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December 14, 2006

Enterprise 2.0 and Expertise

In Enterprise 0.0, the competition for my job was within a specific geographic or organizational area. That is to say, in order to compete, I just needed to be better than the guy sitting next to me. Enterprise 1.0 came along and with the advent of Web 1.0 the world opened up to my skills and knowledge. Knowledge and information was freely available as the organizational walls started to crumble. I competed with the top Metadata professionals in the world and this changed the game forever. Without organizational or geographic boundaries, there is no limit to where companies can go to get help or lower costs. Assuming you grant me the courtesy of being one of the top five professionals in the world, I really only needed to compete with the top four metadata professionals. Unfortunately, that was the good news since I understood who they were and what they knew. These experts produced books, articles, and various other publications and freely shared their knowledge. Web 2.0 changes the game, once again. Instead of me competing with the top four, I now have to compete with the Cumulative knowledge of everyone else in the world. Mark Twain once commented that:

The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot

In the Web 2.0 world, being the worlds number one may very well be liability. While being recognized is nice, the fact is that when any technology opens it mind to the open source mentality, expertise is no longer needed. This is what happens when all information is free, freely available, to anyone at anytime; anywhere in the world.

Posted by Todd at December 14, 2006 1:14 PM