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February 27, 2007
Value Creation in Enterprise 2.0
Traditional command and control communications, business models, and value creation frameworks are being replaced inside and outside the corporation. End users are no longer just consumers of information and customers are no longer consumers of products and services. Rather, they have become the product, the service, and the source of value. What are the implications to the business, technology, and individual in a world where the lines of the organization extends to the other side of the world? Federation, Agility, Ubiquitous Computing, SOA, Seamless end-to-end interoperability, heightened business intelligence and monitoring are no longer visions of the future but street signs of the present. This session will describe why this is happening as well as the implications to us as consumers, employees, and technologists.
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Posted by Todd at 12:11 AM
February 16, 2007
Corporate Collaboration
Organizations will need to understand the full impact of deploying Collaboration technologies. Traditional command and control would dictate that there needs to be an over arching strategy, architecture, and governance in place in order to be successful. However, that type of deployment fails far more than it succeeds. Traditional organizations tend to focus on the measurements of failure. That is to say, they focus on the technology and infrastructure which only ensure that you don’t fail but has little to do with success. Success comes from a bottom up framework that allows for exponential growth of both content and usage. Content and usage are measurements of success; the only way to truly succeed in the organization is to gain mass adoption of the technology which results in a massive change in culture. Some organizations will choose this change while others will be forced into it but competitive forces.
Posted by Todd at 1:32 AM
February 15, 2007
Get Involved with Enterprise 2.0
What could someone do to get involved with Collaborative or Web 2.0 solutions within an organiztion? Here are a few ideas:
Access Research Firm Information on Web 2.0 (i.e. Gartner, Forrestor, etc.)
Create a Collaborative Team Environment with Sharepoint, IBM, etc.
Create a Blog and/or Wiki even if no one cares
Replace your Intranet with Collaborative Applications
Utilize the Web, Audio, and Video Conferencing Tools
Communicate Outside Knowledge Sources from 2.0 Environments
Share Articles, Books, and Overviews with Executives
Get Involved with the Client-Support Organization
Get Involved with the Architecture Team Organization
Get Involved with Related 1.0 Technologies like Search, Intranet, etc.
Advertise your Interest and Expertise: i.e. IBM Blue Pages
Engage the Web Service Delivery, SOA or Registry Teams
Network with other Web 2.0 SME’s
Email me with your thoughts...
Posted by Todd at 8:57 PM
Early Stages of the Revolution
The key component of Enterprise 2.0 is participation; we must all get involved and add to the body of knowledge. We must define who we are and what makes us special. “Good Enough” is no longer the definition of success. This road to transformation will be blocked by everyone up and down the food chain. Managers, who have made a career of controlling information, will feel out of control in this new world. However, managing the human imagination will be the corner stone of value delivery in this next environment. How will this manifestation occur? For each of us the drive will be different; some will be forced while others will choose.
In 2004, our organization started to look into collaborative solutions and the value that could be generated. The collaborative architecture environment included team workspaces, work flow, information access, integrated communications, Intranet platforms, presence, web conferencing, and many more. These technologies brought an entire new perspective to a traditional culture of command and control. Control is the key here. Corporations enjoy control because it is a great predictor of outcomes. The tighter the control, the more predictable the outcome will be. Collaborative applications eliminate the control and this can be unsettling for some. We have been taught that without control chaos will emerge. Look around the web world and see where assumptions have been wrong.
When Amazon allowed customer reviews, the prevailing opinion was that sales would drop with the negative comments, sales didn’t drop they rose. When Ebay allowed seller and buyer feedback, the world said that the business model would crumble. When Google went to a value add business model versus an advertisement one, we all wondered what the end result would be. When Wikipedia started, all said that the quality of the information couldn’t compete with published papers and encyclopedias. In the end, the errors in Wikipedia are less than .02 per 1,000 as revealed in a recent study. Is this new or something that only applies to new technology? Well, not really:
Lee Iacocca wanted convertibles but the engineers said no, the salesmen said no, the dealers said no, the plants said no. Lee said “Yes, if you have to take a can opener and pull the tops off each car, we are having convertibles”. Mark Twain said the man with a new idea is considered a crank until the idea succeeds. Beethoven wrote the “Heroic Symphony”, which broke every rule of the classics; the orchestra said no we can’t play it. Stravinsky premiered the “Right of Spring”, the critics declared him insane. Marcel Duchamp painted “Nude Descending a Staircase”; everyone declared it the worst picture ever painted until it was recognized as a turning point in art history. Freud described the un-conscious world, while the conscious world said no. James Joyce changed the literature world forever by writing in the stream of consciousness technique and everybody declared him deranged
The point is that today, the architecture of participation seems far-fetched but in reality, we are simply in the early stages of the next revolution.
Posted by Todd at 11:21 AM
February 9, 2007
High Performance
Much has been written about high performance and the impact to the organization. Many authors discuss the collaborative environment and new tools that allow the information worker to access corporate information anytime and anywhere. Other authors focus on the performance rules of accountability, metrics, and objectives. Both of these views of high performance are accurate and should be reviewed by the reader.
The average yearly increase in U.S. workers' productivity has doubled from 1.5 percent during the period 1987-1996 to 3 percent from 1997 to 2006, according to U.S. Labor Department figures. Information workers must define their own path to productivity and based on these metrics are doing a great job. The key ingredient is multi-tasking with technology. According to an Oregon State University study knowledge workers spend the majority of their working hours processing and manipulating information. The information they manipulate may be encoded in many different formats: documents, databases, software code, web pages, email messages, phone conversations. At the center of productivity is the concept that almost all knowledge workers organize their work into discrete and describable units, such as projects, tasks or to-do items. Information workers are required to define their own path to productivity and value-add for the organization. Years ago, the organization was expected to define what value and performance meant but not today. The old go to work from 9 to 5 is being replaced by a 24 hour a day information flow. For many information workers, the transformation from being told what value is to defining that value is unnerving.
Posted by Todd at 10:52 AM
February 2, 2007
Metadata's Demand Side Economics
Last month, I took a deep dive into the supply-side economics of metadata. While the supply of metadata is important, the demand or usage of the information is an imperative for long-term success. Ideally, you would have both a solid demand and supply, but if you had to choose between one or the other, take the demand. Demand is much harder to create, develop and sustain over an extended period of time.
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Posted by Todd at 12:16 AM