Author of the book Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel made the following remarks in a Gartner interview, earlier this year:

“When innovation becomes democratized, many traditional assumptions about innovation and the best ways to innovate are upended….When innovation resources are cheap and well diffused, what firms ought to do is let a thousand flowers bloom…then select the best flower. It no longer makes sense for corporate marketing researchers to go around asking passive consumers what kind of flower they would like, if only they could have it and then, after huge process efforts, decide to develop that flower.”

The same is true of technology solutions. Whereas von Hippel pointed this comment directly at manufacturing innovation, the IT floors of today are the machine factory floors of yesterday. In the information age, the medium of production and delivery are bits/bytes. The problem with most 2.0 discussions is that they cannot separate the product/service from the medium which facilitates the interaction.

Perhaps you disagree? Then mitigate, if you will, the divergence between the facts which the IDC collected and Forrester’s recent claim [pdf] that “IT Departments Generally View Web 2.0 in a Favorable Light” (pay less attention to the titles than to the stories being told). Let’s just say that if both Forrester and their clients see anything 2.0 as something sold by vendors then they’ll both soon be extinct.

Let’s put it another way: 2.0 is the same as experiences — they just happen. You don’t buy technology for them; you don’t get opinions as to whether or not you’re going to adopt them — they just ARE. You can stick your head in the sand about it and suggest that everything is the same, or you can embrace the fundamental differences that are alluded to by von Hippel’s comments.

Leery of that? Then try this one on:

“The ability of an organization to innovate is a pre-condition for the successful utilization of inventive resources and new technologies. Conversely, the introduction of new technology often presents complex opportunities and challenges for organizations, leading to changes in managerial practices and the emergence of new organizational forms. Organizational and technological innovations are intertwined.” Alice Lam

The reason we’re not seeing the potential of much of the technological innovations come to fruition is that the organizations have not formally embraced them. This is being repeated with 2.0. Of course, 2.0 is often also seen as just another fad/phase, not a collection of principles to express a reality already taking place. IT can choose to embrace those changes — nay, facilitate them via new methods (after all, methods and techniques are part and parcel to technologies…the origin of which Gk technología systematic treatment, or technique). Contrary to the beliefs of many CIOs most of the methods they believe are in place and are being followed, are part of the dirty little secret of most corporate operations: they actually get in the way of doing real work, and so everyone has a workaround to get stuff done. IT floors (and other operational areas) are far more replete with examples of adaptation that you’d ever find on some secluded island.

Adaptation is a beautiful thing and is something to be honored: it is, after all, a perfect synthesis of the realities. Changing a ‘bad’ reality must be done with respect to existing adaptations. Case in point: Verizon Call Centers.

A few years ago, still during the honeymoon period between GTE and Bell Atlantic, there was an initiative to make the desktop of the call center representatives more efficient/effective. Indeed, an entire year of visual design and architectural possibilities had progressed. The concepts were brilliant, but classically flawed. I spent very little time in the field talking to the call center people to know that the initiative was doomed, without change. The issue: facts, and perceived facts.

The design team was operating off of a number of facts that were not false, but weren’t exactly as they interpreted them.

• The number of applications available to a rep to support a call was upwards of 50. In IT, anything they’ve created is an ‘application’. The majority of these ‘applications’ were badly managed collections of content, and yet nowhere in this solution was there focus on freeing all of this content out of the ‘applications’ they were stuck in — something that would have added exponential value.
• The number of applications a rep typically engaged to support a call was a minimum of 3-5. This too was accurate, but watching this dance in motion was a true work of art. They had adapted their entire dialog to the dance that was going on behind the scenes. Indeed, they leveraged the delays to engage in more meaningful conversations with the customers, often uncovering unmet needs which they would then turn into upsells.
• The learning curve for these tools was costly. This too would have been relevant if it were applicable. These people were masters of adaptation. They worked the system (technical and financial) from every angle. The leaders among them made 6-figure salaries and annually went to some big blow-out (I met some of them at their sales conference at the Atlantis resort). Such salaries lead to high retention. Among the ‘youngest’ in seniority, they’d been with the company for 2 years. Turnover was not relevant and work-arounds are quickly learned in such high-paced environments. Indeed, anything ‘new’ would have slowed down the dance and would have only been worth changing dance steps over, if it added tremendous value elsewhere. It did not. [Last I heard, the initiative was never implemented. Another testament to the hidden productivity drains of large initiatives; the antithesis of 2.0.]

So let me repeat again, 2.0 is about embracing adaptive (or emergent). It is in the adaptive space that you leverage the inherent energy in the crest of the wave: energy for free. Or in the case of von Hippel, let the flowers bloom where they may, in all their varieties.

Caution: IT will likely insist they don’t have budget for dirt.