with no computers, with great collaborative culture. In those places, Enterprise 2.0 is a reality.

The first question that every employee must know how to answer is...

Why are we collaborating?

Is our company really engaged in this?

Or did they just buy a new software?

I think Idris is having a tough job in some big companies. Every single small victory is well deserved.

On the other hand, there is great collaboration being done among SME. Truly 2.0. And not very different from what we are doing here.

[Bart]

I think we're going to see a whole new kind of enterprise being built in the future, where certain skill sets will be combined to solve the problem currently at hand. What I'd call an adhocracy.

These companies (I've seen quite a few now and am involved in 2 myself) are loosely based and need to be inherently externally communicative, so adapting new technologies which are open and standard (because you never know how you're going to work with next) is a no-brainer for everyone involved.

I believe this is where it's heading. Not big companies changing their culture to fit technology, but loosely based companies that already have the right culture and for which the use of it is 2nd nature. The problem, however, is there's quite a few classical business-holes (liability, economic models, etc) that need to be overcome for this kind of enterprise2.0. But given the nature of adhocratic enterprises, I feel this is a smaller problem than changing entire enterprise 1.0 cultures.

Food for thought: Shouldn't big companies start by creating smaller entities of themselves that fit the above description? (kinda like they're breaking up the complete puzzle back in to smaller pieces)

[Bart]

and by loosely based, I of course meant loosely connected ;)