Richard Filing

I subscribe to Fast Forward’s RSS feed and here’s another good reason why - it originates from a NY Times article - If the US State Department Can Use Wikis and Blogs Effectively, So Can Your Organization ?
Excerpt: I came across a recent NY Times article about the growing use of wikis and blogs within the US State Department, an organization that clearly has interest in controlling its messages AND in understanding better how to use information, knowledge and brainpower to be effective. Read in full here

Great story in INC Mag’s March issue about Blogger.com and Twitter founder Evan Williams
Excerpt: Eventually, Williams sends me an apologetic text message–we resolve to push back the meeting slightly–and then he does something else: He uses Twitter to send a text message to, oh, a few thousand people: “Late for my first meeting of the year and in need of a shave.”
Read the entire story here

Excerpt: … But the pain is not just a MySpace problem. It seems to be an industry-wide issue. The total audience of U.S. social networks seems to be stuck at a low-to-mid-single digit growth rate, while the engagment metrics are falling for just about everyone. Time spent on Bebo.com has been sliced in half over the last four months, while Friendster’s time spent has plummeted nearly 75% in the same time period. Overall, minutes spent per site fell 5% in December 2007 compared to the year-ago period. Read full article here

Looks like a plan …
1. Make governance an enabler. The reason why most large organizations are slow to adopt Enterprise 2.0 tools is that senior executives are uncertain about the implications, and as a result cautious or worse. Governance needs to be in place to allay those fears, without stifling the emergent, participative nature of how the new tools create value for organizations.

2. Start from business applications, not tools. Far too often people want to implement blogs, wikis, tagging, or other tools. This is completely the wrong way around. The starting point has to be a specific business application, such as project management, product development, sales support or any number of functions that relate directly to business value.

3. Make work easier. None of the rhetoric or practice around Enterprise 2.0 makes any sense unless it makes the everyday work of employees easier, more effective, and more productive. If that is the principle around how all initiatives happen, things will necessarily be on the right track.

4. Build strategies at the architecture level. As described in more detail in my Successful Enterprise 2.0 and social media speech, a core issue is gathering inputs such that they contribute to valuable emergent outcomes. Any enterprise strategy has to be at this level, not at the level of implementing tools.

5. Allow users to experiment. This principle is often overlooked, yet Enterprise 2.0 is founded on end-users being able to adapt the tools, processes, and working to something that suits them. Everything must be changeable by users so the end result of how tools are used is unpredictable.

6. Create pilots that yield useful lessons. Understanding that no organization has got Enterprise 2.0 “right” yet, and that every organization is different, the task becomes one of trying things, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and evolving systems so that they create value. Designing projects to learn useful lessons and acting on these lessons is at the heart of this.

Trends in the Living Networks Blog

                                                         Excerpt: ‘…. increasing evidence abounds that Enterprise 2.0 adoption has begun in earnest with a typical example being Wells Fargo taking the plunge, having rolled out Enterprise 2.0 platforms to 160,000 workers. It has become clear that we’re moving out of the early pioneer phase to a broader acceptance phase. From the production side, a brand new analysis indicates that the business social software market will be nearly $1 billion strong this year and over $3.3 billion by 2011. In these and other ways, such as the growing collection of success stories, Enterprise 2.0 has arrived.’

Lesson #1: Enterprise 2.0 is going to happen in your organization with you or without you

Lesson #2: Effective Enterprise 2.0 seems to involve more than just blogs and wikis.

Lesson #3: Enterprise 2.0 is more a state of mind than a product you can purchase.

Lesson #5: The benefits of Enterprise 2.0 can be dramatic, but only builds steadily over time.

Read the full Hinchcliffe article here

Lynda M. Applegate from the Harvard Business School is spending the next 12 months looking at the role of disruptive change in kickstarting enterprise innovation.

Information Week with some lite case studies
Excerpt: Facebook and other social networks in the workplace can suck up employees’ time and worse. But managed right, they may be the next breakthrough in business collaboration.

Web 2.0 techniques aren’t only for tech-drenched startups. The basic ideas can be applied by almost any company, even without using any Web 2.0 technology. Some of the core principles of Web 2.0 are:

1. Mix and Match: Data or applications can be combined in new ways to create new opportunities.
2. Distribute Widely: Instead of waiting for customers to come to you, release products or services where customers already are.
3. Enable, Don’t Control: Instead of forcing customers to do things a certain way, make it easy for them to do it in whatever way works best.

More from Susan Kuchinskas at BNET