More Enterprise 2.0 Studies
by Bill Ives
Looking at communication inside the enterprise is a hot topic for researchers these days, especially looking at how organizations are taking web tools and approaches inside the firewall. We have seen some of these studies already on this blog such as the Information Week report that Joe McKendrick wrote about. Jeffrey Treem of Edelman pointed me to a study he was recently involved with, his firms Third Annual, New Frontiers in Employee Communications. You can see the highlights on his blog post, Internal Communications Channels Study.
Here are four of the highlights from the Edelman study in Jeffery’s words:
1. A lot more organizations are using new media than you would think – only they are doing it internally where the risks are lower and there is a more immediate and tangible effect on the business.
2. If I were to put my money on the channel that will have the greatest impact on businesses it would be wikis, as they are the most dynamic of the tools.
3. It is critical that all communications channels be viewed as part of an integrated communications strategy. When this occurs, employees get relevant content with context.
4. When communications are fragmented, employees just get a lot of noise.
He adds, “Internal communications strategy will be a key differentiator for organizations as they battle for the next generation of talent.”
Here is my reaction. Uses of “new media” outside and inside the enterprise are very different and usually done by different groups, e.g. Marketing vs. IT or KM or Corporate Communications. I am not sure that the risk is less inside, just different, and the groups who operate inside are usually, but not always, more risk adverse. So it is encouraging to see the continued inside use.
Wikis may be the leader in the short term because they can be quickly applied to such tactical tasks as event planning and document sharing. I think the long run it may be the more generic open architecture concept (tools to be determined) and composite applications or mashups because they can potentially address more strategic issues. Blogs are also quite flexible but have some baggage from the web to work through. The Edelman study found that 99% of the people know what a blog is and only 48% know what a wiki is. However, that might not be a good thing for blogs as many will have a negative view of them as a business tool. In the blog example, I posted about on Monday it was decided at first to not tell the participants that the new strategy session recording platform was a blog for that reason.
I agree with the third point but we are seeing many initial enterprise 2.0 applications to be isolated pilots. We are not yet at that maturity stage. I hope the fourth comes true. Some of the pundits are saying this. But they also said it about KM. Knowledge management is alive and well but not having the transformational impact some predicted. Enterprise 2.0 has much greater potential. I hope it is realized.
Jeffrey’s blog post also listed a number of other studies and I found this very helpful. Here is the list. Not all of these studies refer to Enterprise 2.0, if any, but that is the field they are looking at. I will try to look at least some of them.
Makovsky 2006 State of Corporate Blogging Survey (May 2006)
Northeastern University & Backbone Media Blogging Success Study (November 2006)
Corporate Blogging Survey 2005: Is It Worth The Hype? (Backbone Media)
Cymfony and Porter Novelli Corporate Blog Survey (July 2006)
Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki (Socialtext, last updated in October 2006)
NewPR Wiki (contains lists of corporate blogs and executive bloggers, ongoing)
