Comments on: Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron

By: Bill Ives

Bill Ives — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:40:11 +0000

Thanks to Paul, Colleen, Roger, and Jon. for your comments. I will try to follow up on your suggestions. Jon I like your historical references. I think clay tablets and papyrus were first used for non-business purposes, religious or governmental in these cases, but were soon adopted for business. They allowed for asynchronous social interchange as as well as data storage. I wonder where telephone usage first started? It allowed for synchronous communication at a distance. If it was not first a consumer tool, then it was both consumer and business at the same time. We now have more powerful tools for both synchronous and asynchronous communication with many side benefits, Why would a business be reluctant to use them if done appropriately in a business way? I wonder if our ancestors were afraid to put business information down on clay tablets for fear of inappropriate use? Perhaps some were.

By: Jon Husband

Jon Husband — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:19:53 +0000

Very informative, and clarity re: the differentiation.

I always wonder if the ubiquitous ballpoint pen was a consumer product before it began to be bought in bulk, along with pads of writing paper, for storage in the stationery space on every floor of every office building in every city on the planet.

Cartridge pens or fountain pens were much more dear and much less user-friendly.

Then, more recently, along came post-it notes and whiteboards. Whilst individuals used them, you can argue they are more social. Did they start as consumer or non-enterprise products (say, for example, in the classroom ?).

Social software that is useful and lets the user interact with both information and other people is fundamental to the process of working with information and with knowledge, and knowledge flows are n-directional today. The use of social software in enterprises today and tomorrow is fundamental, and the way work happens is changing a lot because of interconnectedness combined with powerful access to information and growing ease of use with GUIs. All three of those factors will almost certainly continue to grow in scope and impact.

By: Roger W. Farnsworth

Roger W. Farnsworth — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:29:44 +0000

I think a lot of what we’re seeing is a new generation of employees exhibiting a much stronger need for expression of self, and the development of a workplace that can address this need using more powerful networked tools. The fundamental change in the desires and motivation of the workforce is more than interesting, it’s transformational. My blog points to an article about this transformation that was recently published in bMighty.

http://ciscoetl.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/generation-collaboration/

The challenge here is in aligning the changing needs of he individual with the requirements of the business.

By: Colleen Copple

Colleen Copple — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:47:18 +0000

There are a lot of technologies out there that not only provide the social networking functionality of Web 2.0, but also provide the much of the value that community-driven content, ratings, tags, etc. bring to the table to help companies streamline processes and share/manage information more effectively across the enterprise – effectively helping to solve real business problems. I encourage you to look into companies like SAVO who are doing just this. We’re actually hosting a webinar on Tuesday, May 13 titled “Moving Beyond the Legacy Sales Portal – Leveraging Web 2.0 to Drive Sales Performance.” You can register at savogroup.com. I’d love for you to take a look and let us know your thoughts!

By: Paul Sweeney

Paul Sweeney — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:35:09 +0000

Maybe there are some very simple ways of looking at this. And at the risk of going against the current meme with regards the need to get seismic with change, perhaps an “easy implementation path” is what is required here. For instance, haven’t a lot of problems with IT implementation being standards and interoperability based? weren’t there a lot of issues with interface design / user and reporting customisation etc. These are fairly trivial issues these days. But there are also the “big ones”, i.e inaccurate forecasting of demand in a supply chain; integrated communications and software systems (CTI) in customer service, and call centres. Another thought, is maybe the “nature of the interaction” that a person within the business needs to be profiled in terms of how their interaction with the rest of the company, then the business environment, in order to achieve a fit between attention, activity, and interactions? Again, just an idea.