The only recent research I’ve seen comparing Enterprise 2.0 adoption by region is the July 2008 McKinsey survey, which breaks down which Web 2.0 tools are most important to companies in particular regions as well as overall level of satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools by region. The “regions” are pretty broad (Europe vs. North America vs. Asia-Pacific, etc.), but the results are interesting.
According to the survey results, blogs are most important to companies in Asia-Pacific (48%) and India (46%), though companies in North America (37%) and China (35%) consider them more important than companies in Europe do (21%). India is where companies think wikis are most important (37%), whereas North America is where social networking is most important (35%). China leads in terms of the importance of peer-to-peer (22%).
In terms of satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools, Asia-Pacific leads the back by an astounding amount (40% of respondents reported highest satisfaction, and only 8% reported lowest satisfaction). The lowest level of satisfaction appears to be in Latin America.
Although some countries/regions are obviously further along than others, variation seems to be less about overall maturity and more about the Web 2.0 tools on which companies in a particular area are focusing. I would imagine that the specific tools being emphasized (for example, Web services and blogs in Asia-Pacific) have a significant impact on the satisfaction rates.
The president of APQC (where I work) blogged extensively about the survey results—including the regional breakdowns—on our knowledge management blog: www.kmedge.org/2008/08/around-the-world-with-we...
Duane
· 1 year ago
Having worked for foreign owned corporations I can tell from first had knowledge that there are differences between corporate cultures. The West and especially the United States stands unique in the world in its celebration of personal liberty and rouged individualism. These national convictions that, “anybody can grow up to be President” and “let every voice be heard” or “let every vote be counted” are at this countries core. It is my experience that especially in Asian cultures, gaining harmony is critical and it is not encouraged to challenge authority or those above you. Perhaps that leads to a slowing in adoption of Enterprise 2.0 principals where all voices are equal and the debate is just as important as decision.
Lauren Trees
· 1 year ago
The only recent research I’ve seen comparing Enterprise 2.0 adoption by region is the July 2008 McKinsey survey, which breaks down which Web 2.0 tools are most important to companies in particular regions as well as overall level of satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools by region. The “regions” are pretty broad (Europe vs. North America vs. Asia-Pacific, etc.), but the results are interesting.
According to the survey results, blogs are most important to companies in Asia-Pacific (48%) and India (46%), though companies in North America (37%) and China (35%) consider them more important than companies in Europe do (21%). India is where companies think wikis are most important (37%), whereas North America is where social networking is most important (35%). China leads in terms of the importance of peer-to-peer (22%).
In terms of satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools, Asia-Pacific leads the back by an astounding amount (40% of respondents reported highest satisfaction, and only 8% reported lowest satisfaction). The lowest level of satisfaction appears to be in Latin America.
Although some countries/regions are obviously further along than others, variation seems to be less about overall maturity and more about the Web 2.0 tools on which companies in a particular area are focusing. I would imagine that the specific tools being emphasized (for example, Web services and blogs in Asia-Pacific) have a significant impact on the satisfaction rates.
The president of APQC (where I work) wrote extensively about the survey results—including the regional breakdowns—on our knowledge management blog: www.kmedge.org/2008/08/around-the-world-with-we...
Paul Morriss
· 1 year ago
I haven't got any research to back what I'm saying, however I would have thought that differences in culture between countries is pretty much accepted. My hypothesis is then that corporate culture in a given country follows from that country's culture.
Another factor that you don't mention surely must be language. Apart from Google, not many companies work on localisation. So people are going to be using tools that aren't in their mother tongue. (However the fluency of English amongst Europeans puts the British to shame, as the fluency of the British in French or German is way behind compared to the converse.)
I've heard it said (again no research I'm afraid) that the culture in the UK is more nearer European than the US. However I would say our use of Facebook etc. is on a par. If I'm right then it could be the language factor, rather than the culture factor.
I think as time goes by one couldn't say that one country lags behind another, but that the use of the tools (and even the shape of the tools) differs.
Barthox
· 1 year ago
One of the reason that comes to my mind would be a somewhat weaker entrepreunarial spirit in Europe as in the US ....
And this on two levels:
- US corporations are more prone to adopt such new technologies, while EU companies will wait and see what's this all about ...
- people being less afraid of starting a company in the US than in Europe, E2.0 consultants will appear more quickly. They will then start to evangelize the companies from point one and bring them to adopt and spread the usage of E2.0 tools ...
A trend that would seem to confirm this is that E2.0 is making his way in France, Italy and Germany (from what I can tell), which are much more entrepreunarial countries than Belgium, where E2.0 is close to non existant ...
I'd be curious to see what other Europeans will say about this ...
Suzanne
· 1 year ago
Andy,
I don't have data available but recently came across an article in Der Spiegel (Germany's equivalent of Time Magazine) which describes a similar lag in the general German blogosphere. As of August 2008 there are no more than ~200,000 active blogs in Germany. The total number of German blogs is estimated somewhere around 500,000. The German language version of wikipedia though is the second biggest in number of articles after the English version, so lack of comfort with Web 2.0 tools doesn't seem to be the problem.
Der Spiegel attributes the weakness of the German blogosphere partially to cultural factors: Germans don't like confrontation, don't necessarily like to debate. Based on anecdotal evidence (and Geert Hofstede) I would say the 'cultural differences' explanation is a valid one. The concept of authoring, for example, is likely to carry very different levels of appeal for a German and an American. What I am most interested in is: IF there really are significant cultural differences that result in different adoption speeds and levels, how do you make it work? Do you change the incentives? Do you modify the tools?
Scoble and Israel seem to blame it on national cultures, though I'm not a huge proponent on relying on "culture" as a definitive factor. Oddly enough, my education in international relations makes me look for something more rational rather than culture as the most important causal variable. Unfortunately, I don't have a great answer for you. I just thought I'd throw in this thought.
as Polytechnic of Milano, Italy we've been active for several years with research projects on the strategic impact of ICT on businesses. Last year we conducted a one-year research project, the "Enterprise 2.0 Observatory", to analyze the deep organisational changes resulting from the application of Web 2.0 tools and its philosophy within organisations. We also investigated the emerging IT governance models to manage the ever increasing needs of flexible architectures (i.e., SOA or BPM).
Following your question, I'd like to share with you some of the insights of the research, which is based on a 70 case studies, a survey to 65 CIOs from the top italian companies and a community discussion with experts.
Enterprise 2.0 in Italy is still not widespread, but an increasing number of italian companies are actually aware of the phenomenon and, most importantly, are experimenting and implementing Web 2.0 technologies with the enterprise (ca. 20% for blogs and wikis). In the next couple of year, this number is expected to double. There is, however, a major knowledge gap (i.e., "do not know") ranging from 7% for blogs to 40% for social networks or folksonomies.
The main barriers are by and large cultural ones: little or no understanding of the potential (51%), difficulty in finding a ROI (48%) and need for organizational changes (37%). For instance, technological barriers or even investment levels are less than 10%.
Finally, not all business function are actively involved: most of the action is happening within IT (63%), Marketing (45%) and HR (28%).
MOin
· 1 year ago
when we now talk about Web 2.0 and marketing everything is embedding with ads and people are selling spaces like i came across a new service introduced by twitad with this online service you can put ads in your twitter account and monetize it. now if we take a look and think why twitter was made for its pathetic, twitter is meant to be a status updater.
Leave twitter take Digg, worst and worst of all business is ruining the meaning of social bookmarking websites. if i tell you, to appear in digg's front page you can pay me 200$ and i'll get you a lot of diggs even if you have a crap post. yeah this business is on the way some people named "socialelves" are doing this openely.
All these big mama websites are more like a market place now webmasters are taking huge benefit out of this and this is good but what about a normal user?
Sören Stamer
· 1 year ago
As a German Entrepreneur working with clients in Europe, Amercias and Asia, I share your perception that cultural differences very much influence the adoption rate and the speed of change. Compared with the people in the U.S. and especially in the Silicon Valley Germans tend to ask for more safety before they embrace change. My perception is that failure is still more stigmatized on this side of the pond.
However, my personal perception is that things have changed a lot already within the past few years. The perceived time lag between Silicon Valley and Germany has been dramatically reduced. I guess we are talking about 10-15 month instead of 3-5 years. But since the speed of change has increased as well, the differences are still significant.
The mindset of the people has started to change as well. New trends spill over to Germany through Twitter and Facebook in an instant. And with an increasingly dense network the trends make their way from bloggers and geeks to CEOs and CFOs of big companies much faster than in the past.
Quite a few large and medium sized German companies asked me to present our Enterprise 2.0 experiences on their strategy meetings and corporate seminars within the past few month. They seem to be willing to embrace the technology and start to change their paradigm. Needless to say that there are still huge cultural challenges to reduce control and practice the art of letting go.
I wonder if we will see something like a synchronization of corporate cultures as a result of a a highly networked world.
Alice
· 1 year ago
I wish i would have been there at the event. Web 2.0 social communities are the way in building up a stable business. I think that America is running in front of the world in this particulair case. In The Netherlands they imitate solutions from the US, and they work, believe me.
Regards,
Alice
PaulSweeney
· 1 year ago
In Ireland, I think there is a feeling of "2.0 isn't for real companies". Full stop. It is also not very "smart" to be trying to build a 2.0 company. The old school software lessons were learned pretty hard in Ireland during 2000-2004 and everyone is wary of any hint of hype. The more plain vanilla E2.0 seems, the more likely it will be to get adopted. IMHO.
Chris
· 1 year ago
As fast as the internet and it's applications move it's really interesting to hear these tidbits about the European companies. It seems odd considering the attendees obviously understand the implementation and use of these applications. It could very well be a simple cultural difference. We don't have Japanese style toilets (at least not that I've witnessed) in the U.S. and probably never will.
Atul Rai
· 1 year ago
Hi Andrew,
I do think there is some kind of cultural influence here. For example, in India, there are differences in terms of the way people approach things, from those in the US. This does impact, to whatever extent, the way people look at the whole idea of collaboration. For example, there are organizations where collaboration is seen as a waste of time, and people who do, are considered to be not working.
Thanks, Atul.
Bart Schutte
· 1 year ago
Andrew,
There are definately cultural differences that help explain the Web 2.0 take-up. Before giving my two cents, I encourage you to contact Professor Erin Meyer at INSEAD here in France (she's American, a specialist in cultural differences and how they impact the enterprise and workplace. http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/faculty/p...
Erin Spoke at our global IT conference last April and was fascinating. The differences are real and its important for global business people to understand them to be effective.
Now my perspective. Let's take France. Why is it slower than the USA? French enterprises tend to be much more hierarchical, top-down, command & control than american global firms. The idea of letting the internal social network rise-up is very scary to them. This is the first thought they have when presented with Web 2.0, and all of the IT journals over here focus on that issue (risk, security) rather than the potential.
In addition, the French to tend to want to analyse everything before they start so that they are sure of the outcome, the planning, etc. Americans (of which I am one) tend to be more gut-feel : this feels right, let's try it out.
So if there are cultural differneces, then we need to take them into account when trying to introduce these concepts in our enterprises. Fortunately, because we are global, I can seed lots of pilots around the world and see where it takes-off the best.
Christophe Toulemonde
· 1 year ago
Andy, Here are my 2 Euro cents comments I have done some work recently on Web 2.0 and social networks in France and conducted a survey** on that subject in the French companies Apart from technologies coming out of the US (although we have also our champions (Netvibes, Dailymotion :-) ), I can point some differences: -> Cultural: The "club" culture is more developed in the US than in Europe*. Lions Club, Rotary, University Alumni, Sport clubs belong to the American culture and are an important way to socialize. In Europe, people are much more individualists. -> Organizational: Lots of European* companies have still a hierarchical organization model where initiatives have to be accepted/controlled/scrutinized/Â… by management. In France, we still have the work status of Cadre and Noncadre, an employeesÂ’ classification based on responsibilities, autonomy, execution, Â… -> Business: We donÂ’t value the failures as you do. European* Business will invest in a new model if they are sure to gain some advantages. A complete business plan with explicit ROI must be done before starting the initiative. Enterprise 2.0 seeds need to be sown and they will perhaps blossom if employees, partners, customers adopt them. It a kind of bet businesses have to do. Not really part of our culture.
The U.S. and European aerospace and defense manufacturing industries may require high power computing networks, but the relatively low-tech agricultural and service industries that dominate the economies of poor nations will benefit from more affordable ICT investments.
Abdulrehman
· 11 months ago
I firmly believe that there is a very optimistic approach in investment in Web technology, keep aside ebay and google, etc. more about the social networks. Poor algorithms and on-site administrators, have empowered a some minority of users called power-users on almost every social network like digg, SU and mixx. Digg already has been accumulating more than 65% loss since 6 previous quarters, what do you expect?
All Comments
According to the survey results, blogs are most important to companies in Asia-Pacific (48%) and India (46%), though companies in North America (37%) and China (35%) consider them more important than companies in Europe do (21%). India is where companies think wikis are most important (37%), whereas North America is where social networking is most important (35%). China leads in terms of the importance of peer-to-peer (22%).
In terms of satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools, Asia-Pacific leads the back by an astounding amount (40% of respondents reported highest satisfaction, and only 8% reported lowest satisfaction). The lowest level of satisfaction appears to be in Latin America.
Although some countries/regions are obviously further along than others, variation seems to be less about overall maturity and more about the Web 2.0 tools on which companies in a particular area are focusing. I would imagine that the specific tools being emphasized (for example, Web services and blogs in Asia-Pacific) have a significant impact on the satisfaction rates.
The full survey results can be accessed at:
www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Information_Technolog...
You do have to complete a free registration.
The president of APQC (where I work) blogged extensively about the survey results—including the regional breakdowns—on our knowledge management blog: www.kmedge.org/2008/08/around-the-world-with-we...
It is my experience that especially in Asian cultures, gaining harmony is critical and it is not encouraged to challenge authority or those above you. Perhaps that leads to a slowing in adoption of Enterprise 2.0 principals where all voices are equal and the debate is just as important as decision.
According to the survey results, blogs are most important to companies in Asia-Pacific (48%) and India (46%), though companies in North America (37%) and China (35%) consider them more important than companies in Europe do (21%). India is where companies think wikis are most important (37%), whereas North America is where social networking is most important (35%). China leads in terms of the importance of peer-to-peer (22%).
In terms of satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools, Asia-Pacific leads the back by an astounding amount (40% of respondents reported highest satisfaction, and only 8% reported lowest satisfaction). The lowest level of satisfaction appears to be in Latin America.
Although some countries/regions are obviously further along than others, variation seems to be less about overall maturity and more about the Web 2.0 tools on which companies in a particular area are focusing. I would imagine that the specific tools being emphasized (for example, Web services and blogs in Asia-Pacific) have a significant impact on the satisfaction rates.
The full survey results can be accessed at:
www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Information_Technolog...
You do have to complete a free registration.
The president of APQC (where I work) wrote extensively about the survey results—including the regional breakdowns—on our knowledge management blog: www.kmedge.org/2008/08/around-the-world-with-we...
Another factor that you don't mention surely must be language. Apart from Google, not many companies work on localisation. So people are going to be using tools that aren't in their mother tongue. (However the fluency of English amongst Europeans puts the British to shame, as the fluency of the British in French or German is way behind compared to the converse.)
I've heard it said (again no research I'm afraid) that the culture in the UK is more nearer European than the US. However I would say our use of Facebook etc. is on a par. If I'm right then it could be the language factor, rather than the culture factor.
I think as time goes by one couldn't say that one country lags behind another, but that the use of the tools (and even the shape of the tools) differs.
And this on two levels:
- US corporations are more prone to adopt such new technologies, while EU companies will wait and see what's this all about ...
- people being less afraid of starting a company in the US than in Europe, E2.0 consultants will appear more quickly. They will then start to evangelize the companies from point one and bring them to adopt and spread the usage of E2.0 tools ...
A trend that would seem to confirm this is that E2.0 is making his way in France, Italy and Germany (from what I can tell), which are much more entrepreunarial countries than Belgium, where E2.0 is close to non existant ...
I'd be curious to see what other Europeans will say about this ...
I don't have data available but recently came across an article in Der Spiegel (Germany's equivalent of Time Magazine) which describes a similar lag in the general German blogosphere. As of August 2008 there are no more than ~200,000 active blogs in Germany. The total number of German blogs is estimated somewhere around 500,000. The German language version of wikipedia though is the second biggest in number of articles after the English version, so lack of comfort with Web 2.0 tools doesn't seem to be the problem.
Der Spiegel attributes the weakness of the German blogosphere partially to cultural factors: Germans don't like confrontation, don't necessarily like to debate. Based on anecdotal evidence (and Geert Hofstede) I would say the 'cultural differences' explanation is a valid one. The concept of authoring, for example, is likely to carry very different levels of appeal for a German and an American. What I am most interested in is: IF there really are significant cultural differences that result in different adoption speeds and levels, how do you make it work? Do you change the incentives? Do you modify the tools?
The full Spiegel article in German is available at http://tinyurl.com/64qzpz.
Additionally, I thought you may find this interesting as well: http://www.crn.com.au/News/84309,business-users...
Seems Australian businesses may be lagging as well.
I commented on this already after your tweet on my blog: http://discovering-the-starfish.de/2008/09/07/l...
as Polytechnic of Milano, Italy we've been active for several years with research projects on the strategic impact of ICT on businesses. Last year we conducted a one-year research project, the "Enterprise 2.0 Observatory", to analyze the deep organisational changes resulting from the application of Web 2.0 tools and its philosophy within organisations. We also investigated the emerging IT governance models to manage the ever increasing needs of flexible architectures (i.e., SOA or BPM).
Following your question, I'd like to share with you some of the insights of the research, which is based on a 70 case studies, a survey to 65 CIOs from the top italian companies and a community discussion with experts.
Enterprise 2.0 in Italy is still not widespread, but an increasing number of italian companies are actually aware of the phenomenon and, most importantly, are experimenting and implementing Web 2.0 technologies with the enterprise (ca. 20% for blogs and wikis). In the next couple of year, this number is expected to double. There is, however, a major knowledge gap (i.e., "do not know") ranging from 7% for blogs to 40% for social networks or folksonomies.
The main barriers are by and large cultural ones: little or no understanding of the potential (51%), difficulty in finding a ROI (48%) and need for organizational changes (37%). For instance, technological barriers or even investment levels are less than 10%.
Finally, not all business function are actively involved: most of the action is happening within IT (63%), Marketing (45%) and HR (28%).
Leave twitter take Digg, worst and worst of all business is ruining the meaning of social bookmarking websites. if i tell you, to appear in digg's front page you can pay me 200$ and i'll get you a lot of diggs even if you have a crap post. yeah this business is on the way some people named "socialelves" are doing this openely.
All these big mama websites are more like a market place now webmasters are taking huge benefit out of this and this is good but what about a normal user?
Hence, the use of web 2.0 tools within Enterprises lagged significantly behind as a study by CoreMedia and Berlecon (http://www.coremedia.com/en/124534/enterprise-2...) showed. The results are published in "Enterprise 2.0 - Die Kunst loszulassen" www.diekunstloszulassen.de as well.
However, my personal perception is that things have changed a lot already within the past few years. The perceived time lag between Silicon Valley and Germany has been dramatically reduced. I guess we are talking about 10-15 month instead of 3-5 years. But since the speed of change has increased as well, the differences are still significant.
The mindset of the people has started to change as well. New trends spill over to Germany through Twitter and Facebook in an instant. And with an increasingly dense network the trends make their way from bloggers and geeks to CEOs and CFOs of big companies much faster than in the past.
Quite a few large and medium sized German companies asked me to present our Enterprise 2.0 experiences on their strategy meetings and corporate seminars within the past few month. They seem to be willing to embrace the technology and start to change their paradigm. Needless to say that there are still huge cultural challenges to reduce control and practice the art of letting go.
I wonder if we will see something like a synchronization of corporate cultures as a result of a a highly networked world.
Regards,
Alice
I do think there is some kind of cultural influence here. For example, in India, there are differences in terms of the way people approach things, from those in the US. This does impact, to whatever extent, the way people look at the whole idea of collaboration. For example, there are organizations where collaboration is seen as a waste of time, and people who do, are considered to be not working.
Thanks, Atul.
There are definately cultural differences that help explain the Web 2.0 take-up. Before giving my two cents, I encourage you to contact Professor Erin Meyer at INSEAD here in France (she's American, a specialist in cultural differences and how they impact the enterprise and workplace. http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/faculty/p...
Erin Spoke at our global IT conference last April and was fascinating. The differences are real and its important for global business people to understand them to be effective.
Now my perspective. Let's take France. Why is it slower than the USA? French enterprises tend to be much more hierarchical, top-down, command & control than american global firms. The idea of letting the internal social network rise-up is very scary to them. This is the first thought they have when presented with Web 2.0, and all of the IT journals over here focus on that issue (risk, security) rather than the potential.
In addition, the French to tend to want to analyse everything before they start so that they are sure of the outcome, the planning, etc. Americans (of which I am one) tend to be more gut-feel : this feels right, let's try it out.
So if there are cultural differneces, then we need to take them into account when trying to introduce these concepts in our enterprises. Fortunately, because we are global, I can seed lots of pilots around the world and see where it takes-off the best.
Here are my 2 Euro cents comments
I have done some work recently on Web 2.0 and social networks in France and conducted a survey** on that subject in the French companies
Apart from technologies coming out of the US (although we have also our champions (Netvibes, Dailymotion :-) ), I can point some differences:
-> Cultural: The "club" culture is more developed in the US than in Europe*. Lions Club, Rotary, University Alumni, Sport clubs belong to the American culture and are an important way to socialize. In Europe, people are much more individualists.
-> Organizational: Lots of European* companies have still a hierarchical organization model where initiatives have to be accepted/controlled/scrutinized/Â… by management. In France, we still have the work status of Cadre and Noncadre, an employeesÂ’ classification based on responsibilities, autonomy, execution, Â…
-> Business: We donÂ’t value the failures as you do. European* Business will invest in a new model if they are sure to gain some advantages. A complete business plan with explicit ROI must be done before starting the initiative. Enterprise 2.0 seeds need to be sown and they will perhaps blossom if employees, partners, customers adopt them. It a kind of bet businesses have to do. Not really part of our culture.
(* understand : France for sure, Latin countries (Spain, Italy,...) certainly, others European countries probably)
(** (see http://www.jemmresearch.com/us2/entreprise20.html))