Comments on: Harvard’s McAfee Proposes Enterprise 2.0 for Economic Recovery

By: Joe McKendrick

Joe McKendrick — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 03:00:17 +0000

Zia, MT: Thanks for the feedback. MT, good point that organizations must transform their thinking and management styles, and tools are an extension versus a catalyst. Zia pointed out that people often seek new solutions during periods of great volatility (this era being one of them). What may often happen is companies may see a few competitors succeeding in tough markets with such approaches, and therefore emulate the winners. If Enterprise 2.0 can be demonstrated to be providing competitive advantage, management in lagging or struggling companies may suddenly “get religion.”

By: MT

MT — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:00:49 +0000

Good post…however, tools alone cannot fix an ailing company even if new leadership recognizes the value in deploying them. A culture shift is necessary first to get employees accustomed to open communication. Only then can the organization begin organically adopt Web 2.0 tools. Regardless of how simple Web 2.0 tools appear to be, they still diverge from most of the communication mediums and models that organizations use today (think: email, documents, etc.). Also, just as important as the tools deployed is the common language the must the allowed to emerge, so that ideas can be shared quickly and efficiently. Web 2.0 shouldn’t be viewed as a “hammer”, because the communication challenges that exist in any of these troubled companies today aren’t the same type of “nail”.

By: Zia Zaman

Zia Zaman — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:50:02 +0000

Joe, great post about a great thought leadership piece from Andy. The key statement is that the truly great companies will benefit from the interactions between its employees if the IT group has the courage to make modest investments in a ESSP. Said differently, competitive advantage and survivability depend on a multitude of variables but an often-forgotten one is the ability of the company’s people to find new solutions (revenue streams, cost-cutting) and new opportunities (new products, new partners, new angles, new markets) in the midst of periods of increased volatility.