Japanese Business Culture & Social Computing

June 27, 2008 at 11:09 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

A couple of weeks ago I was in Sapporo at the Infinity Ventures Summit (the site’s in Japanese) to talk about the role of informal networks in business and show off Trampoline’s SONAR Suite. This is the largest technology innovation conference in Japan, bringing together the leading start-ups, corporations, analysts and investors. The focus was mainly on mobile and consumer internet so Trampoline really stood out as an enterprise infrastructure provider. We were also one of just four non-Asian firms invited to present.

I’ve travelled in Japan in the past but this was my first visit in a business context. The amazing etiquette involved in exchanging business cards was the first thing that struck me. In an unstructured setting like a drinks reception in the West cards are typically swapped at the end of a conversation if there’s a likely relevance for future contact. In Japan cards are exchanged at the start of a conversation with no filter for relevance. This means you get through a lot of cards and your pockets rapidly end up bulging with other people’s.

Cards must be offered horizontally with the text in the correct orientation for the recipient, held at the corners in both hands. When you receive a card you must hold it similarly in both hands and give it your full attention for a second or two before looking up or continuing conversation. You must hold the card in front of you throughout the conversation. It’s insulting to put it in your pocket, scribble a note on it or (worst of all) hand someone a crumpled or disfigured card. If you’re sitting around a table with people the correct thing to do is lay everyone’s cards out in front of you in a neat row matching their positions around the table.

What interested me most, however, was the cultural alignment of Japanese enterprises with social computing solutions. Previously I’d assumed that Japanese business culture would be intrinsically hostile to technologies that make informal groupings and networks visible, or which lead to information being shared in new ways, since there is sensitive etiquette surrounding these processes. However my experiences in Sapporo completely changed my view of this.

The connection I’d failed to make previously is that Japanese corporations have historically placed a much higher value on the informal networks amongst their employees than their Western counterparts. Within the “shushin koyo” model of life-long relationships between employer and employee, many aspects of the individual’s social life were organised and supported by the corporation. This was seen to build organisational strength and forge links outside the formal structure (both of which are also notable drivers for social networking tools in the enterprise). During the long recession in the 1990s a lot of these extra-curricular activities were cut, but a management culture persisted in which informal networks were highly valued. On the face of it enterprise social computing tools are perfectly placed to fill this gap.

In many cases products developed for a Western market will need to be modified significantly before they are suitable for Japanese customers. This won’t simply be a case of changing language in the user interface. Behaviours around privacy management and authorisation will almost certainly need to be modified to fit different cultural nuances. But contrary to my initial assumption, Japanese corporations may prove to be early and well-informed adopters of social computing technologies.

I’m indebted to Shuji Honjo for drawing my attention to the possible like between social computing and corporate involvement in extra-curricular activities.

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Enterprise Social Computing: What will happen in 2008?

January 4, 2008 at 10:44 am · Filed under Charles Armstrong, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Enterprise Software, Social Computing, Trampoline Systems

This is my maiden posting for FASTForward so I’d like to thank the organisers for inviting me to write here. I’m CEO of Trampoline Systems, an enterprise social computing business in London (UK). My background is in the social sciences and in particular the discipline of ethnography; so my interest is primarily in human and organisational factors rather than pure algorithms. Life as CEO of a high-growth technology startup is exciting but somewhat relentless, so my postings here will probably not be frequent. However I’ll do my best to comment on interesting trends and possibilities I observe in the course of speaking to customers and colleagues in the hope this will be of interest to FASTForward readers.

For this first post I’m going to pick out a handful of the developments I think will be significant in 2008. Obviously this is a mug’s game since humans have such a rotten record of predicting the future. But here goes:

1. Many companies will commission pilots of “Facebook for the enterprise”. Most will fail to deliver any value. The meteoric adoption of Facebook by corporate users during the first half of 2007 did more than anything else to boost executive consciousness of social networking. For vendors like Trampoline this has been enormously helpful. Previously most of our conversations had to start with an explanation of the basic concepts. Now we can generally get straight to discussing the business value. However in 2008 we’re also going to see some negative outcomes from the Facebook phenomenon. Executives who have witnessed the rise of consumer social networking and sensed it may have significant implications for their business may make a knee-jerk response and instruct their IT team to instal a pilot implementation of “Facebook for the enterprise”. Established vendors and new entrants alike will rush to offer products that either plug into Facebook itself or provide a carbon copy of the platform with increased security to meet enterprise needs. However a lot of these pilots will fail to deliver value and will be abandoned. There will be two reasons for the failures. First, they will be based on the incorrect assumption that social networking techniques which work well in the consumer world will be equally successful in the enterprise. In fact it’s clear that the value of social networking in the enterprise is radically different than in the consumer world and substantially different techniques are consequently required. Second, the pilots will too often be set up without connection to a pressing business problem. This means there will be little urgency around the use of the new tools and little benefit to employees from adopting them. Many pilots of this kind will see enthusiastic adoption by 5% of the user community whilst the other 95% takes little or no notice.
2. Microsoft Sharepoint will gain rapid adoption as a surrogate for social computing. In 2008 a lot of businesses will be interested in social computing but nervous about implementing unfamiliar technologies. Microsoft Sharepoint is ideally placed as a “safe haven” for such businesses. Sharepoint opens up a degree of emergent structure and collaboration without rocking the boat. It slots into the familiar Microsoft product universe. In its 2008 guise it even presses some “social” buttons with wiki and blog functionality (though I wonder how many businesses will actually use these). Some businesses will find that Sharepoint takes them as far as they want to go. Many others will find its limitations frustrating and will go on to implement fully-fledged social computing solutions. Either way Sharepoint adoption is going to sky-rocket during 2008.
3. The first social computing applications to target specific business problems will appear. Up to now  enterprise social computing has been limited to social networking platforms, blogs and wikis. These are all generic product categories with more-or-less universal application. 2008 will mark an important point of maturity in the sector with the launch of the first technologies that use social computing techniques to address specific business problems. These products will have little to do with social networking or content creation. Each one will be relevant only to a very specific vertical market or role. I don’t know what these applications will be and this is really my most speculative prediction; but I’ve got a strong hunch we’re going to see it happen during 2008.
4. “Enterprise Social Computing” will gain ground as an umbrella term alongside “Social Networking” and “Enterprise 2.0″. Words play a crucial role in the rise of any emerging technology. They provide handles that enable people to grasp and discuss unfamiliar ideas. They function as a useful shorthand for underlying phenomena that are often complex. Such terminology is inevitably in flux. As the technology develops and product categories begin to crystalise, new phrases emerge to describe the changing picture. There’s already been a slew of terms since 2000. “Social Software” was the first generic term used to describe blogs and wikis. “Web 2.0″ was coined by Tim O’Reilly as a wider description of the socialisation of the consumer web. Andrew McAfee defined “Enterprise 2.0″ to discuss how a parallel process would impact businesses systems. “Social Networking” is a long-standing academic term that took on a new meaning with the rise of Friendster, MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook. Another academic term, “Social Graph”, came into general currency with the launch of OpenSocial. However none of these terms offers an umbrella description for the overall technology phenomenon and the need for such a term is growing rapidly. Over the last three months I’ve noticed a lot of people starting to use the phrases “Social Computing” and “Enterprise Social Computing”. These seem to be good umbrella terms and I find myself using them increasingly in preference to other terms. I suspect that Enterprise Social Computing will emerge during 2008 as a stable term for this new generation of business systems.

So those are my predictions for the next twelve months. All that remains is for me to wish FASTForward readers an exciting and rewarding year.

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