Enterprise 2.0 - By George I Think They've Got it
Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to address the topic of Enterprise 2.0. I was the featured speaker at an AIIM Webinar, entitled "Be First to Market With Effective Collaboration. “ (For those of you who are thinking, “collaboration – I thought you said it was on Enterprise 2.0?”, – come to our training – or listen to the webinar).
The slides from the presentation are posted to slideshare and available here.
As is often the case, the webinar experience not only gave me a chance to share my opinions and insights, but to learn as well.
First, I was pleased to see that nearly 900 people registered for this webinar. Collaboration (and by association Enterprise 2.0), is highly relevant to business professionals (or at least AIIM members.) Its always nice to know that our work over the last few months has not been in vain.
But the real pleasure came when the Q&A portion of the webinar began. The level and diversity of questions posed were wonderful. There were actually more questions posed than we had time to answer during the session. Therefore, as I have done in similar situations in the past, over the next few weeks, I will be posting to this blog, questions from the webinar that were left in the queue, along with my response. So, if you are interested in the topic, keep an eye out.
But, back to the focus of this post, what I learned during the webinar. Among the many questions posed, a significant number were focused not on the technology side of Enterprise 2.0, but the cultural and business model perspectives. Initially I was a bit concerned that the enthusiasm expressed by myself and my co-presenter, Jeremy Milo, might leave too many listeners to believe that Enterprise 2.0 is a foregone conclusion, another case of “Field of Dreams.” I am pleased to say that this was not the case. Many questions challenged the ease and speed with which the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 can be realized, not technically, but procedurally and culturally.
To this I say BRAVO – I think you've got it.
Attendees were obviously interested in evolving collaboration models in the workplace. But those that posed the questions concerning issues such as security, intellectual property rights, compliance and incentives are my brethren. Like them, I believe that the zeal over transparent and open collaboration, among and between inter- and intra-corporate teams must be tempered. (My first testament to this opinion was made in a post to the FastForward blog, nearly a year ago.)
Those that understand that culture, process and control are important and very real issues within the realm of Enterprise 2.0 are not antagonists, laggards or even roadblocks to the adoption of the technology. My assumption is that they are seasoned business professionals that have been down this road before with knowledge management, instant messaging, portals, online communities and e-mail. Sure evolving technology models are making open collaboration easier. This should lead to an acceleration in innovation and a decrease in functional and knowledge silos. But, if corporate culture and practices are not aligned with technology – don’t bother.
As I indicated in my last blog post, in our recent Enterprise 2.0 survey, we found that respondents that were affiliated with an organization that had embraced Knowledge Management were more aware of obstacles and challenges to Enterprise 2.0, but also further along in their adoption of and understanding of Enterprise 2.0 technology and practices.
November 7-9 
