By now we’ve all seen, heard, used, abused, heard abused this thing called Web2.0 pronounced web two-point-oh, in case you were wondering. (this might become the single most important piece of advice in this column, but I’ll press on regardless).

For the uninitiated, if you currently use the internet, you probably use Web2.0. It’s the name given for the current evolutionary state of the internet – the delineation between Web1.0 and Web2.0 is very fuzzy as to be non existent. However a few years ago, some very smart people realized that the core way in which we engage with the internet had changed. We had, over the short span of a couple of years, started to be “contributors” not just “consumers” of internet resources. There was no eureka moment, more of a behavioural shift towards participating, collaborating and generating personal content that coincided with some very useful technologies to facilitate new ways of computing.

Take Wikipedia for example. Here we have a single database of knowledge, multiple thousands of contributors and self-censorship in action. Leveraging the network effect, Wikipedia now far exceeds Encyclopedia Brittanica in volume and is considered by some on-par in terms of accuracy.

A common misconception about Web2.0 is that it is only appropriate for the net-generation and only appropriate for consumer type applications and for people with an abundance of spare time on their hands. There is, however, a growing movement that foresees that Web2.0 technologies and philosophies will become the new standard for the ways in which organisations interact with themselves, each other and their clients. This is referred to as Enterprise2.0.

Enterprise 2.0

So, imagine a global enterprise, separated into divisions based on product or region, each with an R&D, marketing etc function. Traditionally in this organisation, the management of information is handled centrally via a tightly controlled intranet that publishes sanitized versions of divisional performance and regional achievements. At best, useful information is stored within a knowledge base, and usually fragmented into user stovepipes.

Knowledge Management The generation, management and leveraging of information is the primary source of competitive advantage in today’s global and service oriented environment. So, put yourself in the role of a Project Manager in Chile faced with the issue of dealing with ore tailings in soft clay-loam. He searches the enterprise knowledge base but finds nothing, makes a few calls without success and resigns himself to the fact that he’ll have to solve the issue himself. Unbeknownst to him, four other Projects Managers in Australia have also faced the same issue but because they were geographically grouped were able to solve it together. An enterprise wiki – even one that was targeted specifically at the PMs would have enabled all interested parties access to create, edit, manage, access and leverage this information, improving productivity, reducing cost and reducing time to market.

Collaboration These same project managers are always looking for an edge over their competitors and spend some time researching best practices. As they come across relevant web-sites they “tag” them to their enterprise-bookmarking system. Using bookmarking the researchers can instantly see who else across the organisation shares common interests, opening the way to greater collaboration.

Keeping in the Loop, or Out of it!  Accessing the enterprise portal, our Chilean PM only sees the news and events that he has subscribed to. He can also add his own feeds from industry and personal blogs, data-set updates and news sites. This additional control over the information reduces the total “noise”, including excessive use of email, reaching his desk and increases productivity.

There are many more examples that could be drawn from implementing Web2.0 within the enterprise (e.g. Enterprise2.0)…. However, it is not without it’s challenges.

Challenges for Enterprise2.0

Reluctance Employees may be reluctant to use the new technologies, despite training and prodding. Most people who use the Internet today aren’t bloggers, wikipedians or taggers (less than 1% of wikipedia users are actually contributors)

Lack of Control In an era where corporate messages are tightly & centrally controlled and managed, any organisation looking to implement Enterprise2.0 must be sure that the senior management is prepared to “lose” the hard fought and won taxonomy (e.g. We call our customers “clients”) and be prepared for it to be replaced with a folksonomy, Likewise, devolvement of control of the internal message could lead to legal issues, such as impinging on intellectual property rights, distribution rights and the like and need to be addressed through training and policy enforcement. The self-correcting philosophy would mitigate this risk somewhat.

Shifts in Power Web2.0 is about the masses, the constituency. In an organisation it would be expected that these technologies cut across silos and free up information. It may, however, create different silos and powerbases – those focused around willingness to engage with and embrace this new way of thinking.

Network Effect The key to getting this all to work is to establish a critical mass of contributors. Organisations need to understand what a critical mass would look like, recruit users and start an informal rollout that draws people to the tools because there is something of interest already there.

Implementation

As this philosophy relies on intrinsic motivation (e.g. doing good, collaboration etc) any implementation of Enterprise2.0 is doomed to fail when the organisation mandates it or KPIs on usage or contribution are based on it. Some keys to successful implementation are:

  • Receptive Culture is required to cultivate new collaboration practices.
  • Common Platform. one large wiki instead of many unconnected ones. 
  • An Informal Rollout. Let people to come to these tools because there is something of interest already there, not because they were told to.
  • Don’t Force it. Forced use will result in loss of innovation.
  • Reward innovation

A Web2.0 Inventory

  • wiki web sites that enable users to add and edit content collectively
  • blog are chronologically organized online journals
  • rss used to gather updated content such as blogs, news and present updates in a list
  • tagging collaboratively creating and managing tags to classify and categorise content
  • social networking support the creation and use of online personal networks
  • rich internet applications all the workings of traditional applications but on the web
  • folksonomy the set of classifications and categories as determined from tagging
  • mashup a web site combining multiple sources of data and functionality