The Content Economy

The Real Enterprise 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:17:00 +0000

Nenshad Bardoliwalla, former CTO for Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) at SAP, has written an excellent article that provides "the missing components of the full Enterprise 2.0 picture". It is a must read, both for those who don't see how Enterprise 2.0 fits into their business and for all those Enterprise 2.0 evangelists that seem to think that a new major version does not build upon all previous versions, whether it is a software or an enterprise. Here is a teaser, but you must read the full article since it describes where Enterprise 2.0 fits in the Enterprise:

These definitions of Enterprise 2.0 and their juxtaposition against the definitions of Enterprise 1.0 are misguided. I am certain based on my experience that the free form emergent world depicted as Enterprise 2.0 is NOT an evolution from the structured world of Enterprise 1.0, but rather, the two will exist in an intertwined tapestry that defines the full breadth of what today's enterprises need to look like. It's extremely unhealthy for our industry to pit these two worlds against each other because they will perpetually co-exist."

If an Enterprise 2.0 tool can: increase the average deal size, reduce cost to serve, increase customer loyalty, decrease new product development time, etc., than there is a legitimate business use case and a hard ROI associated with it. So my advice to both the zealots and naysayers of Enterprise 2.0 would be to take an existing, legitimate pain point, like offer creation, or product development, or customer service, and start by benchmarking your current metrics. If an Enterprise 2.0 tool can move those metrics in the right direction in a provable way, you will have real, hard ROI. If the tool doesn't contribute to moving those process metrics in the way you hoped, then you might have a problem with your executive sponsor.

My comment to the last part about ROI, as I argued in my previous post, is that most organizations are missing "current metrics" when it comes to "knowledge work" that surrounds, enables and supports existing business processes in, say, the R&D and Marketing & Sales departments. They either don't have enough metrics, or the right ones to tell them how they actually perform. This means that there is no baseline to start from and from which to build your business case and calculate ROI. The challenge here is that we need to establish this baseline before we can prove that we can improve it. To be able to do this, we also need develop new or refined approaches, methods and metrics that allow us to establish this baseline because the ones that we have used when measuring performance in transactional business processes can't easily be applied to knowledge work.

Eureka! Now I know how to calculate the ROI of Enterprise 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:16:00 +0000

Sorry to disappoint you, but I actually don't know how to calculate the ROI of Enterprise 2.0. But I will at least tell you why I don't know that.

The debate about where the Enterprise 2.0 use cases are hiding, and whether or not you can calculate the ROI from Enterprise 2.0 is quite interesting. It is especially interesting if you consider that the debate is based on the wrong assumption: that we can apply the same approaches, methods and metrics that we have used to improve transformational and transactional business processes in order to improve knowledge work. Obviously, this won't work.

I personally find it quite easy to reason about and communicate the value that Enterprise 2.0 can bring to a business. This can be done by telling stories, such as telling the story about a team of people that tries to collaborate on a document by sending it back and forth via email, and then contrasting it with a story of a team that collaborates using a wiki.

But somehow, these stories are not enough to convince some people that they need to start looking at how to improve knowledge work, and that they need to start exploring the possibilities of new tools and technologies - the same kind of tools and technologies which are already being used successfully on the social web for tasks which are very similar to the tasks we perform at work. Talk about opportunity!

When it comes to Enterprise 2.0 use cases, there is definately not a shortage of use cases. It is just something that the sceptics say because it sounds good to them. Rather, from my experience it is the other way around – there are almost too many of them. Just by watching how my collegues use Yammer, I have identified well over 30 use cases that micro-blogging supports and which are very hard to carry out with other tools and technologies. And new use cases are being identified all the time.

Some of the use cases, such as crowdsourcing ideas for PR activities, wasn't possible before, at least not feasible from a cost and management perspective. It is either that, that we couldn’t afford to perform the use cases, or we didn't bother to make the effort to define the value they generate or to measure this value.

Do you know of any organisation that has tried to and succeeded in measuring how it performs at building market intelligence? Or that has succeeded in measuring how efficient and effective the communication within a project team is? For example, do they measure how much communication it takes and how long time it takes to delegate a task to a team member? Do they measure the effectiveness of this communication - if the right decision was made or the right task was carried out in the right time?

I'm all ears.

As knowledge work is becoming a much bigger and more business-critical part of most businesses, they obviously have to do something to get better at it. A business that succeeds in improving knowledge work and leveraging its social capital will most likely become smarter, faster and more innovative than the competitors that don't. THAT is the business case for Enterprise 2.0. A business that rather passively waits until there is a book to buy that will tell exactly how define and measure the value of knowledge work won't have a very bright future. In fact, I am pretty sure it won't have a future at all.

To sum up, let me make a few things clear.

First of all, it is possible to define the value of knowledge work, such as problem solving and collaboration.

Secondly, it is also possible to measure this value.

But the problem is that we haven't yet come up with exactly how to do that yet.

What obviously doesn’t work is to apply the same approaches, methods and measurements as we have used before when trying to improve transactional business processes. So, we have to come up with new and improved ones. But how do we do that?

I suggest that we start exploring the new and improved use cases and learn to do this as we go. I am pretty sure that this is how most businesses are started and how most improvements are being identified and initiatied. You have an idea, you see an opportunity and you decide to seize it. The people who are just interested in maths will maybe make great accountants or managers (good at sustaining status quo), but not great entrepreneurs or business leaders.

ECM in the age of the social web - new slide deck

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:29:00 +0000

Below is the slide deck that I used for my presentation at the seminar ”How many information flows are there?” which was arranged by Mid Sweden University, CEDIF project Centre for digital information management and EU Objective 2. I will share the full story (what I said to the slide deck) in an upcoming post.

ECM Today - Trends And Realities

View more documents from Acando Consulting.

This week in links - week 44, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:07:00 +0000

"Who Knows What? Finding in-house experts isn't easy. But most companies make it harder than it should be." by Dr. Nevo, Dr. Benbasat & Dr. Wand in Wall Street Journal:

In-house experts, with their specialized knowledge and skills, could be invaluable to both colleagues and managers. But often workers who could use their help in other departments and locations don't even know they exist.

Because of an inability to tap expertise, problems go unsolved, new ideas never get imagined, employees feel underutilized and underappreciated. These are things that no business can afford anytime—let alone in this tough economic climate

The answer, we think, is to use social-computing tools.

Activities and interactions that occur in blogs, wikis and social networks naturally provide the cues that are missing from current expertise-search systems. A search engine that mines internal blogs, for example, where workers post updates and field queries about their work, will help searchers judge for themselves who is an expert in a given field. Wiki sites, because they involve collaborative work, will suggest not only how much each contributor knows, but also how eager they are to share that knowledge and how well they work with others.

Tags and keywords, which are posted by employees and serve as flags for search engines, can reveal qualities in an expert that are far from transparent in any database or directory. And social networks can help employees use existing relationships to not only reach out to distant experts but also trust them more than they would complete strangers.

"Enterprise collaboration turns to Web 2.0" By Janine Milne:

Enterprise collaboration tools will be primarily Web 2.0-based with four years, posing major problems for organisations as entrenched users cling onto old-style working methods, warned a Gartner survey.

Gartner recommended firms take a softly-softly approach to introducing change to reluctant users, explaining the business reasons for the switch and recognising which model suits which situation.

"Using technology to improve workforce collaboration" by James Manyika, Kara Sprague and Lareina Yee:

Knowledge workers fuel innovation and growth, yet the nature of knowledge work remains poorly understood—as do the ways to improve its effectiveness. The heart of what knowledge workers do on the job is collaborate, which in the broadest terms means they interact to solve problems, serve customers, engage with partners, and nurture new ideas. Technology and workflow processes support knowledge worker success and are increasingly sources of comparative differentiation. Those able to use new technologies to reshape how they work are finding significant productivity gains.

But most companies are only beginning to take these paths. That’s because, in many respects, raising the collaboration game differs from traditional ways of boosting productivity. In production and transaction work, technology use is often part of a broader campaign to reduce head counts and costs—steps that are familiar to most managers. In the collaboration setting, technology is used differently. It multiplies interactions and extends the reach of knowledge workers. That allows for the speedier product development found at P&G and improved partner and customer intimacy at Cisco. In general, this is new terrain for most managers.

"Maximizing Business Value from Enterprise 2.0 through Fun & Motivation" by Rex Lee:

When discussing E2.0, I often hear "Shouldn't we just implement these social tools and simply let business value "emerge"? My answer is NO, not if you want to maximize business value.

I am a strong believer that organizations, should focus and facilitate the use of these tools in order to maximize organizational benefits.

To drive value, I've often referred to the engagement factors and in this post I wanted to focus on one of the factors, "Motivation".

How do we address motivation? Do we adopt the "build it and they will come" approach? No. But what about Wikipedia? it seems like complete "self-organization" has made it successful. But consider that only 1% of the people who visit Wikipedia actually contribute content. That's alright with a population set of the world, but 1% of your company may not be enough and if you have specific objectives you may need to motivate others to participate.

So what then? Should we use traditional motivation tactics (i.e. Carrots & Sticks)? For example, should we give bigger monetary bonuses or incentives to those who leverage social computing technologies to solve problems or provide innovative solutions? The answer yet again is surprisingly, NO.

Fun, as a design principle shouldn't be overlooked as it impacts the application design from look and feel, through context, content and process. It also should be addressed when designing events leveraging social computing technologies.

Internal micro-blogging can be intimidating

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:16:00 +0000

Browsing is a complementary method to searching which can be used when you have av vague idea about what you are looking for, or when you just cannot describe it. Just as browsing is a complementary method to searching, micro-blogging can be seen as a complementary method to targeted communication methods; phone, e-mail, chat, sms and so on. You micro-blog when you don't know specifically who to address with something. With micro-blogging, you simply turn to your followers, your groups and the entire community instead of targeting specific individuals.

As the adoption of internal micro-blogging grows at my own company, I am constantly discovering new use cases for internal micro-blogging. Here are a few of the things people use it for:

Asking collegues to help them find information about something, such as a report, method or customer
Asking collegues to help them with a problem they have with a specific software, their computer, or something else
Finding collegues with a specific skill, experience or knowledge
Building intelligence about something, such about what is currently happening at a customer or what we have previously done for that customer
Sharing ideas and finding collegues willing and able to help them develop them further
Getting help to find the right translation of a term that they use within their profession

The benefits of internal micro-blogging becomes quite clear as soon as you start to use it. But, I have also learnt that, for some people, internal micro-blogging can be intimidating. Why is that?

I believe it has to do with the fact that positions and titles matter also online. Some people are simply very afraid of making mistakes, such as saying the wrong thing, when their boss could be listening. So they see it as a much safer strategy to not say anything at all and just listen in on other conversations without joining them.

It all has to do with our fear of transparency. Micro-blogging is a transparent way to communicate, way more transparent than targetet communication methods like email. When micro-blogging, you just have to be a little more careful about what you say and how you say it than when you email people. Email is perceived as "safer" in this respect because it is much less transparent. It allows you to say more sensitive things, assuming that you trust the people that you communicate with (so they don't forward your conversation to other people). The point is that a lot of people will do anything to hold on to email and continue to use it for conversations which are not senstive and which could be very valuable to others who are not on the list of recipients to join or access.

Comparing micro-blogging to email also highlights another potential benefit of internal micro-blogging. The lack of transparency with email also means that you can use your work email for communicating and discussing highly sensitive things, even very private things. Or just bullshit and complete nonsense. This highly contributes to the email mess that most of us have to deal with on a daily basis. Internal micro-blogging is, just as blogging, a way to keep the important stuff than can be important to others as well from being buried and lost in your email inbox.

To me, one of the greatest promises of Enterprise 2.0 and tools such as micro-blogs is that we can use them to tap into the hidden talent of a large organization. The people who don't get to travel a lot, or who have the time needed to develop a strong informal internal network, can start to make start building a network of their own. The people who don’t have access to established forums other than their project and department meetings can share their ideas, opinions, experiences and knowledge with other collegues across organizational and geographical borders.

The sad part, from my experience, is that most of the people who don’t speak up at an internal meeting won’t do it online either. Although I am sure that some of them will speak up as time goes by and they get more used to this new communication arena, it will take time. And they won’t change their behavior voluntary. It will take peer pressure.

A New Age of Enlightenment

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:59:00 +0000

We are currently experiencing the dawn of a new Age of Enlightenment. The social media revolution (yes, it is a revolution since it shakes and changes existing rules, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and also threatens the existence of old institutions) shows very similar characteristics as the Age of Enlightenment that started in the 18th century. Here are some excepts from Wikipedia:

The Enlightenment is held to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy, and reason as primary values of society.
In his famous essay "What is Enlightenment?" (1784), Immanuel Kant described it simply as freedom to use one's own intelligence.
One of the primary elements of the cultural interpretation of the Enlightenment is the rise of the public sphere in Europe...a “realm of communication marked by new arenas of debate, more open and accessible forms of urban public space and sociability, and an explosion of print culture"...its members held reason to be supreme; everything was open to criticism (the public sphere is critical); and its participants opposed secrecy of all sorts
...those areas of political/social knowledge and discussion that were previously the exclusive territory of the state and religious authorities, now open to critical examination by the public sphere

I think it is pretty easy to draw parallels between the Age of Enlightment and the current period in human history.

We continue to value freedom, democracy, and reason, but we also emphasize additional values such as trust, sharing, openness and transparency.
The availability, usability and reach of today's web-based communication tools have given us the freedom not only to use your own intelligence, but also to more easily make use of the intelligence of others as well as to contribute to a collective intelligence.
The public sphere that has been created with the web as platforms knows no borders and have almost no barriers to entry. The blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook are examples of new arenas of debate and exchange which are more open, accessible, interactive and scalable than any public spheres previously existing. We have seen an explosion of user-generated digital content which is shared in these arenas where everything is open to criticism and can be commented on, rated, reviewed and recommended to others. We also oppose secrecy of all sorts, with transparency being a key value.
The discussions that were previously initiated, hosted and moderated by the media can now be critically examined and commented on by anyone. Anyone can also initiate, host and moderate discussions. We are no dependant on the platforms for debate offered by media institutions.

This week in links - week 43, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:02:00 +0000

"Ten ways how leadership can influence and promote interpersonal trust in knowledge management behavior and processes", weknowmore.org

1. Act with discretion
2. Be consistent between word and deed
3. Ensure frequent and rich communication
4. Engage in collaborative communication
5. Ensure that decisions are fair and transparent
6. Establish and ensure shared vision and language
7. Hold people accountable for trust
8. Create personal connections
9. Give away something of value
10. Disclose your expertise and limitations

"The Business Case for Social Computing #SPC09" by Brett Young:

Session notes from SharePoint Conference 2009:
Knowledge Management Issues within the enterprise are still looking for a solution, and social computing might be part of it: Rapid response to problems, capturing knowledge to ensure business continuity, and reducing transition costs. Although social computing may be part of the solution, it is not THE solution to knowledge management.
If we manage by commitment, and employees meet their commitments, do we really care when, where, and how they do it?
When all of your economics come from the industrial age, everything is measured like a factory.
Social computing increases the frequency of "knowledge accidents" within a company – which is a good thing.
If you don't build it they will go somewhere else.
Social computing is really just a shift in communication channels. It is not something to justify, but something to navigate through, embrace, and leverage as a new capability and manage as a new risk.
"The anti-social organization is ultimately non-productive." – Chris Howard, Burton Group.

"Grassroots Social Media is a Risky Necessity" by Anthony Bradley:

Enterprise IT organizations must determine when a grassroots movement has a high chance of success or when a more top-down approach is required. This involves building a decision model as part of the social media governance program that enables the enterprise (all levels) to understand the nature of the social media purpose in terms of its ability to succeed as a grassroots driven effort or where top-down involvement is required. Done correctly this can empower grassroots social media movements without undue risk.

Understanding and capitalizing on the grassroots is critical for both bottom-up- and top-down-driven social media efforts. Generally, the enterprise leadership forms a team to lead a top-down social media effort, while members of a potential social-media-based community drive a bottom-up approach.

"The Problem of the Intranet" by Gordon Ross:

We’ve seen several frames or lenses through which to view the “problem” of the intranet:
intranet as technical problem (issues of performance, content management technology, search engine technology);
intranet as information design problem (content structure, navigation, IA, usability);
intranet as productivity problem (measurement of gains made through self-service applications and access to information, ROI, enhanced efficiencies); and
intranet as social capital problem (employee engagement, culture, job satisfaction).
Our hypothesis is that while intranets are traditionally seen and framed as a visual design and material object design problem, they in fact have more in common with complex systems than printed brochures, especially when it comes to social intranets and Enterprise 2.0.

Challenging the assumption of “intranet as object” and reframing it as “intranet as complex system” is the first of a few key assumptions that need to be recognized and understood to ensure social intranet success. Framing the intranet as an object leads to trying to design an object and expecting it to behave like one, subject to standard cause and effect type statements. Framing the intranet as a complex system changes our perception of it: no longer is it a static thing, but a dynamic environment, one which responds to different attempts to control and shape it.

The rebirth of Email (was it dead?)

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:27:00 +0000

Let's get the obvious clear first. Email is a great communication tool that can be used benefitially for many different purposes. But not for any purpose.

The current wave of new communication and collaboration tools that hit the shore will not kill Email (sunbathing on the beach). In fact, it will only make Email stronger. In addition, only the tools that integrate nicely and purposefully with Email will thrive.

How is that? Well, by introducing new tools which are more suited for the purposes where Email is ill suited, chances are that Email will be used for the things it is good at and not for the other things.

The Akilles heel of Email is that it can be used for any kind of communication. The simplicity and availability of Email encourages people to use it by default when communicating with other people. Email has become the primary choice for people. But if we don't reflect on how we use it and use alternative tools for purposes where email is less suited (which we obviously don't), it quickly leads to inbox hell, occupational spam, information overload...call it whatever you like. Work-related information is mixed with information which is not work-related, private discussions are mixed with official one-way broadcasting, small notifications are mixed with emails containing large attachments, fragments of discussions are fragmented and scattered around in the inbox, information in emails tend to multiply like a virus when you get involved in or start a reply circus act...I think you get the picture.

Above all other things, there are two factors which must stand accountable for these consequences:

1. THE TOOLS
The lack of easy to use and readily available tools that are better suited for uses where Email performs bad (such as collaborating on documents)

2. US
The existing attitudes and behavior of people, coupled with the tendencies that people tend to act without thinking and always choose the most convenient solution in sight, not the one which is most suited for the specific purpose.

These two things are what we have to work at to change.

Obviously, this reasoning does not only apply to the Email paradigm, but also to other paradigms as the Document Management paradigm. Why is collaborating on business content still equivalent to putting the content into a container called "document" and shuffling it back and forth?

You already know the answer to that last question; because there have not been any good alternative tools for along time (although now there are) and because it is such a big thing for us to change how we think and behave.

Email is dead. Long live Email.

This week in links - week 41, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:42:00 +0000

“Time management is the central skill of success. Your ability to manage your time, to focus and channel your energies on your highest value tasks, will determine your rewards and your level of accomplishment in life more than any other factor.” (Brian Tracy)

"Intranets - stop benchmarking, start leading" by James Dellow:

...we continue to have a narrow view of the 'intranet' concept - it is not treated like the Web inside the firewall, rather we continue to think of portals and Web-content management systems. Secondly, intranet managers need to stop benchmarking each other - if all you do is copy, what competitive advantage does your intranet provide (and so it it follows, you are treated like an overhead)? Finally, like any organisational change, introducing new work practices needs to be supported in a sustainable way - there is far too much emphasis on the wrong aspects of self-service and adopting technology without any assistance (self-service should empower users, not simply shift effort from above the line in one department to below the line by shifting it to individual employees).

"Proctor and Gamble’s ‘technopologist’: social networks enrich my job" by Joe McKendrick:

Social media is significantly changing the role of marketing, Knox says [Dave Knox, corporate marketing brand manager for Digital Business Strategy at P&G]. The convergence of technology, marketing and social interaction is becoming more important every day, “but at the same time, it is a new skill set for many marketers to learn.” Only 10 years ago, the marketing toolkit for a brand manager was limited to four choices (TV, print, out of home and radio). “But today, new technology is emerging every day, offering new ways to serve and engage people more effectively. At work we aim to use these new digital tools to continue to be a leader and innovator in marketing and digital business.”

While Knox is immersed within one of the world’s largest companies, he finds that social media is a valuable tool for bringing in outside points of view as well.

“When working for a big corporation, you have an amazing amount of resources at your fingertips. And you are surrounded by incredibly smart people,” he points out. “But most of these people have a similar background to you and are trained to approach problems in the same way. My blog [hardknoxlife.com] has helped me by giving me access to people with different backgrounds and views on the business world. It is a way to connect with these people outside of my day to day work and really get a set of different viewpoints on what is going on with marketing.”

Knox says by staying active in social media through his blog and Twitter, he has been able to do his job better. “My external network has emerged as my business filter, allowing me to sort through the noise and keep on top of what is really important. While it might save time in the short-term to slow down in social media, I think it would hurt me in the long term in terms of personal growth and knowledge.”

"Change Just One Thing" by Jason:

We all get caught up in working hard and in the same way. On the other end of the spectrum, we often try implementing new tools or processes with lots of hoopla and effort. Changing habits is really difficult. By following this simple plan of changing one thing, you can achieve a positive result collaborating with your team or partners.

Here are some ideas:
Use a wiki page for all team status reports or meetings moving forward
Assign one note taker for all meetings and rotate so that every meeting is documented with discussion points, decisions, and next steps – no exceptions
Don’t ask any questions through emails – use a forum or other mechanism
Use file-based documents as a last resort or only if you have to send them out externally. Otherwise, use a sharable web document of some kind
If you do any of these things, you WILL see a positive result in productivity. The point is it doesn’t really matter as long as it is one thing and meaningful. What is the one thing you would change?

"Social Media: Strategically Relevant In Down Times" by Mike Gotta:

Deloitte LLP’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) practice has recently released the results of the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study, which evaluates the perceived potential of online communities* and identifies how enterprises believe they may better leverage them.

Survey results indicate that while enterprises are effectively using online tools to engage with customers, partners, and employees for brand discussion and idea generation, organizations are continuing to struggle with harnessing social media’s full potential.

"While we are seeing signs of maturation in this year's study, there are still plenty of companies who do not realize the power of communities, and others who have not yet figured out the proper approach for leveraging communities as part of their business," said Francois Gossieaux, partner with Beeline Labs and a senior fellow with the Society of New Communications Research. Businesses are truly become social again, and companies should look to leverage the collective wisdom of their employees, customers and partners in order to innovate faster, reduce costs, and bolster their bottom lines."

Reintroducing: The Content Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:30:00 +0000

If you are quite new to this blog - here are a few posts from the archive that I hope could be of interest to you:

The Age of Transparency – Rebuilding trust

People need information, not data or content

The Dark Matter of the Business Universe

Management By Listening Around

Organizations don't need experts, they need mentors

Businesses must support sharing and use of knowledge

Don't listen too much to users - observe them instead

15 quotes to spice up your Enterprise 2.0 business case

This week in links - week 40, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:43:00 +0000

"The Importance of Online Workplaces" by Larry Cannell:

When working online we need places to to gather information, to communicate with colleagues, to learn from others who have encountered similar situations, and to work within teams or organizations with shared goals. As a result, we gather information in files on our computers, organize folders of messages in our e-mail client, or maintain binders full of printed reports from business applications on our desks (because they take so long to retrieve otherwise).

Online workplaces are involved in virtually all information- or knowledge-based activities within an enterprise. By improving online workplaces, an enterprise can significantly increase the performance of these activities. However, the goals of an online workplace need to go beyond automation. When aligned with supporting culture and business practices, online workplaces can provide the basis for sustainable competitive advantage. The source of this advantage comes from the intellectual capital that can be captured and reused. This is illustrated in the following conceptual model.

The efficiency of completing repeatable processes and transactions is the focus of workflow systems and transactional systems. In the interest of decreasing cycle time, both of these system types optimize how individuals and groups serve business processes: The process comes first and the worker is subservient to the process (cue Pink Floyd music). However, this “process first, user second” design does not work well for the many ad hoc activities that make up a typical workday, in which the user juggles multiple variables and gathers information as needed. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid call these two different modes “process” and “practice.”

"The Real Business Value of Social Networking" by Luis Suarez:

Seth Godin...once again...nails it, as far as I can tell, on what the real challenge is for social networking to flourish in the enterprise world.

In over the course of a little bit over two minutes, he gets to share some really good insights on what the real business value of social networking is all about. And guess what? He doesn’t do it through a definition, nor through stating hard facts none of us can (nor will!) relate to! Ever. Instead, he shares it through stories. Stories we can all relate to.

Speaking of stories, I found this video with excellent advice on how to tell stories via Tom Graves (@tetradian) on Twitter:

"The Social Media Fear Factor" By Rachel Happe:

There is plenty to be anxious about in considering using social media for business.

Many look at all their valid fears - whether they are as simple as having un-edited content in the public eye or whether they are concerned with law suits - and decide it is too much to take on. On the other side, I hear a lot of social media enthusiasts recommend a 'Just Do It' approach. Like many things, the reality for people concerned about the ramifications of using these new communication mechanisms is somewhere in the middle.

Things you can do to practice:
Use Yammer internally
Train and encourage people within your company to have personal blogs. Run competitions.
Introduce smaller work groups to wikis
Implement an enterprise-wide social network (emphasis on social)
Create group blogs to comment on industry news and events that are only accessible internally.
Pretend to blog for an external audience before you deploy an external blog.
Form communities of practice internally and learn how to 'manage' them
You get the idea. Practice is critical.

My first day with Google Wave

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:53:00 +0000

”Google Wave feels a bit regressive. Email paradigm on steroids? - Jevon MacDonald (@jevon), Dachis group.

I got the same feeling as Jevon when I saw the first screenshots and read about Google Wave at ReadWriteWeb and elsewhere. I am not sure if that feeling has completely gone after having used it for an impressive whole day, or if it has just changed a little.

I usually try to stay away from reviewing products and tools, but this time I have made an exception. The exception spells Google Wave. I shared some of my early reactions yesterday on Twitter. Here are a few of my tweets, in chronological order with the first on top:

Checking out Google Wave
The best thing with Google Wave is the empty inbox
It's hard to really test Google Wave without someone to communicate with - invitations aren't sent immediately
Reflection from my first wave in Google Wave: how to end a real-time conversation in a wave?
Does Google Wave provide a searchable directory of all users? I haven't seen one
If Google Wave usage is going to take off, we need to be able to find each other

Google Wave IS Email 2.0. And I mean that in a good way.

How? Well, Google Wave builds on the strengths of Email 1.0 and adds 2.0 qualities and features to it to compensate for the weaknesses of Email 1.0. But it does not just add these things on top of Email 1.0. The Google Wave team has come up with a new architecture and applied some fresh new design principles. Google Wave has apparently been designed to take advantage of the simplicity of email and our familiarity and (sometimes bad) habit with using email for virtually any kind of communication and even collaboration. But in areas where email performs really bad, such as when it comes to providing structure, versioning, history and context to conversations and integration of various forms of content, Google Wave stands tall.

Despite what some analysts have said, I have a hard time seeing how Google Wave can be compared to a social networking platform like Facebook or even Twitter. At least not until there are a lot of people using it and some way to discover and connect with people and become aware of their activities. Today, I can communicate with people I know or who provide me with their Google Wave address outside of Google Wave so I can add them as contacts. But there currently is no way to discover and get to know people from inside of Google Wave, unless they happen to be part of a wave into which you are invited.

In a way, Google Wave is like email on steroids. The part that is missing now is the infrastructure for social conversations - the social network. I can see Google Wave being integrated into services such as LinkedIn and FaceBook or even Twitter, but I can't see how it will replace it. And I don't think that is what Google is aiming for with Google Wave. Google Wave is just not social in the same sense as Facebook and definately not in the same way as Twitter.

What I can see however is a huge potential of Google Wave becoming a collaboration infrastructure for small groups of people. A wave in Google Wave ties all conversations and content that is somehow related to a task or project together - and it keeps them together. That is essential in virtual collaboration. The wave provides a context that grows organically from the first single message. You can build upon it almost indefinately and the history of all conversations is readily available via the really amazing ”Playback” function where you can walk yourself though the history of a wave. This is how Google explains what a wave is:

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

As waves are not tied to peoples' inboxes, the email inbox lock-in problem does not apply for Google Wave. A wave can be accessed and interacted with from virtually any context, be it a blog, an intranet, or a mashup. Although a wave is logically tied to persons, it is not tied to their inboxes. The inbox is just a view where you are notified about new waves or changes to an existing wave. The wave is not physically ”in” your inbox. The wave exists in one version only and everybody see and interact with the same wave. So there we have the potential death of email management and putting space limits to inboxes. The chinese whispers game that you can play with email, with the message changing as it moves moves from one person to another, can't be played in Google Wave. Any attempt to distort the message or filter out things will be recorded, and the original message can be found.

I personally think that Google Wave will hit like a bomb on the enterprise market for collaboration and communication tools. I am quite sure that the news about Google Wave hit like a bomb at the Microsoft Corp Headquarters in Redmond when it was announced at the Google IO conference in May earlier this year. I also think that the chance - or risk depending how you see it - that the guys at Microsoft have managed to think outside the box with the upcoming new 2010 versions of Exchange and SharePoint is minimal. I am convinced that these dinosaur products are stilled based on the good old email and document paradigm, but now with more social features and characteristics, a clould offering, RIA and other 2.0ish stuff as icing on the cake. Google, on the other hand, came up with a new recipe and invented a new cake.

As always, Google will start with letting consumers try out their new tool. But the fact that ”select business and university customers of Google Apps” have invited to this first beta trial indicates that Google Wave will be a corner-stone in Googles enterprise offering. Google Wave can be the first real threat to Microsoft in the enterprise software arena.

Finally, here are some insignificant short notes that I wrote down yesterday as I tried out Google Wave:

As I can see every character that other people write in real time, at the same moment as I write something myself, I tend to change my message as I write based on what other persons write. The end result is a message that hardly can be understood by other users who did not participate in the wave at the time.
It took a while until I understood that I had to click messages to mark them as read. I expected it to work like Google Reader, where just scrolling by (reading) messages would mark them as read. Now I have to do a lot of unnecessary interaction.
The green dot indicating if a user is online or not is really ugly and almost annoying.

Well, Google Wave really has to do something about the ugly green dot if Google Wave is to become a smashing success ;-)

UPDATE: The green dot is now mysteriously gone! (yesterday, my own profile picture had the green dot and now it hasn't)

Companies need help in understanding and taking advantage of social media

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:26:00 +0000

The Swedish IT industry newspaper Computer Sweden has a piece on companies being stressed by social media- they know they need to do something but now what and how (read the full article translated with Google Translate here, in Swedish here):

Social media creates frustration out on business. Everyone knows that they can be used in a smart way - but it is difficult to know how.

- Just yesterday I thought about how we could use it, "says Per Olofsson, CEO of environmental engineering company ClimateWell.

He thinks that social networks in particular, could be used in a robust manner internally in the company.

- We are growing and growing and are in many countries and it could be an effective knowledge platform, "he says.

I had the opportunity to make a comment in another related article in the same newspaper (read the full article translated with Google Translate here, in Swedish here). Although it is not entirely clear in the article, I am saying that increasing transparency within and across the firewalls of an organization, in a managed way, is one of the great business opportunities:

The trend is continuing in social media. "Certainly one can understand that it is difficult for companies to keep up, but there are great risks if we do not do it," says Oscar Berg, an expert on Web 2.0 at Acando.

Some companies are mostly included in the value of using social media externally, for marketing and sales.

Others also see an internal use to create a more effective communication.

- It's either or. Few have really seen how to combine these elements. I myself have no track of everyone who works here at Acando and sometimes it happens that I have colleagues who work with the same type of assignments for other clients and that I could benefit from having an exchange with.

- If you could create the forms in which it is possible to see what others are doing and then marry it to see what customers and partners are doing - it strikes me as a great opportunity for businesses in the use of social media, "says Oscar Berg.

Suggested ways to use Google Wave

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:26:00 +0000

Here are a few examples from the Google Wave team about how to Google Wave:

UPDATE: Lars Rasmussen at Google also links to a number of examples on how to use Google Wave in a recent post on the Official Google blog.

Organizing events

Keep a single copy of ideas, suggested itinerary, menu and RSVPs, rather than using many different tools. Use gadgets to add weather, maps and more to the event.

Meeting notes

Prepare a meeting agenda together, share the burden of taking notes and record decisions so you all leave on the same page (we call it being on the same wave). Team members can follow the minutes in real time, or review the history using Playback. The conversation can continue in the wave long after the meeting is over.

Group reports and writing projects

Collaboratively work in real time to draft content, discuss and solicit feedback all in one place rather than sending email attachments and creating multiple copies that get out of sync.

Brainstorming

Bring lots of people into a wave to brainstorm - live concurrent editing makes the quantity of ideas grow quickly! It is easy to add rich content like videos, images, URLs or even links to other waves. Discussion ensues. Etiquettes form. Then work together to distill down to the good ideas.

Photo sharing

Drag and drop photos from your desktop into a wave. Share with others. Use the slideshow viewer. Everyone on the wave can add their photos, too. It is easy to make a group photo album in Google Wave.

Work is not a place, it is something you do

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:12:00 +0000

Online, on virtual places like Yammer, Twitter or LinkedIn, people tend to tell their colleagues and others what they are doing, thinking, liking, reading...and not so often where they are, when they arrived there and when they left. Why? Because the latter often just doesn't make much sense. Knowing where someone physically is doesn't usually contribute very much to your work. But knowing what someone you work with will help you coordinate actions, and tell you when it time for you or someone else to contribute. By learning what other people are doing you might also spot opportunities for exchanging ideas, knowledge or opinions, or doing something together.

Most people today understand that being physically present at the office is not necessarily the same thing as working or being productive. Still, most corporate cultures are stuck with the mindset from the industrial age that work is a place and uses time spent at that place is the main way to measure work.

It has not always been like that. In the agricultural society, work used to be about what you could produce. Then we moved into factories and offices and began to refer to work as a place. The introduction of the time clock, invented in 1888 by jeweler Willard Bundy, reinforced this. It tracked the number of hours an employee worked and was the main measure by which work was measured and workers were paid and rewarded.

If time spent at the office is a relevant measure or not depends upon the type of work you do. But in most cases it is a misleading measure. For knowledge workers such as marketing and sales people, engineers, IT consultants, writers, and so forth it is damn right wrong. Our work environment is getting more and more complex, with more interactions with more people across organizational, geographical and cultural borders. Many of us work with people in different time zones. Still, our contributions are very much measured in the same way as during the industrial era peaking during the 20th century - by the face time we spend at the office during office hours.

Sooner or later, virtual work will be the norm and a practice that will catch on everywhere. But if it is currently allowed at your company / department / team or not usually comes down to individual managers and whether or not you have a trusting boss. In a Harvard Business Publishing article called "Stay Home and Work", Rosabeth Moss Kanter states:

Choosing how long to work and on what schedule has long showed productivity benefits. People are less stressed when they can adjust their hours or days to family or personal needs. A greater feeling of control is associated with more energy and better health, studies show, making those workers more productive.

Technology exists to make remote work feasible and effective. Cell phones have liberated people from desks. Cisco's telepresence capabilities make it possible to feel as though you are in the meeting room with people anywhere in the world, sitting just across the conference table.

The barriers are the usual human ones. Without a culture of strong accountability, collaboration, trust and personal responsibility, remote work doesn't work. That culture is missing in too many organizations. Managers don't always know how to coordinate and communicate with people they do not see face to face; they must value the work product and not the face time. Leadership is important. People need clear goals, deadlines, and performance metrics. Team members need trust and the ability to rely on and fill in for one another.

It is pretty clear that we have to get away from concepts such as face time and office hours. We need to stop thinking of work as a place and make virtual work a norm. What really matters in the end is what results we produce and that we achieve our goals. But that of course implies that we must define what kind of results we expect, what goals to achieve, and probably also provide some directions. A problem is that a lot of people still don’t know how to do that. That includes managers, and possibly your boss.

“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results” - General George Patton

Resist printing! (and save the world)

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:24:00 +0000

Well, if you don't save the world you will at least c0ntribute to moving things in the right direction.

"The average daily web user prints 28 pages daily."
(Source; Gartner group and HP according to Wikipedia)

For about a year now, I have tried my best to live by my new "resist printing" principle. It has not been easy, but looking back I have been very successful in my attempts to change my behavior. Simply put, I print much less than just a year ago. I would estimate that I am definitely down to less than 5 pages per day on average (which doesn't mean that I print 5 page by day, but occasionally I need to print a tender, agreement or such which is longer than 5 pages).

The most effective way to force myself to a new behavior has been to make it harder for me to exercise my unwanted behavior. This is what I did:

When the black ink in my printer at home ran out out over a year, I decided not to buy a new ink cartridge. So from that point I could simply not print anything when I was at home.
When at work, I don't log on to the domain unless absolutely necessary. This means that I cannot print at the office - unless absolutely necessary, that is.
I assigned the “PDF writer” as the default printer on my laptop. So, if I happen to print by accident at times when I am logged on to the domain at work, it will be printed to a PDF file.

Of course, there are also things that I have done to make this change of behavior easier, such as getting myself a smartphone with Internet access, a mobile broadband card for my laptop, and as using Google Reader to consume most of the information I'm interested in (reading information in an RSS Reader is more optimized for screen reading than most sites). Anyway, key has been the ability to bring my information with me digitally instead of on paper, which in turn has required the ability to be able to connect to the Internet anywhere and anytime, and to access the information I need via the web. Today, thanks to new smartphones, 3G and Web 2.0 apps, that is definitely possible.

Another factor that has considerably reduced my consumption of paper is that we don't have a newspaper at home. Both my wife and I read all news online, except for an occational news magazine stuffed with great journalistic content (like the excellent Swedish magazine “Filter”).

To sum things up; we live in a digital age characterized by digital abundance when it comes to information. Almost everything that is printed on paper can be read online as well. Resisting printing and reading daily news online instead of on paper are two really low hanging fruits when it comes to saving our environment and reducing unneccessary water consumption (AND saving costs). We have really no excuse for not changing our behavior. Expecially if we consider the following:

One year's worth of the New York Times newspaper weighs 246 KG (520 pounds). (2)

Approx. 324 liters (85,6 gallons) of water is used to produce 1 KG (2.2 pounds) of paper. (1)

It takes 75,000 trees to print a Sunday Edition of the New York Times. (3)

New York's largest export out of the Port of NY is waste paper. (4)

It costs the Times about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead (5)

In ten years from now, the newspaper industry as we know it today will be gone and printers at home and offices will be much less used. The fact that we today still read news on paper and print so much information that could as well be consumed online will seem incredible stupid. Our children will look at us and ask us what the f**k we were thinking.

References:
1. Environment Canada (from "Eco Design Paper Facts" by iD2 Communications)
2. Purdue Research Foundation and US Environmental Protection Agency, 1996 (from "Eco Design Paper Facts" by iD2 Communications)
3. North Carolina Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling (from "Eco Design Paper Facts" by iD2 Communications)
4. What About Waste, Cornell Waste Management Institute, 1990 (from "Eco Design Paper Facts" by iD2 Communications)
5. “Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle”, Silicon Alley Insider

This week in links - week 39, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Here is this week's set of links with some comments of mine.

"Social Business" by Euan Semple:

...I believe there is a fundamental change in how we do business heading our way. Driven by the networked communication tools flourishing on the web, tools like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, not only how we communicate with those who benefit from our services but also how we organise ourselves to produce them will be changed forever.

Social tools like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Wikis and Blogging are placing in the hands of everyone communication tools that give them access to global audiences within seconds with virtually no cost and no gatekeepers. This has never been possible on this scale before and no one really knows what the impact will be.

What I believe is happening, as more of our society becomes more connected and computing power and bandwidth become pervasive, is the equivalent of the advent of the printing press.

Being aware of these technologies is a very different thing from understanding them, actually using them, and knowing how to get the best out of them. This is before we even begin to touch on the subject of how to use them in a business context and how to “manage them”. The biggest change in communications, and possibly the most challenging for those called communications professionals, is a change in tone.

There are those who would claim that the views expressed here are just another re-hashing of cyber-utopianism that has been around since the start of the net...But I would argue that what we are seeing is a much more gradual, long lasting and profound change in the way we see ourselves and each other driven by the proliferation of networked communication described above. There is a genie that has been let out of the bottle and while we may not see the full effects of its actions in our lifetime there is little doubt that things won’t ever be the same again.

Comment: Hear, hear!

"Defining KM" by David Snowden:

Given the overall levels of cyncism about knowledge management, together with issues of initiative fatigue and excessive communication, it is proposed that a simpler and more common place definition be adopted together with some clearly business orientated guiding principles. A first draft is set out below:

The purpose of knowledge management is to provide support for improved decision making and innovation throughout the organization. This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience augmented by the provision of information, processes and technology together with training and mentoring programmes.

The following guiding principles will be applied:
All projects will be clearly linked to operational and strategic goals
As far as possible the approach adopted will be to stimulate local activity rather than impose central solutions
Co-ordination and distribution of learning will focus on allowing adaptation of good practice to the local context
Management of the KM function will be based on a small centralized core, with a wider distributed network

Comment: A new definition is very needed and this is a great start.

"People Centric Organizations ? Not that sure..." by Bertrand Duperrin:

...the main objective, let’s be honnest, is to make people give their best, to be sure that no talent or expertise is left unemployed. That’s the macro level.

At the micro level, it’s considering people as the engines of the organization. And their knowledge and social capital as the fuel. A new kind a fuel that can’t be stocked, replaced or substitutable and which combustion is uncertain.

Comment: Great points, agree 100%. I also agree that we must explain what we mean when saying that we should put "people in the centre". For me, it means that we need to focus more on how employees can become more productive, efficient and innovative (once called "white collar productivity"). Until now we have mainly focused on processes, non-human resources and technology. These is so much potential in people yet to be released!

"The value of a peer network" by Janus Boye:

Build strong relations with your colleagues and you will be successful. This has been a common mantra for many years. However, when faced with new challenges, many employees have found to their surprise that their internal network and relations fail to provide them with sufficient answers and inspiration.

My advice earlier this year was to start networking right away, but a recent conversation with Christian Waldstrøm, Associate Professor at Aarhus School of Business, brought to my attention that the value of internal networks may in fact be overrated. Waldstrøm has found that internal networks tend to lock stakeholders into unfortunate inter-relations while fostering habitual thinking and stereotyping patterns.

A strong internal network of relations can certainly be valuable, but external relations may be more valuable and helpful in times of change. If you know somebody who has solved a similar problem, you can always contact him/her irrespective of organisational changes. In addition to ideas and potential solutions, you also get a fresh outside perspective and the opportunity to meet peers who share your challenges. If you are able to connect with somebody who has solved some of the issues you are facing, the solution might need to be adapted to your organisation, but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel entirely.

Comment: Strong points. A company is often a very competitive environment and people tend to build alliances that help them to a better position, not real relations based on trust. It is your external network that might help you get a new job if you need one.

"12 Theses on Collaboration" by Dr. Kjetil Kristensen:

Any initiative aimed at improving collaboration internally and / or with external partners is a complex undertaking. These theses on collaboration has been developed to create some structure in the apparent chaos.
Collaboration is an essential part of knowledge work.
The majority of work is collaborative.
Think, then act.
Collaboration requires disciplined management and leadership to succeed.
While important, technology is not enough.
Work practices should be systematically developed and reviewed.
Usability is too important to be left to the technology people alone.
The importance of awareness and training cannot be overstated.
Collaboration is inherently dynamic and should be treated accordingly.
Get your priorities right.
Find the sweet spots rather than using a forced approach.
Never forget that collaboration is about creating value.

Comment: Great guidelines for collaboration.

Managers ARE scared to death of social media

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:20:00 +0000

A study made by the Swedish organization Ledarna where they conducted deep interviews and surveys with managers across Europe has found that more than halv of all managers are afraid that social media will make employees less productive and that sensitive information will leak outside the organization.

More than half of the managers see that social media as a interruptive factor that does not provide any proven value. Peter Liljeros, leadership consultant at "Ledarna" comments:

"That it [social media] might consume time or that sensitive information can be spread has nothing to do with social media. It can just as well happen during a coffee break."

Presentation: Getting Real About Enterprise 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:13:00 +0000

Here's the opening presentation from Acando's Enterprise 2.0 event in collaboration with AIIM September 10th 2009. It served as an introduction to the sessions that followed by AIIM, Tetra Pak and NewsGator.

Getting Real About Enterprise 2.0

View more documents from Acando Consulting.

5 Essential Enterprise 2.0 Whitepapers

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:33:00 +0000

Here are a few good whitepapers that complement my previous post "5 Essential Enterprise 2.0 Research Reports":

"Enterprise 2.0: What, Why and How", Enterprise 2.0 Conference

An introduction to Enterprise 2.0 - what it is, and why it's one of the most crucial concepts to understand in business today.

- Register (minimal) to download

"The ROI of Enterprise Social Computing", NewsGator

whitepaper that discusses how social computing solutions can deliver ROI and help improve three core areas of your business: Reduce expenditures, Leverage current investments, Improve operating efficiency

- Read summary

- Register to download...or read "Seven Ways To Cut Costs with Enterprise 2.0", Social Computing Journal

"Developing an Enterprise Social Computing Strategy", Intel

Read how Intel IT transformed collaboration across Intel while addressing top business challenges such as helping employees to find relevant information and expertise more quickly, breaking down silos; attracting and retaining new employees; and capturing the tacit knowledge of mature employees.

- Download without registering

"Collaboration: Know Your Enthusiasts and Laggards", Cisco

Cisco conducted one of the world's first comprehensive studies of the factors associated with successful adoption of network-based collaboration.

- Download without registering

"Balancing Candy and Aspirin - The Goal for Enterprise 2.0", Open Text

Business has two main objectives: generate revenues and keep costs and risks low. All organizations must learn to strike the perfect balance between meeting the expectations of Web site visitors and those of internal teams. Customers look for information to make informed choices. Internal teams have lead generation goals and must control public information.

- Register to download...or read on Slideshare without registering.

5 Essential Enterprise 2.0 Research Reports

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:45:00 +0000

Here are 5 quite recent research reports directly or indirectly related to Enterprise 2.0 which I recommend reading.

"AIIM Industry Watch Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0", AIIM

- Download the report (registration required)

- View presentation on Slideshare

- Read summaries: Bill Ives, John Mancini, Laurence Hart

"Enterprise 2.0: Social Software on Intranets", Nielsen Norman Group

- Purchase the full report

- Read summaries: Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, Reuters, Social Computing Journal, Tom Graves

"How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0, McKinsey Global Survey Results", McKinsey & Company

- View, download, share, print the report (registration required)

- View report on Slideshare

- Read summaries: Matthias Rempel, Daniela Barbosa, Steve Dale

"Intranet 2.0 Global Study findings report", Prescient Digital Media

- Download Summary Report of Intranet 2.0 Global Survey (free version)

- Listen to podcast by author Toby Ward

- Read summaries: Bill Ives

"Global Intranet Trends for 2009", JMC / Jane McConnell

- Read highlights

- Download TOC and sample

- Purchase the full report

- View presentation on Slideshare

- Summaries: Janus Boye, Mark Fidelman

And finally, an extra that does not qualify as research but nonetheless is an useful reading:

"Developing an Enterprise Social Computing Strategy", Intel

- Download the whitepaper

- Read whitepaper on Slideshare

This week in links - week 37, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:11:00 +0000

Here are three important pieces on Enterprise 2.0 from this week.

"E2.0: Unleashing the Potential" by Paula Thornton:

How is 2.0 thinking different? It relies on a shift away from many commonly held beliefs. It is not an abandonment of such beliefs, but requires that they be suspended to move to a more flexible, adaptive middle. It requires the ability to embrace dichotomy, to simultaneously consider opposing concepts to find new possibilities.

Enterprise 2.0 unleashes the potential of corporate resources by shifting control. While management does not go away, it is not an activity in the hands of a few.

While digital technologies contribute to the structure, they are only seeds. At the lowest level construct, Blog technology is not different than a Wiki: both provide functions to create and display content in a specific format. The main distinctions in Blogs and Wikis are the functions and formats they provide. But the same is true for all other common desktop applications. A Blog or a Wiki is no more inherently social than email.

There is no prescribed starting point for Enterprise 2.0, but there is one capability that emergence fundamentally depends on: the ability for people to find each other by things that define relevance – work, topics, skills, affiliations, trust. As well, people must have ready access to relevant ‘raw materials’ for their work. Shorten the distance to finding relevant resources.

To be truly emergent, Enterprise 2.0 must be seamlessly integrated with knowledge work. It cannot be an appendage; it should not require adoption.

Enterprise 2.0 is inherently social. It is not about managing knowledge but is about rendering knowledge. It is enabled by, but is not achieved by installing a digital technology. It unleashes the potential of humans not with workflow, but by flowing work and thought on persistent conversations.

"Defining Social Media" by Mike Gotta:

Social media enables public and transparent participation models where people and organizations interact as peers.

Social media possesses low-barriers to expression, engagement, and contribution to promote exchanges, relationships, and sense of community among its participants.

Social media strategies include practices that facilitate behavioral and cultural contexts necessary for social media to be adopted and leveraged by its participants.

Social media itself is not a single technology or set of technologies as much as it is a design point for the application of social tools or leveraging of social platforms. Social media leverages a variety of network and infrastructure services, including end-user devices and form factors, to deliver contextual and situational user experiences that bond people with other participants in a trusted fashion.

"Rules are for impatient people" - guest post by Stewart Mader on Dennis Howlett's blog "Irregular Enterprise":

To me, a term like Enterprise 2.0 is a nice label to affix once you recognize that there is something visibly different about how an organization functions. For example, universities that have encouraged wide adoption and use of technology in teaching and learning, developed online courses in addition to traditional ones, and changed the educational environment to emphasize learning for understanding instead of content delivery and memorization could conceivably be given the label “Enterprise 2.0.” Universities are enterprises, and 2.0 represents a change from 1.0.

In sum, here are several timeless patterns I’ve observed in my years of working with a variety of organizations on technology adoption. As Merlin Mann said in a recent speech, “This is not a list. It is a list of four things, but don’t think of it as a list. Because that makes me mad. Item 1.”
Never underestimate how busy people are, and how quickly they will ignore or dismiss something they don’t see as useful.
What has worked for me, time and time again, is to work my way through an organization team by team, department by department, and find out what day to day problems people want to solve.
Rules are for impatient people. You need to observe patterns to see what works well and where the weaknesses lie.
The best strategy for long-lasting technology adoption comes from running a small pilot, working out the kinks, telling a good story with relevant examples from the pilot, giving people permission and encouragement to find the best uses, and letting them guide their peers.

Ready or not, here it comes

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:56:00 +0000

I am a firm believer that communication is the core of any enterprise and that communication contributes greatly to its success if it is effective.

In these days, with globalization, virtual teams, telepresence and complex collaboration between organizations, effective communication is even more important than before.

For that simple reason, I am confident that more and more organizations will adopt Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 to improve the ways they communicate.

As Nielsen Norman Group concludes in their "Enterprise 2.0: Social Software on Intranets" report:

"Ready or not, here comes Enterprise 2.0...Social software is not a trend that can be ignored. It’s affecting fundamental change in how people expect to communicate, both with each other and the companies they do business with."

Why a social (professional) online network is a key strategic resource

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:55:00 +0000

Below is an excellent summary of how online social networks benefit organizations by Lisa Kimball and Howard Rheingold, Rheingold Associates:

You get the biggest payoff for having a distributed organization when groups can work together across departments, functions, and roles on developing strategies to respond to changing conditions. This is where organization becomes more than the sum of its parts. Instead of relying on small, isolated groups or outside consultants, organizations can leverage their social network to identify opportunities and resources for strategic initiatives.
But strategy requires communication about more than project milestones and logistics. To support strategy, the communication across the network must be rich, conversational, continuous, and involve everyone in the organization.
The danger for distributed organizations is that their communication about strategy becomes disjointed because members lack the environment to support substantive, ongoing (between face-to-face meetings) discussions. Many people believe erroneously that f-t-f meetings are the only time you can have this type of exchange. New skills are required to engage with each other effectively at different times from different places.
This is where the organization can get the biggest payoff for investing in communications resources (time, energy, supporting technology). An organization that does this well can create strategies, processes, and new approaches it needs to thrive.
Conversations are the lifeblood of modern organizations. Until recently, the knowledge and understandings conveyed in meetings and memos and water cooler bull sessions just leaked into the air. The great advantage of new media is not how much information they can put at disposal of individuals and organizations – but the kind of conversations they make possible. The technology for sharing knowledge and cementing powerful social networks is no longer rarely accessible or expensive. The knowledge of how to use the technology, not the software or the physical means of transporting it, will be the strategic advantage of those who possess it and diffuse it.

People need information, not data or content

noreply@blogger.com (Oscar Berg) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:11:00 +0000

Simply speaking, Information Management is about enabling the delivery of the right information in the right time to the right audience.

One essential insight needed to achieve this is that when people need information, they don't care to distinquish between data and content. They just need information. Structured content (data) is not information, neither is unstructured content. Information is what you might get when interpreting content.

For many different reasons, ranging from historical to technical, structured content and unstructured content is managed differently in most organizations. Structured content is typically created and managed in business applications such as ERP. Unstructured content is often not managed in any systems at all. This creates a divide in the information landscape which in the end hurts an organisation’s productivity, efficiency and ability to innovate.

So, a major challenge in Information Management is to ensure that all content is managed and then integrate it to serve the information needs of the users.

When designing external customer-facing solutions, we understand that we must focus on information needs. We understand that we can’t force customers to turn to one system to view structured content that holds information about a product and to another system to view unstructured content such as manuals or reviews. We understand that we need to provide it all in the same context, just when the customer needs it. Not even one click away. Otherwise the customer won’t be convinced to buy the product.

Strangely, we often don't care to integrate unstructured and structured content to serve the information needs of internal users (employees). As a result, employees have to spend a lot of their time on personal information management – finding/refinding, organizing and sharing information. They need to turn to different systems to satisfy their information needs even if these are related to the same thing, such as a product. So, a lot of their time is spent on finding and refinding information they have already found before. And they often don’t have much support from internal IT solutions. As confirmed by AIIM’s Market IQ on Findability from 2008:

"A majority of respondents believe that findability in their organization is worse to much worse than their own organization's consumer-facing web sites and 49% of respondents have no formal goal for enterprise findability within their organizations."

So why don’t organizations do more to solve this? The solutions are out there, more or less.

I believe the answer is pretty simple; it is because it is very hard to see and follow the cause-effect chain down to how all this affects the bottom-line result. Something which is much easier to do when it comes to customer-facing solutions.

Most people, including those in management, would probably say they understand that there must be a connection. But as long as they don’t see any real evidence of the connection and that bad internal Information Management affects the bottom-line results negatively, most people won’t act to do something about it.