Andrew McAfee's Blog - Latest Comments in Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Eticaret Yazılımı — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 15:46:59 -0000

Dear Kevin,
I agree with you.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Trevor Miles — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:55:47 -0000

I'm really late to this discussion, but I am pleased to have found it. Hopefully my comment will rekindle the discussion and we will get some updated views and opinions.

I'll come clean: I work for a software company in the supply chain space.

I found Dennis Howlett's response to this discussion frustrating to say the least. But he may well be correct that the biggest barrier to E20/SocBiz - to me they are the same thing - is the existing organizational and power structures. Managers who have obtained power through the control of information and the dissemination of opinion are threatened by SocBiz, whether embodied in theories espoused by consultants or in technology espoused by software companies. As others have commented, this may be a very legitimate concern. But there is a great part in "The Big Switch" by Nichola Carr that discusses how our current corporate structures have resulted from a lack of rapid communication at the a time when organizations where consolidating and expanding geographically, much of the expension enabled by the advent of power utilities and the wide spread adoption of AC power.

Dennis and I are roughly the same age so I hope he will relate to this anecdote, which is relevant to the entire SocBiz/E20 debate. In the early 1990's I used to review research proposals for the then DTI in the UK. At some dinner I happened to sit across the table from the senior civil servant who ran the DTI and disbursed a large amount is research grants. I started talking to the person sitting next to me about the various word processing packages available at the time and their relative merits. As we were going through the various pro's and con's the civil servant interrupted us to say that if we worked for him he would fire us. When asked why that was, he said that writing letter was what secretaries did. We should be focusing on the content. We were just wasting our time on this technology stuff.

Given the capabilities of the word processes at the time and the difficulty of transmission, let alone the ability to edit the document, across the enterprise he had a point. As does Dennis Howlett.

Yet who would argue 20 years later that the virtual standardization around Microsoft Office has resulted in a huge increase in productivity? Now we have a whole generation that has grown up with PC's and personal productivity tools, such as Microsoft Office, and gone much beyond that. If I want to get hold of my kids I use Facebook because they only check email a few times a week. And many people entering the workforce are so comfortable with word processes or spreadsheets that migitrating them to new ones is a reltively painless process.

So yes, organizational and power barriers always slow down the adoption of new processes and the technologies that enable them (please note the order of the terms). As Dennis and others have pointed out, often for very legitimate reasons of corporate governeance. Does this mean the technologies, and technologists that promote them, need to be dismissed? I hope not.

So a small challenge to those who dismiss technology adoption as a way of encouraging/fostering/forcing process chnage. Why not spend as much energy arguing against the conservative attitudes that prevail in business that prevent the adoption of more collaborative ways of working as you do about the relative merits of People, Process, and Technology versus Technology, Process, and People?

Henry Ford supposedly once said "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Thank you Henry for pushing your "technology".

As to the business value, let us consider the supply chain further. Outsourcing and off-shoring are financial instruments to reduce the assets owned by an organization. There is absolutely no benefit of operational efficiency that can be identified from outsourcing and off-shoring. Roughly at the same time as this original blog came out I wrote about discovering George Stalk's original work on Time Based Competition. http://blog.kinaxis.com/200... In a conversation just last week about B2B collaboration with Lora Cecere of Altimeter Group we agreed that anecdotal evidence points to the fact that the enquiry-to-quote-to-order lead time, all of which is information based, is still as long or longer than the order-to-delivery lead time, which is the physical manufacture and/or distribution of finished goods. George Stalk's book "Competing Against Time" was published in 1990!! He message is still relevant and I believe the use of social concepts are key to changing the manner in which multi-tier collaboration is carried out.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Rich Blank — Sun, 16 May 2010 21:42:29 -0000

Great post. Technology is a tool and it's only as good as you use it. The big issue is adoption, change, and culture. The technology itself doesn't solve these problems....it's easy to say "a wiki will solve the problem". In many companies, there are people that don't know what a wiki is. You also have to encourage, educate, evangelize, mandate, align incentives to share. For example, you have silos of engineering teams. They use e2.0 to collaborate within their team, but not between teams and the CEO wants to know why and doesn't understand why engineers won't talk to each other and drive more innovation. Sometimes (well, many times) within the corporate world, if people aren't rewarded or incentives aligned to share, people don't.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

estetik — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:31:24 -0000

I think, Enterprise 2.0 can help: Better productivity and innovation. However, productivity will decrease when employees have access to Enterprise 2.0 tools.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Sell Businesses Online — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:26:44 -0000

In your response to "Problem: How can we accurately forecast how many units we’re going to sell?" you are absolutely correct. The more removed from the production, the more removed from reality execs become. numbers can't tell the whole story they never could.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Jeff Wilfong — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:12:50 -0000

Enterprise 2.0 is not necessarily about utopias. Web 2.0 companies "own" the information of the open-source communities. MySQL, FireFox, and other have been co-opted by larger interests. Facebook and other social networking sites will basically sell information.

In a similar way, I think Enterprise 2.0 still has this top-down flavor. Management holds the reins of knowledge nets, and attempts to control the flow. Without this facilitation, the business would lose great value and chaos could surely result. The boundaries between outside the company and inside the company would melt and for all intensive purposes, the companies core knowledge would melt away as well. Management does not just control, but contains.

Thus, management is exceedingly important, however, the structure of organizations, job roles/functions, and processes will invariably change in the coming years. How this will look, only time and innovation will tell.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Carlo Delumpa — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:28:42 -0000

Enterprise 2.0 is as much about transformative business models as it is about technologies and tools. These transformations take time, require committed sponsorship across the organization (particularly in the C-suites) and are potentially extremely disruptive to the established organizational power structures. Note that these have absolutely nothing to do with technology. More likely, we're talking about tremendous organization development and design that not only has to be part of the Enterprise 2.0 conversation, in many cases it has to precede it to set these efforts up for success.

I agree with Dion, that "almost all organizations have to face social computing one way or the other and the longer they wait, the more work they might have to do" and I am in agreement with the benefits of Enterprise 2.0. As in most technology projects I've been involved in (14 years at HP) the "soft side" of transformation usually comes after the technology nut's been cracked. the idealist in me is wondering if there are organizations out there that addressed both in parallel and found more lasting success.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

David — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:10:35 -0000

The 2.0 Adoption Council consists entirely of "Enterprise 2.0 folks" who work in the day to day reality of the Enterprise across various business units scattered all over whichever Fortune X list you want to use. The deep understanding is there.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Business Opportunities — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:24:22 -0000

Until Enterprise 2.0 folks gain a deeper understanding of the day to day reality of the Enterprise, this will continue to have a superficial impact on the Enterprise. If we look back at Enterprise 2.0 in 20 years and can see lots of Enterprise 2.0 “legacy applications”, we can consider this effort to have been a success.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

chocoBRAIN Marketing — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:46:42 -0000

Enterprise 2.0 is often times discussed starting from a technological point of view trying to meet business requirements with existing tools. Surely, technology can drive innovation BUT at the end of the day especially in the software industry technology has to support business meaning there has to be real value add! And a real value add can just be provided if you start with clarifying what are my objectives that I want to achieve and which tools can help me in achieving it e.g. more efficiently.
The current web 2.0 tools are nice but not yet as far process oriented how it should be in enterprises. Google wave is a good starting point but there is still a lot of room for improvement. At chocoBRAIN.com we've started to left out all existing tools and just focus on how to achieve business goals by designing a process oriented web2.0 platform processes from scratch. We would love to get your feedback on it at CEBIT 2010 in Hannover where we'll present it the first time to the public. Or just contact us in February via twitter for a beta-user.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

petewild — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:18:06 -0000

excellent ideas for using the crowd in the workplace which I had not previously considered
I have a list of risks in not adopting enterprise 2.0
http://www.petewildermuth.c...

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Udayan — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:32:48 -0000

Here is a collection of views that I have come across, on why Enterprise 2.0 will not work. I would love hear somebody countering these arguments!
http://setandbma.wordpress....

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Webcam — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:26:57 -0000

Very good article. “Like it or not, large enterprises – the big name brands – have to work in structures and hierarchies that most E2.0 mavens ridicule but can’t come up with alternatives that make any sort of corporate sense.” I totally agree with you.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Mark Fidelman — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:26:40 -0000

There are many use cases in the Enterprise today. I find most of the dissenters are the consultant or pundit types that have little to no connection with large or small companies. They are doing a service however in helping to surface the successes.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Rick Ladd — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:03:35 -0000

Dion:

I agree the overthrow of hierarchy is unlikely and, while you haven't provided any detail on what that "more interesting and subtle" thing that's going to happen is, what I'm seeing in my very hierarchical aerospace company is a subtle shift in the method and efficacy of communication. I don't think strictly hierarchical organizations lend themselves to good communication. If it happens it's likely in spite of the methods the enterprise sets up to accomplish it. We are notoriously bad at passing information down, and few tell the whole truth when passing it up.

With the ESSPs we are using and experimenting (gingerly) with, the hierarchy - at least with respect to communication - is slowly flattening and, as a result, also broadening. People who may never say a word otherwise are beginning to comment on conversations or blogs. Things that might never get said, e.g. criticism or our outward, customer-facing website, are starting to pop up. I find this a good and encouraging thing.

I'm also inclined to agree with your second point as well. Working in what I would consider a very command-and-control, hierarchical organization that blocks access to social networks and personal blogs (very haphazardly, I might add), including Twitter, I nevertheless am seeing the writing on the wall for that kind of control. There are just too many ways to communicate, mobile devices (as you suggest) being the most obvious. A couple of years ago, phones with cameras were banned on campus. Guess how that worked out. Taking pictures is still verbotten, but everyone has a camera. We're expected not to take pictures of things we shouldn't be taking pictures of (like Kinetic Kill Vehicles on display in our Leadership & Learning Center).

Which points back to one of those interesting and subtle things I think you're referring to. Trust. In order for E2.0 capabilities to truly flatten the hierarchy somewhat (again, at least with respect to inter-company communication and knowledge sharing), employees will necessarily be granted a higher level of trust than is normally the case. We just saw this happen when the President of our company announced he was ceasing to use the moderated blog he and his Executive staff had been using for about two years, and moving the conversation to a more social (and unmoderated) "site" which more closely resembled what I think of as a blog.

Anyway, I am deeply grateful for both your and Professor McAfee's perspectives on E2.0, as well as both of your highly informative tweets. I have learned much and, by good fortune, have been able to transfer some of your knowledge to my company. All goodness!! Danke.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Tony Brice — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:03:51 -0000

But Dennis Howlett is, by his own admission, a curmudgeon. I know many curmudgeons and they are ALL wrong about forward looking things ALWAYS. Pay no attention. Too many companies are already getting tremendous benefits, including significant cost savings, from E2.0.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

erikj999 — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:59:13 -0000

As an architect for an enterprise software vendor, I’m a big E2.0 fan and yet sympathize with Dennis’ argument (but not the arguing). Some constituents of E2.0 are clearly finding value today, which I’m excited about. But there are people who tend to get preachy about the urgency of E2.0, protective of how E2.0 is defined, critical of questioners, and (perhaps understandably) suspicious of software vendors. That noise doesn’t bother me.

Social networking and other E2.0 features are relatively easy to buy or build, meaning the perception that enterprise applications vendors are too Jurassic to understand E2.0 is simply false. Also, it’s been pointed out (NYT: http://bit.ly/1GG0AG) that social networking grew fastest among people squarely in the decision-maker age range, which should dispel notions that the generation gap is a barrier to adopting E2.0 (although maybe a barrier to blind adoption).

I see 3 things which impede corporate E2.0 adoption. First, social features have to incorporate governance constraints surrounding data retention, privacy, and security. Traditional role & function security mechanisms conflict with the free-form, opt-in, and self-service spirit of E2.0. Meshing E2.0 with existing access management is expensive and lacking best practices. Second, E2.0 hasn’t yet sufficiently differentiated itself from already widespread Web 2.0 and collaboration tools. Finally, enterprise applications (and their information models) need to be useful and fully-functional social networking participants. That goal is still pretty much unfulfilled, but nicely describes a good part of my day job.

Nevertheless, enterprises and app builders alike are actively tossing E2.0 features into their efforts backlog along with other to-dos. But like many other useful technology initiatives, enterprises won’t push ahead unless they are good and ready. There is no need to make apologies for putting other priorities ahead of E2.0. Of all the possible drivers for implementing E2.0 or not, the one I don’t worry about is ignorance.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

dmreinke — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:10:13 -0000

Maybe I'm over-simplifying, but I don't think E2.0 needs a "model" or a particular culture to take root in organizations - at least the way Andrew describes it. Rather, I think the E2.0 takes root in organizations that are performance based when it offers a superior solution to a business problem. It's worth noting that in my own business (a crowd-sourcing fashion demand forecasting company) I have never once internally or externally used the term E2.0. In regards to culture, we're consistently adapting our solution to work inside our client's existing culture vs changing a culture - let's give this thing a chance!

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

dmreinke — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:59:07 -0000

Joe,

Great comment. I think you are right on. I started a 2.0 company by accident - I wasn't focused on revolution. I was focused on a particular business problem in a particular industry and stumbled upon the social web as a sensible part of the solution.

I think there is a valid concern if more practitioners don't start leveraging 2.0 and creating real ROI stories, the "drum-beaters" may turn business leaders temporarily against e20 as another management fad.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Anne Marie McEwan — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:22:19 -0000

What problem does E2.0 solve? For one thing, the technologies can be used to shrink social distances in workplaces globally distributed across eco-systems (suppliers, alliances, partnerships, fragmented business units etc), and taking the opportunity to change attitudes and working practices from silo mentality to collaborative. See http://chucksblog.emc.com/c... for a great case study.

In this era post-GM collapse and living through the aftermath of the global financial crisis, what other questions can we be asking? Solving problems are of course crucial but we do now have the opportunity to take stock of how things are done.

For me, the focus of E2.0 is not primarily the technologies. It is the underlying business processes. I have been saying that the process-based forms of organising, typified by TQM, JIT, Lean, Concurrent Engineering and others, represent the first wave of smart working. Process integration, continuous improvement and problem-solving are all essential component of these process innovation and control methods, and they tap into the tacit knowledge of previously ignored shopfloor operators. These methods are nothing without the willing contribution of these people. Power to the people? I'll say.

I see E2.0 as a label for the potential to reformulate business processes and business models into loosely connected, decentralised, peer to peer approaches to production within value networks that create economic and social value (Aspen Institute report, The Rise of Collective Intelligence, 2007 http://bit.ly/2Lzk6O).

Building on what we know from the the pioneering process‐based models of organising, social technologies in combination with reformed value networks and business models now create enormous potential for enabling a second wave of process and socially-based smart working. Continuous improvement (CI) in the first wave is now Collective Intelligence in the second (CI 2.0 if you like).

My views have been formulated through my doctoral research 15 years ago and subsequent recent monitoring of global workplace trends, I recently found Dennison, though, saying similar things in his prescient analysis of process-based forms of organising back in 1997:

http://www.denisonconsultin...

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

JoeSchueller — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:00:27 -0000

I'm so glad you shared this. In my situation, I find the "fundamentalists" on either side of this argument so difficult to work with. Like anything in life, the truth lies in the middle. Emerging, egalitarian, networked solutions do not make 170 years worth of brand building and innovation processes and cause them all to be wrong. The key to this is trying to help people abstract information distribution (efficient in the 2.0 models) from decision accountability (what hierarchies can be good at).

This is why I've never pushed my solution on anyone. We haven't had a "roll-out," we've stayed in "beta," we don't advertise, we're just there. We're not "deploying" this. We'll certainly advise and evangelize where it makes sense, but we won't push it on anyone. If you do, you incite all the arguments that end up in people concluding this is a "crock."

Much like you've done here, we've had great success when we stop talking about tools and start talking about work processes that could benefit from broader, more transparent, more robust interaction. Inevitably, the discussion becomes less about what's wrong with the tool or who's being disintermediated, and more about how much faster and better we'll be able to work.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Susan Scrupski — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:47:59 -0000

Hey. Just did a phenomenal interview with a large, well-known, Wall Street investment bank. Ironically (Den), it was the audit and compliance global organization that drove an e20 solution to answer an age-old problem: high inefficiencies and underutilization. It's an impressive global rollout that incorporates 5 financial center locations with the firm's subject matter experts in product, trading desk, regulatory, and banking. The initiative has yielded a "huge leap forward" due to the transparency and visibility the firm has as a result of breaking down the fiefdom walls that impeded the firm's progress in years past. Greatest challenge? The people issues. It forces employees to communicate more. Additionally, the new processes expose the weak links in the firm and threaten job security/relevance. Greatest benefit? The initiative answers to the Board of Directors and provides predictable, reliable reporting that mitigates risk and ensures regulatory compliance.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Fred Johanson — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:46:45 -0000

Enterprise 2.0 is certainly a crock from at least one key aspect. The term "Enterprise 2.0" implies equivalency with Web 2.0 tools, which is far from the case. In fact, I struggle to think of a single Enterprise 2.0 tool which is equivalent to a Web 2.0 counterpart. If you were a hot shot programmer, would you rather work on the next feature for Twitter or the next iteration of SharePoint?

A few examples from my company's 3+ year Enteprise 2.0 experience:

My company may use MediaWiki software, but it's vastly inferior to the Wikipedia implementation. Our IT department certainly isn't capable of keeping pace with the regular MediaWiki releases. You want a MediaWiki extension approved for your office wiki? Don't forget your TPS cover with that request.

A user that wants to use the non-sanctioned browser on the intranet? Forget it. We only do IE7 in these parts. So, yeah, you can forget those Laconica Firefox addons.

It would be great if could upgrade to the latest blogging software. We use open source, but there are non-trivial costs involved with testing and security accreditation. So maybe we can squeeze some money into the budget next year to do it?

Oh, yeah, and then there is that whole issue about blogging metrics. I need to somehow prove the blogs are generating value for the company, so that I can get that budget to upgrade the software. 1,000 people from across the company read 5 blogs on average per day, which means I should be able to get $K for a simple software upgrade. Three years later and those meetings are less-and-less fun. "Don't come back until you can prove a blog resulted in 100 additional sales!"

We also suffer from Enterprise 2.0 Shiny Ball Syndrome. We got the wiki up. That box is checked. Next! Hello, blogging. No one ever got promoted for making a wiki server a little more reliable or the tagging software a little faster. But hello enterprise microblogging! I am thinking maybe a nice holiday bonus with this one.

Web 2.0 tools have become so vastly superior to their (ahem) Enterprise 2.0 equivalents that I seriously doubt widespread Enterprise 2.0 adoption will ever be achieved. No enterprise(s) will ever be able to keep pace with the unrelenting innovation taking place on the Internet.

Our company lead users that should be building our mythical Enterprise 2.0 are in Parallel Kingdoms on their iPhones between Twitter sessions. I will put them up against your ESSP prediction market dream team any day.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

Dave Kinkead — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:48:26 -0000

The benefits of E2.0 will obviously impact organisations of varying degrees. While E2.0 wont be the best choice to solve every problem listed above, your first point - bring new hires up to speed - is one that all organisations can benefit from.

Case in point, when taking over a new company last year that had a strong isolationist culture of 'knowledge is power', I launched an internal wiki to document policy and processes and made department heads accountable for ensuring content was loaded. This single action was in a large part responsible for a 50% reduction in the time required for new hire training and orientation which translated into an approx $10000 per head cost reduction.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss

dhinchcliffe — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:16:30 -0000

Hi Andrew,

I also responded to Dennis at length myself on ZDNet this afternoon:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinc...

Thanks for shedding light on the topic, though I think Dennis throws up skepticism about things just to get conversation going. I do think it's smart at this point to touch on leading misconceptions, such as the overthrow of hierarchy (I think something more interesting and subtle is going to happen instead) as well as your excellent examples of use cases.

I would only quibble with your comment that enterprises can shut down Enterprise 2.0 at will. The advent of mobile devices has ensured that this will not happen in all but the most locked-down environments (i.e. secure government facilities). I think almost all organizations have to face social computing one way or the other and the longer they wait, the more work they might have to do. Though again, I'm encouraged by how non-disruptive adoption has been so far with the relatively fast inroads (both via grassroots efforts and formal initiatives) E2.0 has made, at least in terms of how accessible the tools are in the last year.