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April 4, 2007
Introducing Enterprise 2.0
By now you have probably heard of Web 2.0 and all of the hype surrounding the next evolution of web technology. The impact on our culture is unmistakable with the advent of Weblogs, Wikis, and many other social applications. While Web 2.0 has been debated by researchers as to who and when the concepts emerged, little argument exists that the technology has arrived. Unlike Web 1.0, this new technology encourages user participation and derives its greatest value when large communities contribute the content. User generated metadata, community based information, and innovative designs enable a much richer environment for value creation.
Imagine a world where delivering the most advanced product with the greatest number of features actually losses the war for customer’s attention. This is exactly what happened to the feature rich Diamond Rio MP3 player. The Rio hit the world with a simple design, advanced features and a collection of technology advancements that forced the recording industry to file suit to protect their interest. Yet, today 75% of the market is owned by Apple’s IPod which has far fewer features, cost more, and operates on top of a proprietary music format which cannot be accessed by other devices. On the surface, this seems to fly into the face of Web 2.0 openness. What happened to the traditional framework where value dictated the winners and losers? Describing the competitive market where the Apple IPod competed head to head with the RIO is leaving out a few details. Specifically, the emergence of ITunes and the ITunes Music store altered the entire music ecosystem. The advanced functionally was transformed to the computer application which eliminated the need for that kind of feature set to be housed within the device. Add the ability to buy any song for $0.99 and you have a complete transformation worth billions. What Apple delivered is the “music experience” for the end user. This transformation from the traditional buying CD’s and loading the songs on the computer then trying to manage the music was Apple’s greatest accomplishment.
The IPod story is an Enterprise 2.0 success story based on collaborative designs, viral marketing, and the implementation of the experience over technology and features. Businesses, organizations, and individuals are all changing the way in which value is delivered. Enterprise 2.0 is about you, your collaborative ability to contribute to the vast amount of knowledge in the world today. We are starting to see power shift from the few that controlled the flow of information to you; Times Person of the Year for 2006. The business implications of this new media are unclear. No one is really sure where the rich user interfaces, self-service, the long tail, agility, transparency, and the emergent components of trust are going to take us. The one thing we can count on is that change is inevitable. Organizations have a plethora of knowledge stores ranging from repositories to registries; from corporate Wiki’s to Enterprise Collaborative applications like SharePoint. While we have plenty of tools to choose from, technology is only part of the solution. Social or behavioral changes must also occur in order to make inroads into the business culture of the organization. For example, when sending out an attachment do you email the document or send a link to a shared workspace? With collaborative type solutions, we have a much richer set of tools to deliver value to the business. Additionally, the organization must also change and adopt the technologies as a viable method of doing business. The essence of Enterprise 2.0 is the facilitation of value creation not the management of it. We are moving away from the traditional command and control model of value creation to one that is self-organizing, innovative, distributed, and collaborative. By utilizing these tools, altering the social behavior, and implementing change in the organization, we can evolve to a single entity all driving toward the same goals.
Posted by Todd at April 4, 2007 12:00 PM