1. Whether economics is a science or not is a point of legitimate debate. You have a point of view but seem to be presenting as fact. I have a point of view though it is loosely held.
2. Err – I’ve met with Innocentive on several occasions this last year, I’m on their distro list and I’ve run the numbers. Please recheck. They’re mostly in healthcare and health related sectors. Better still, ask them. Unless things have changed the last three months, I think you’ll find they will agree on that. When I posed the question: “So you’re elance for the enterprise?” They didn’t disagree.
3. I’m not railing at McAfee or the general E2.0 hypothesis – we had a perfectly amicable discussion where he agreed that finding substantive use cases was problematic. It was a continuation of a similar discussion two years ago and which has been borne out time and again from others.
4. I’m suggesting that the tenor of arguments fails. I did not say the argument necessarily fails.
5. Simply waving a hand re: 90/9/1 and saying ‘deal with it is’ isn’t much of an argument. In the cases I have been managing, it has proven incredibly difficult to move the needle. I’m not convinced ‘we’ know enough about the mechanics of interaction to be certain how the needle is moved. We have some reasonable guesses based on certain cultural factors but that’s about as good as it gets.
6. You can engineer your way out of complexity through deconstruction but in that I would pick my cases very carefully. But I’m not sure what you mean by ‘complexity’ in this context. Process? people? organization? IT landscape? Different arguments for each. For ONE argument, check this: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=559
7. ‘Power to the possibilities.’ This is the sort of remark that makes me wince. Catchy? Yes. Endearing? No. Does it help advance the argument without invoking images of Che Guevara? No. THAT’s the problem. There is an important yet subtle difference between moderating the language and moderating the argument. Your position on the former fails even if the position on the latter is logically sound when presented in such tones to a management audience.
8. Finally – as a philosopher, surely you know that your attribution of me as a mirror to Davenport is logically unsound as it is based on supposition and inference rather than an understanding of the individual position. In any event, you might want to check the discussions Tim O’Reilly and I have had on this general topic but which started round about here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=525

The example your ‘friend’ gave indeed proves economics is not a science. But unfortunately he chose the wrong evidence. He chose the evidence taught by many to ‘be’ economics…all wrong and highly flawed. I come from the Heynesian school of economics. As such, economics is a science.

You said: “The reference to Innocentive is even more interesting. That is pretty much restricted to one market (healthcare) and is at a very early stage” Healthcare? Are you kidding. Early stage? Have you been watching, or did you just miss the last decade? http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2008/03/31/the-new-natives/

Blasting McAfee? Now you just sound like Tom Davenport who clearly made a mockery of himself on the stage at FF08.

What is it exactly that you’re trying to PROVE and based on what evidence will you be satisfied? You don’t prove 9-11 — it just happens and you deal with the consequences. You can’t engineer your way out of complexity.

You’ve asked me not to tell you what you believe. Then prove to me that you don’t believe the things I’ve had to surmise from your words…you still DON’T understand 2.0 — otherwise you wouldn’t sound so much like Davenport, playing a sadly tragic Shakespearean character part:

“It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

You said: “they risk being tarred as destroyers and not as change agents for good.” I guess it totally depends on your perspective. Indeed, I see ‘we’ as the change agents for good and ‘thee’ as the destroyers.

Power to the possibilities.

I’m taking a management line based on my thinking as a professional accountant trained in social psychology and who specialized in recovery work at distressed businesses.

The way I read much of this ’stuff’ leads me to a conclude that proponents are fantasizing about replacing ‘the enterprise,’ its hierarchies and structures with a form of anarchy. That’s fine where it leads to something of value but what, where and how?

Having spent most of my life in service (aka people) based organizations, the only thing the technology allows is the easier discovery of people who may help solve problems, better execute a project…whatever. That doesn’t necessarily mean the existing structures collapse. We’ve always known the informal organization is the one that ‘gets things done’ far better than the org chart would suggest. The fact we can see it more clearly doesn’t change the org chart. It is treating management as imbecilic to assume they don’t know these structures exist.

In any event, those holding onto the levers of power will put up one heck of a fight to retain that power. More important, they have the means with which to make sure they are insulated well into the future. And please don’t throw the financial crisis at me with a ‘See I told you so,’ because you only have to look at who is being introduced into power to understand that it is ‘out with the old, in with the older’ and no discernible shift in thinking.

Some of the Tweets around this are farcical. The idea for example that a sellers market changes the organization internally is plain wrong. It may change the composition of the workforce and lead to some pruning but the basic structures remain largely intact. Otherwise you end up with chaos. More important, people instinctively take a flight to survival.

There is an implicit assumption that all people are willing to follow this particular Pied Piper. Not true, regardless of the way you cut it. Check inside any organization and when asked, they may say yes, but what will they do? Nothing. Nielsen’s 1/9/90 law is alive and well. Most people just want to come to work, do their job, get paid and go home. The kind of changes you are proposing requires far more than that. So OK – people’s jobs are at stake. But when everyone’s job is at stake Maslow’s hierarchy of needs kicks in. Hard.

I find the references to Y2K amusing. What the enterprise people I know remember about that time is the over hyping of problems that turned out to be a fallacy. The resultant reigning back of IT spend and gradual reduction in software inventory was the direct result which has seen IT budgets consistently reduced over the succeeding 6 years. Echoes of today’s E2.0 ’stuff?’

The reference to Innocentive is even more interesting. That is pretty much restricted to one market (healthcare) and is at a very early stage. Close up it looks like a glorified version of e-lance with the emphasis on labor arbitrage. That model may work in a few markets but I don’t see it as generally viable. Jury is definitely out on that.

But isn’t the kicker that Andrew McAfee and many others have been searching for the last 2+ years for solid enterprise changing examples to back their theories with little real success? At least he agreed with that thought when we met at E2.0 in Boston. As have others with whom I’ve since spoken. Isn’t the reality that the argument is trying to forecast a conclusion that has yet to be reached, let alone proven? Or rather isn’t it the case that what we really see today are small change outliers? Possible game changers but not even close to the fundamentalist change I hear in the tone of these kinds of discussion.

Does all this mean that proponents are plain wrong? Not necessarily. But they absolutely must moderate the way the arguments are presented as though they are some genre of absolute truths. Otherwise they risk being tarred as destroyers and not as change agents for good.

Which brings me to the fundamental problem. Theories are presented as facts which are not in existence. That is a dangerous position to take because it threatens management in ways that are guaranteed to lead to resistance, even if the theory is internally sound. On that one, Maslow rules, OK?

Organizations that fail to open up to allow for such ‘voice’ will be brought down — except where ‘apathy’ is the preferred method of operation by all involved

Agree 100%

While intended in jest, it’s worth a serious consideration as to why it would make sense and what that means.

Calling out and drawing attention to ’social fabric’ is VERY relevant for ongoing discussion. Indeed, LEADING the discussion with this shift I think fundamentally changes the focus of the conversation and the direction it can take (effectively, the “2.0 changes everything” types of conversations).

I’m certainly going to consider leveraging more in-depth focus on this concept for future pieces.

Regarding both your examples (Telligent and the associates model), I have been working on how to increase a client “share of attention” of its employees as well as on how to retain major talents in an open talent market. I really think that corporations are slowly beginning to understand the changes at hand, and reacting, slowly I would say, but reacting.

I agree that the “interworkings and dynamics” between corporations will change, and that new firms and new people will find their place and invent new business models. But the organization itself is adapting and understanding that it needs to move from being organized around only the hierachical principle (I am being a bit oversimplistic) to being organize around several principles, including hierarchy and collaboration.

If it is so organized, its voice will change. Its culture will change. What I think is that we are entering a period of change comparable to the “process reengineering” one. Then we changed the processes; now, its the social fabric of the corporation that is about to change.

Your perspectives on people-centered organizations is great. Thanks for bringing that to the discussion.

As we consider all of the different perspectives noted here — all of them viable — we also need to consider another possibility, one that is just a subtlety on everything already mentioned. We’ve spoken of organizations somewhat in isolation. What we haven’t discussed is how the interworkings and dynamics between them will drag on the form and shape…basically market effects. For example, because market entrance costs are so low (for technology/service offerings), many of the 2.0 companies are spin-offs of the brightest from the larger organizations.

Here in Dallas, Telligent is a 2.0 social networking platform made up predominantly of x-Microsofters. The drain on intellectual capital from the ability to more readily self-organize hits major companies two-fold: they lose the capital and the capital now becomes a competitor.

There will be another competitive drain: the associates model. As employees find ways in which to contribute to ‘cooperatives’ (in a variety of forms, including things like Innocentive), and add to their earning power, they will often find a shift in their ‘added’ income that begins to exceed their ’stable’ income and they will also slowly fade away (if not formally, at least informally decreasing their direct contributions and productivity — all those unaccounted for extra hours put in, now diverted).

It seems that most of the things being considered are the more direct and obvious ones, not the subtle ones mentioned here. It’s these latter ones that will have the greatest impact because they will seemingly ’show up’ by surprise (when their effects get enough critical mass to be recognizable).

Clearly, there’s a distinction here between ‘knowledge workers’ and those who are still predominantly interchangeable machine cogs. But there are a lot of ‘machine cogs’ that are going to find opportunities (or create them) to leverage their talents in far more productive ways, as well.

For myself, I’m already seeing far more opportunity to find ‘work’ without looking for a ‘job’.