Collaborative Thinking

Enterprises Not One Dimensional - Technology Not the Only Influence on the Future Enterprise

I totally and enthusiastically agree with Dan. Far too often Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are discussed solely in terms of technology. If you deploy blogs, congratulations, you are an example of Enterprise 2.0. Have a wiki? Fine - we'll call you Enterprise 2.0 too. Only when you address "change" across business, organizational and technology do you catalyze new work models and new ways of working. Below (this is timely as well), I've included the synopsis of a paper I am submitting today on social software trends.   

Stop with Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, etc. I've said it before and I will say it again and again. Analysts at Gartner and Ovum (read Enterprise 2.0 will bring radical change in organizations here) continue to beat the drum of change with only technology in mind. If that was the case, enterprise 2.0 happened when the computer first showed up in big overly cooled rooms, and 3.0 occurred when PCs grew from hobby devices into computing support for distributed human networks that empowered people to take control of their own information and analysis, and 4.0 took place when networks connected these devices, and then the web, and then...we aren't in manufacturing and our conceptual frameworks don't need version numbers. Today's reality is today's reality and then there is the future. Putting names and version numbers around the totality of our organizations or technology doesn't help managers make better decisions. We will never go back to previous models for maintenance and support so let's get real and stop selling concepts that don't map to what is important.

The Future of Information Work: Enterprises Not One Dimensional - Technology Not the Only Influence on the Future Enterprise

Expressing technology value in a business context is fundamental for strategists to gain credibility as they explore new work models made possible through social systems. While often over-hyped (e.g., “Web 2.0”, “Enterprise 2.0”), social software does offer business and IT leaders the opportunity to redefine work structures and ways of working if coupled with organizational change (not just new tools). Positioning social software as a “change agent” in-and-of-itself sets unrealistic expectations. A more comprehensive portrayal of social software will delineate how such solutions help drive innovation, growth, productivity and related human capital management goals. Here's a snippet from an upcoming overview:

Trends In Social Software

Synopsis

Social software is a topic that can mystify, excite, or confuse business and IT strategists. Part of the reason is that three different groups—business leaders, IT strategists, and contrarian thought leaders— all view social software differently.

Business leaders often view social software through the lens of consumer market trends (e.g., user-generated content) and media coverage of popular Internet sites (i.e., Facebook). By duplicating these social platforms with an enterprise context, executives believe that they can harness the participatory nature of these environments and direct user contributions in ways that support strategic innovation and growth objectives while also addressing strategic talent initiatives.

IT strategists often view social software quite differently, considering such tools as part of the natural progression of existing collaboration and content platforms. By continuing to consolidate on common infrastructure and avoid distractions by “shiny new things”, these decision makers feel confident that they can attain the same organizational benefits.

There are also contrarian thought leaders that earnestly represent social software as a disruptive wave of next generation technology. These strategists believe that social systems shift power from managerial ranks to everyday workers enabling the enterprise to improve organizational agility by distributing decision-making across networks and communities.

The inconvenient truth across these diverse perspectives is that each viewpoint is essentially correct. Organizations should consider consumer trends as a source for new work models. There are clear business and technology benefits through a platform approach towards social software. Specialized solutions can play a crucial role in delivering compelling social applications. Transforming social structures within an organization to leverage community relationships across a network of customers, partners, suppliers, and employees has become a key competency demonstrated by high performing enterprises. While technology is one key participant in such change efforts, strategists need to assess technology trends within a broader context that includes societal, economic, political and other factors.

Unifying these diverse perspectives across various business and IT audiences requires organizations to understand how social systems augment business strategies, how social software enables new ways of working, where social applications help catalyze emergent collaboration, and what best practices are influencing adoption patterns in the market.

Connectivity Scorecard

Innovation work commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks. The press release provides some background context (deficiencies in the use of communications technologies). You can download the PDF version of the reports by visiting the site (just click on the citation link below):

New measures provide more comprehensive results on ICT usage

Unlike other research available, the Connectivity Scorecard measures usage and skills such as literacy, the use of enterprise software and the accessibility of women to ICT. It also articulates the benefits of connectivity explicitly in terms of economic and social contributions taking into account varying needs in different countries.

Different economies have different needs

Economic growth of innovation driven economies depends on new ways of using connectivity, whereas for efficiency and resource driven economies social development plays an important role in getting the most from connectivity investments.

The study shows that even the world’s best connected countries such as the Unites States and Sweden are not exploiting communications technologies to their fullest potential. Given the room for improvement on multiple measures of connectivity, there is every reason to believe that the worldwide gain from improving connectivity could be significantly higher.

Connectivity Scorecard

Recommended Reading: HBR Working Papers

In the first article, these three topics are critically important: teaming skills, expanded social network, and boundary-spanning skills. In the second article, the idea that mentoring is not a one-way "brain drain" but a shared exchange is also important to "get right" when thinking about such programs:

Working Papers

Product Development and Learning in Project Teams: The Challenges Are the Benefits

Authors:

Amy C. Edmondson and Ingrid M. Nembhard

Abstract

The value of teams in new product development (NPD) is undeniable. Both the interdisciplinary nature of the work and industry trends necessitate that professionals from different functions work together on development projects to create the highest-quality product in the shortest time. Understanding the conditions that facilitate teamwork has been a pursuit of researchers for nearly a half-century. We review existing literature on teams and team learning, in organizational behavior, and technology and innovation to offer insights for research on new product development teams. Building on prior work, we summarize the organizational benefits of NPD teams, and identify five attributes of these teams that hinder attainment of their potential: (1) project complexity, (2) cross-functionality, (3) temporary membership, (4) fluid team boundaries and (5) embeddedness in organizational structures. We argue that effective management of these five attributes allows not only organization-level benefits, but also team-level benefits in the form of new capabilities and team-member resilience. We then highlight the critical roles of leadership and of communication and conflict management training as strategies for overcoming the challenges to team effectiveness in NPD, as well as for realizing five team benefits: (1) project management skills, (2) broad perspective, (3) teaming skills, (4) expanded social network, and (5) boundary-spanning skills. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our ideas for conducting future team research.

Complete Text (HBS access only, Acrobat PDF Version)

 

Why Mentoring Matters in a Hypercompetitive World

Authors:

Thomas J. DeLong, John J. Gabarro, and Robert J. Lees

Periodical:

HBS Centennial Issue. Harvard Business Review 86, no. 1 (January 2008)

Abstract

Professional service firms (PSFs), like so many other companies, are juggling the modern challenges of global competition, increased regulation, and rapid employee turnover. In a people-oriented industry, attrition has special import. DeLong and Gabarro, of Harvard Business School, along with former Morgan Stanley and Ernst & Young executive Lees, argue that a PSF can gain a much-needed competitive edge by renewing its focus on mentoring. The authors' in-depth interviews with professionals from more than 30 PSFs have yielded four principles for firms to heed as they rediscover this lost art. First, mentoring is personal. Rather than relying on standardized programs, mentors must frequently—and fairly—provide authentic advice and nurturing. Partners at PSFs know how to use their ample people skills effectively with clients; the benefits of using them with junior colleagues are even greater. Second, not everyone is an A player. A small dose of attention given to a B player goes at least as far as a large one offered to an A player. Since B players constitute about 70% of PSF staff, that's time well spent. Third, choice assignments are in short supply, which limits the number of learning opportunities available for associates. Good alternatives include shadowing senior professionals on assignments and taking on research or other projects that are not client-related but that nonetheless build expertise. Finally, mentoring is a two-way street. Protégés should not only learn from their senior counterparts, but also be taught to attract mentors—and to co-mentor one another.

Why Mentoring Matters in a Hypercompetitive World

First Look: January 29, 2008 — HBS Working Knowledge

Social Media Press Release - Is There Such A Thing?

I'm still absorbing this trend - sometimes I feel like it if walks like a duck, quacks like a duck - it's a duck (YAPR "yet another press release"). Other times, I see examples where a narrative is woven into the user experience but maintained loosely in the background (re: not so intrusive) and find perhaps some value in SMPR.

It’s been a week since we announced the Digital Snippets social media release platform and shared the template that explains its functionality. The news spawned quite a bit of discussion online, which is fabulous! We’re really hoping that interested parties will dig into the work that we’ve done and improve upon it further - it’s very early days for all this stuff, and as we have stood on the shoulders of giants in our work, so we hope others will do as well.

I’d like to take this opportunity to deepen the conversation and spark a discussion about functionality and use. It’s been brought to my attention that the best way for me to do this is to get granular and explain the detailed workings of Digital Snippets and just why we (and others) feel it’s so innovative.

Social Media Group » Blog Archive » Digital Snippets - how it works

Thinking In Terms of "Literacy"

Valid perspective. Developing skills and competencies concerning social media is perhaps the iceberg below all the Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 hype. Assumptions are made regarding digital strangers / immigrants / natives without nearly enough focus on the literacy aspects which can have tremendous impact on how well any of those groupings is able to leverage their perceived advantage (or overcome their perceived disadvantage):

According to a clear-eyed study just released by the British Library, the “Google generation” isn't actually composed of plugged-in child geniuses after all. Not only do children born since 1993 – the year the Web was invented – fail to conform to their stereotypes, but the jittery research habits that are often attributed to them are showing up across the entire demographic spectrum.

...

Are kids today smarter than previous generations? That's nonesense. My generation got there first, says Ivor Tossell

“Digital literacies and information literacies do not go hand in hand,” the report says. “A careful look at the literature over the past 25 years finds no improvement (or deterioration) in young people's information skills.”

In other words, the fact someone might be at home on the Web doesn't necessarily give them the skills they need to wring knowledge from it. For one thing, getting the most out of Google requires language and processing skills that young kids are often still working on.

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Everyone, from kids to academics to retirees, is showing what the report calls “horizontal, bouncing, checking, viewing” behaviour – the art of flitting across huge numbers of Web pages, spending little time on each before moving on to the next.

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So it shouldn't come as a surprise that having Google as a birthright doesn't give rise to a generation of superb information analysts. Technology changes behaviour, but when presented with a new technology, people will still behave within the framework of their abilities and desires.

globeandmail.com: The more things change ...

Jabber XCP Delivers Eventing via Pubsub

What will likely become a very critical component of "lifestreaming" that augments Atom/AtomPub (also a fundamental component):

Our developers are at it again, adding support to Jabber XCP for XEP-0163: Personal Eventing via Pubsub, which should be of interest to anyone following the evolution and use of presence technology. XEP-0163 lets users send updates about anything to users on their rosters. Personal eventing lets people easily publish things about themselves - it doesn’t get any more user-centric than this! The updates are sent using the XMPP Publish-Subscribe functionality used in Jabber XCP’s InfoBroker and described in XEP-0060. One way to look at it is that XEP-0163 takes XEP-0060 functionality to a more personal level.

...

The success of Twitter (which has XMPP in its architecture, BTW) and other similar services proves that personal eventing (in addition to presence, in general) is valued in social network settings. Service providers should be interested in the increased stickiness that personal eventing brings to their communities. Once users get used to seeing their friends’ moods, blog posts, activities, etc. they are more likely to stay in the communities which publish these details. The extension of social network technology to enterprise applications is in full swing, so by adding support for Personal Eventing via Pubsub to Jabber XCP, our extensible and highly scalable real-time presence and messaging platform will take the Power of Presence to a more personal and valuable level. The customers we’ve talked to about PEP have some great use cases and they will use this new functionality in their deployments. How about you?

Jabber Filaments Blog » Blog Archive » Jabber XCP Presence Platform Gets Personal (Eventing via Pubsub)

Peter Saint-Andre on Presence

Worth listening - I have enormous respect for Peter and the work that the XMPP community has accomplished. We tend to put XMPP in a box (yet another protocol for instant messaging that also happens to handle presence). That's unfortunate. XMPP has a diverse range of possible applications - for instance, there's a lot of talk lately about the synergy between XMPP and lifestream tools (e.g., Twitter) as well as a means to augment Atom/Atom Pub systems. I have no qualm with SIP at all but remain convinced that SIMPLE is fundamentally flawed, is being used by vendor to advance their own agendas, and should not the one-basket-for-all-eggs direction pursued by the industry when it comes to approaching "presence" in a broader sense. SIMPLE will have it's role, but XMPP should not defacto be dismissed as an option.

Peter Saint-Andre is Executive Director of the XMPP Standards Foundation. XMPP (formerly known as Jabber) is today's leading instant messaging protocol. As Skype users know well, IM is nothing without simple presence signaling. Lee and Peter talked about emerging presence.

Lee Dryburgh, host of the March Emerging Communications conference (co-sponsored by Skype Journal), interviewed Peter Saint-Andre (mp3, 48 MB, 50:00).

Skype Journal: eComm2008 blog: Peter Saint-Andre on Presence

YouTube + Digg + Obama = YouBama

So what if employees where to create a "place" on a corporate intranet and upload user-generated content that they captured (through inexpensive tools) related to some internal strategy, project, idea, etc., and explain why such an endeavor made sense - and then let co-workers vote it up or down? Is it inevitable that some type of internal YouTube becomes standard fare behind the firewall? 

A site called YouBama that launched a few days ago is a case in point. Designed by two Stanford grad students, Christopher Pedregal and Eric Park, to drum up grass-roots support for Obama, the site lets supporters upload videos explaining why they are going to vote for the candidate. The videos can then be voted up or down Digg-style. Pedregal explains to me:

The idea was to make it personal and individual. Everyone says this will be the YouTube elections. This can democratize the campaign process. It is an experiment. We don’t know if voters have a lot to say.

It is a simple but sophisticated site that will appeal to the YouTube generation, and an effective way to distill the most powerful messages with the broadest appeal. (The video at the top right now is a clip of George Clooney endorsing Obama on the Charlie Rose Show). The best part about the site is that it has nothing to do with the official Obama campaign. Says Pedregal:

There are a lot of things the Obama campaign can’t say or can’t do. There are a lot of sensitive issues regarding race or gender or attacks the candidates might use, and voters will want to react to that.

YouTube + Digg + Obama = YouBama

SproutBuilder: Making Widget Creation Easy

Interesting, if I have time later, I'll try playing with this:

SproutBuilder is going to explode the world of widgets on the web. This is far and away my favorite product I've seen at DEMO, not just this year but ever in the three years I've attended. Limited beta accounts are available to RWW readers via http://www.sproutbuilder.com/readwriteweb

The product is a drag-and-drop Flash authoring tool built on Adobe's Flex. SproutBuilder lets you build very sophisticated, multi-page widgets with media, analytics and more. In minutes. With ease.

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I asked Ryan Stewart, Rich Internet Application Evangelist at Adobe, if he had every seen anything like Sprout. He told me, "Sproutbuilder is one of the absolute coolest use cases I've seen for Flex. I think it lowers the barrier to entry to Flash and I hope it's going to spark a lot of creativity among people who aren't creating Flash content today."

I think that almost any individual or organization publishing online would find great value in using SproutBuilder to put together a nice looking, highly functional widget to distribute their content around the web.

SproutBuilder: You've Got to See This Drag and Drop Widget Maker - ReadWriteWeb

Social Media: Sometimes It's All About The Contest

Interesting to see where this blend of brand, advertising, community and gaming annd converge via social media: 

Votigo is an Oakland, Calif. company that offers businesses a way to engage their users with video or photo competitions.

While other companies have offered something similar, Votigo’s next step will be more interesting: It will turn its software into a Web-based application with an easy-to-use dashboard, so that anyone can create a contest featured around their brand.

Until now, marketers wanting to promote themselves on sites such as YouTube have been subject to proprietary policies. For example, YouTube doesn’t hand over any data to marketers about how their video ad campaigns perform. Votigo puts that data back in the marketers hands.

For example, Votigo lets Victoria Secret solicit video submissions from its users, in for a contest where users explain why they should be allowed to attend the Victoria Secret’s fashion show. The best video creator gets to attend (screenshot below.) With Votigo’s next step, though, the contest could be turned into a marketing campaign on other sites that Victoria Secret can then manage itself.

VentureBeat » Votigo, letting companies use contests to market themselves