Collaborative Thinking

The New Out-Of-Office Message: Twitter and FriendFeed

I was e-mailing a vendor contact as part of a document review process and received this "out of office" message. I think it's perfect. I've cleaned it up a bit below but I think this is a sign of things to come - don't push away, simply redirect:

I'm at the <insert name of event or business trip> between <dates> and will have delayed access to e-mail. If you have an extremely urgent issue, then call me directly at <cell phone info>.

If you want to keep track of me, then follow me via Twitter at http://twitter.com/<name> or via FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/<name>.

Out-of-office replaced by shared situational awareness.

Social Software: It's Not New, And It Includes e-Mail...

Based on some Twitter conversations - my definition of social software relies on the insight of Clay Shirky (who is referenced extensively below). Despite how vendors are trying to use the term as if they suddenly discovered something new - social software has been around for some time. And despite some vendors trying to constrain its definition to things like blogs, wikis, etc. social software needs to be examined as a continuum of software tools and applications - not as a time-slice to support a particular product agenda.

We need to recognize the lineage of social software, the instantiations of social software over the years (e.g., e-mail), where it worked - where it failed, and how today's current generation of social software better support social interactions and social contexts better than previous tools (e.g., a wiki vs. e-mail).

If we fail to acknowledge the lineage of social software in terms of its past (e.g., e-mail), present (e.g., blogs, wikis) and future - then we ignore many of the lessons learned along the way and we introduce the chance that we will repeat past mistakes. For instance, much of the chatter around social networks reminds me of the KM holy grail of the late nineties. Vendor positioning of their software as social computing platforms reminds me of the over-hyped marketing of groupware and portals.

Some key points to ponder - or perhaps consider them as "Shirkyisms"...

1.  "I was looking for something that gathered together all uses of software that supported interacting groups, even if the interaction was offline"

2. "Every time social software improves, it is followed by changes in the way groups work and socialize."

3. "One consistently surprising aspect of social software is that it is impossible to predict in advance all of the social dynamics it will create."

Additional Background:

Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

Let me offer a definition of social software, because it's a term that's still fairly amorphous. My definition is fairly simple: It's software that supports group interaction. I also want to emphasize, although that's a fairly simple definition, how radical that pattern is. The Internet supports lots of communications patterns, principally point-to-point and two-way, one-to-many outbound, and many-to-many two-way.

Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported point-to-point two-way. We had telephones, we had the telegraph. We were familiar with technological mediation of those kinds of conversations. Prior to the Internet, we had lots of patterns that supported one-way outbound. I could put something on television or the radio, I could publish a newspaper. We had the printing press. So although the Internet does good things for those patterns, they're patterns we knew from before.

Prior to the Internet, the last technology that had any real effect on the way people sat down and talked together was the table. There was no technological mediation for group conversations. The closest we got was the conference call, which never really worked right -- "Hello? Do I push this button now? Oh, shoot, I just hung up." It's not easy to set up a conference call, but it's very easy to email five of your friends and say "Hey, where are we going for pizza?" So ridiculously easy group forming is really news.

We've had social software for 40 years at most, dated from the Plato BBS system, and we've only had 10 years or so of widespread availability, so we're just finding out what works. We're still learning how to make these kinds of things.

Now, software that supports group interaction is a fundamentally unsatisfying definition in many ways, because it doesn't point to a specific class of technology. If you look at email, it obviously supports social patterns, but it can also support a broadcast pattern. If I'm a spammer, I'm going to mail things out to a million people, but they're not going to be talking to one another, and I'm not going to be talking to them -- spam is email, but it isn't social. If I'm mailing you, and you're mailing me back, we're having point-to-point and two-way conversation, but not one that creates group dynamics.

Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

Shirky: Social Software and the Politics of Groups

Social software, software that supports group communications, includes everything from the simple CC: line in email to vast 3D game worlds like EverQuest, and it can be as undirected as a chat room, or as task-oriented as a wiki (a collaborative workspace). Because there are so many patterns of group interaction, social software is a much larger category than things like groupware or online communities -- though it includes those things, not all group communication is business-focused or communal. One of the few commonalities in this big category is that social software is unique to the internet in a way that software for broadcast or personal communications are not.

Prior to the Web, we had hundreds of years of experience with broadcast media, from printing presses to radio and TV. Prior to email, we had hundreds of years experience with personal media -- the telegraph, the telephone. But outside the internet, we had almost nothing that supported conversation among many people at once. Conference calling was the best it got -- cumbersome, expensive, real-time only, and useless for large groups. The social tools of the internet, lightweight though most of them are, have a kind of fluidity and ease of use that the conference call never attained: compare the effortlessness of CC:ing half a dozen friend to decide on a movie, versus trying to set up a conference call to accomplish the same task.

The radical change was de-coupling groups in space and time. To get a conversation going around a conference table or campfire, you need to gather everyone in the same place at the same moment. By undoing those restrictions, the internet has ushered in a host of new social patterns, from the mailing list to the chat room to the weblog.

The thing that makes social software behave differently than other communications tools is that groups are entities in their own right. A group of people interacting with one another will exhibit behaviors that cannot be predicted by examining the individuals in isolation, peculiarly social effects like flaming and trolling or concerns about trust and reputation. This means that designing software for group-as-user is a problem that can't be attacked in the same way as designing a word processor or a graphics tool.

Our centuries of experience with printing presses and telegraphs have not prepared us for the design problems we face here. We have had real social software for less than forty years (dated from the Plato system), with less than a decade of general availability. We are still learning how to build and use the software-defined conference tables and campfires we're gathering around.

Shirky: Social Software and the Politics of Groups

Tracing the Evolution of Social Software

It isn't until late 2002 that the term 'social software' came into more common usage, probably due to the efforts of Clay Shirky who organized a "Social Software Summit" in November of 2002. He recalls his first usage of the term to be from approximately April of 2002.

I asked Clay if it was the loss of meaning in the terms 'groupware' that made him choose the term 'social software', and he replied:

"I was looking for something that gathered together all uses of software that supported interacting groups, even if the interaction was offline, e.g. Meetup, nTag, etc. Groupware was the obvious choice, but had become horribly polluted by enterprise groupware work."

I asked him why he didn't use the term 'collaborative software' and he commented:

"...because that seems a sub-set of groupware, leaving out other kinds of group processes such as discussion, mutual advice or favors, and play.

The broader issue is that there was no word or phrase that grouped the CSCW and online community currents together without also including a lot of non-group oriented stuff. CMC (Computer-Mediated Communication) for example, includes broadcast outlets like C|Net, two-person email exchanges, and spam -- much too broad. There was also no word or phrase that called attention to the explosion of interesting software for group activities that fell outside online communities and CSCW, things like Bass-Station (which is for offline community) or "Uncle Roy is All Around You" (which is computer-supported collaborative play.)"

Life With Alacrity: Tracing the Evolution of Social Software

Social Software

Near the end of 2002, the term "social software" was gaining ground due mostly to the efforts of ClayShirky, the [iSociety] project, and the [The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2003]. Shirky held a widely publicized "Social Software Summit", which can be best summarized by its [announcement]:

"Every time social software improves, it is followed by changes in the way groups work and socialize. One consistently surprising aspect of social software is that it is impossible to predict in advance all of the social dynamics it will create. Recognizing this, the Social Software Summit seeks to bring together a small group of practitioners and theorists (~25) to share experiences in writing social software or thinking about its effects."

Meatball Wiki: SocialSoftware

Merger + Social Computing = Should I Pay Attention To BEA?

The answer is yes in the long run but no in the short run.

There is a dual reality here: Oracle will eventually acquire several credible social computing tools (Reality #1 - some of BEA's stuff, especially Pathways, is really good). However, it is not clear at all, how those social computing technologies will be positioned, integrated and/or discarded (Reality #2 - a lack of transparency creates uncertainty which is a legitimate customer concern to postpone any buy decision or direction on continued deployment). 

These two news items, announced merely four days apart (see below), should be a stark reminder. Until the dust settles, I would rate any move to adopt BEA's social computing tools as high risk until product road maps are aligned with Oracle's social computing directions. Ditto on the collaboration and content fronts. Business and IT strategists need to be informed as to what components within the BEA platform survive vs. their Oracle counterparts. This includes knowing what tools will be retired and how similar products will converge over time (or not - perhaps some will remain separate but equal (another duality which might be hard to rationalize but BEA has two portals so it's been tried before).   

If BEA persuades me otherwise - I'll post my updated thoughts.

BEA Announces Stockholder Approval of Merger with Oracle Corporation

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Apr. 4, 2008 – BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAS), a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced that at a special meeting of stockholders held on April 4, 2008, its stockholders adopted the Agreement and Plan of Merger, dated January 16, 2008, among BEA, Oracle Corporation and Bronco Acquisition Corporation, pursuant to which BEA will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oracle.  Approximately 99.9% of the shares of BEA common stock entitled to vote and present at the special meeting were voted to adopt the Agreement and Plan of Merger, constituting approximately 68.6% of the outstanding shares of BEA common stock.

BEA Systems Releases Platform for Enterprise Social Computing

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 8, 2008 --The new release of BEA AquaLogic® Interaction 6.5 delivers the industry’s first full-fledged social computing platform, with a variety of new features that can help users harness the implicit interactions of day-to-day business – project updates, new documents, process steps, key relationships, expertise, data changes in underlying systems - that are often shared inefficiently through e-mail. The release also introduces improved usability designed to empower knowledge workers to more easily share community information, find specific expertise and communicate more flexibly, by providing tools that are user-driven and community-centric, and by immersing users in a highly flexible collaborative experience bolstered by desktop, RSS and Web-based tools.

New features include:

• Social profile pages: energized end-user profile pages, with new features that are designed to allow users to communicate their status and enable social networking and activity-sharing;
• ActivityService™ and new extensibility points for harvesting user interactions: a new REST-based API designed to allow systems to publish activity updates to a centralized service that can render those updates in end-user profile pages;
• Comprehensive RSS production and consumption: a comprehensive notification and subscription service that supports RSS generation to track new activity on common objects, as well as immediate or summary email updates. Additionally, the release features an RSS crawler, to import content into the search index and knowledge management framework via RSS;
• Additional usability improvements: these include human readable URLs, one-click page creation and edit menus, simplified wizard menus and more;
• Infrastructure improvements: these include support for .Net Framework 2.0 and IBM DB2

BEA Systems Releases Platform for Enterprise Social Computing

AIIM Completes Enterprise 2.0 Study

Worthwhile webcast to listen (replay) and set of PDF slides available (see below). My analysis of the effort based on the webcast and slides follow below.

Enterprise 2.0 – What’s the Real Story?

While many corporate executives believe Enterprise 2.0 will have a major impact on business, few understand exactly what it is or how to manage it. Social computing? emergent technologies? Blogs? Wikis? Social Networks? Mashups? RSS? Do these technologies amount to anything? Is your organization ahead or behind the curve with adoption and understanding of Enterprise 2.0?

Presentation Materials:
REPLAY Webcast
View presentation slides (PDF format)

Commentary:

1. The good news: the presentation (link below) has some very useful data points (some of which conflict, which shows some market confusion) on questions submitted to survey participants.
2. There is really no need for "yet another definition" of what Enterprise 2.0 means (Slide 6). I will continue to recommend that people leverage the original definition offered by Professor Andrew McAfee from Harvard Business School.
   • Here's AIIM's definition: "A system of web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise".
   • Here's McAfee's: "Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.”
3. The only caveat that I have added to McAfee's phrasing when I discuss E2.0 with clients or people in general is to phrase E2.0 as "the emergent use of social software platforms" vs. "use of emergent software platforms" which I believe preserves Mr. McAfee's original intent.
   • The gap in the definition of E2.0 remains "social software" - and that definition is best served by leveraging a definition from Clay Shirky who defines social software as "software designed for group interaction". That is incredibly helpful because it provides for a conversation about social software that preserves the lineage of information sharing, communication and collaboration tools.
   • Enterprise 2.0 builds on the Web 2.0 concept as defined by Tim O'Reilly who also describes an "architecture of participation" to describe systems that are designed for user contribution (very synergistic with McAfee's work). O'Reilly puts Web 2.0 in the context of "Web as platform", centralization of data ("data is the next Intel inside"), and collective intelligence (alluded to in the AIIM definition). The concept of platform is important and should not be discarded - especially given Marc Andresson's insightful definition of what constitutes a "platform" which puts the term in the context of a something that participates with "systems". 
4. We (as an industry) are still remiss in associating Enterprise 2.0 as a specific set of tools. That clouds the role of culture and other organizational dynamics which are so influential on "emergence". What we also need is to a better job at is defining the use case scenarios and usage models around information sharing, communication and collaboration tools that make something "E2.0" (basically, adding legs under McAffee's and Shirky's definitions).   
5. Listening to the webcast replay, I have a bad deja vu feeling (KM in the nineties). When you ask whether Enterprise 2.0 is important to your business strategy you are asking the wrong question. E2.0 augments your business and organizational initiatives - E2.0 is not an end in-and-of-itself. This was the false siren call of KM which lead to so many overblown expectations and so many project failures. It is no wonder that the term does not come up very often (Slide 20). Like other terms that are somewhat espoused by technologists, there's no business context. If you talked about E2.0 in business terms such as how such a program augments strategic talent initiatives, address shifting workforce demographics, assist with innovation efforts, reduce exception handling or other coordination costs, etc. you are far ahead of the game.
6. The role of culture is spot on. Enterprise 2.0 is not about "all collaboration", "all types of information sharing" or "all types of communication". The context of E2.0 is anchored around "emergence". Addressing organizational dynamics, which includes culture, is important to fully leverage and sustain the goals associated with E2.0. I discuss notions between different types of participation - that which is "directed" vs. what is "volunteered" in this post, "Why Is Social Software So Important?". Sometimes culture is they critical barrier, sometimes it is not - especially when participation and user contributions are "conscripted" (a term used by David Snowden in a KM context).

You can use tools associated with E2.0 in very beneficial ways - but sometimes a wiki is just a wiki, a blog is just a blog. Defacto use of the tool does not qualify as being "Enterprise 2.0". At times, a person's role, workflow rules and other functional duties require people to share information, communicate and collaborate with each other. Within such a context, a certain degree of interaction will occur, even if the organization's culture is deemed to be "unhealthy" (however you wish to define that symptom).

But even within a scenario where participation and contributions are directed - there are often opportunities for emergence - there is no exclusivity here between the more structured work that occurs within an organization and the informal interactions that E2.0 emphasizes.

Enterprise 2.0 – What’s the Real Story?

Enterprise 2.0: Culture Required?

The post below is worth reading. The issue of (in this case, successful use of wikis) culture is critically important when forming, nurturing and sustaining collaboration strategies. A key point is to understand the influence of "directed" collaboration versus "volunteered" collaboration. If we go back to the definition of Enterprise 2.0, one concept that anchors the meme is the notion of "emergence". Enterprise 2.0, by its very definition, does not address all types of collaboration. If I use a wiki within a business process where people are directed by role, workflow and functional needs of the procedure - that's not all that emergent at all - in fact, it's not really a valid Enterprise 2.0 use case scenario. But it is indeed use of a wiki for collaboration and it can thrive without the culture issues that this post correctly points out. However, it the wiki was open and allowed participation from others in the organization even though their role, workflow or functional duties did not direct them to interact with that wiki group - well, now we have crossed over into the emergence aspects of Enterprise 2.0 - and, we're back to "the culture thing". So you can see how tools, context and whether the interaction pattern is directed or volunteered all collide with each other. So some key points:

1. Not all collaboration is Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 addresses a key facet of collaboration that involves social software and "emergence".

2. Tools are tools. Tools in-and-of-themselves do not signal an Enterprise 2.0 solution.

3. You can be very successful in use tools associated with E2.0 (blogs, wikis, tag and social bookmarks, etc) even in situations where culture is "unhealthy" - and when participation is more or less "directed" by role, workflow, and functional duties.

4. To enable higher levels of participation and influence people to volunteer their contributions, then culture issues do indeed come to the forefront - you have entered the "E2.0 Zone" which involves not just tools, but addressing culture and other types of organizational dynamics. 

5. If you think just tossing tools out there makes you "Enterprise 2.0" - that view is dead wrong. More on this perspective can be found in an earlier post, "Why Is Social Software So Important" which I recommend reading.

Transparent Office: Culture is a destination not a starting point

I was just checking out the results of the recent AIIM Survey on Enterprise 2.0. (My company, Socialtext, was one of the underwriters.) There's a lot of great material there about how managers perceive Enterprise 2.0. I was particularly struck by how prominently culture appears as a theme in the responses. There is a view out there that an organization needs to have a "culture of collaboration" culture in order to successfully employ wikis and other Enterprise 2.0 tools.

That view is dead wrong. I've seen wikis thrive in un-collaborative cultures. I've seen wikis fail in collaborative cultures. I've seen wikis thrive in an organization alongside failing wikis in the same organization.

Transparent Office: Culture is a destination not a starting point

Microsoft Continues To Fill SharePoint Social Gaps

This is a really intriguing announcement with important implications. If you take the Atlassian deal which integrates a leading wiki solution into SharePoint, then take the alliance with NewsGator (i.e., Social Sites) to integrate its feed syndication platform with SharePoint, and then add in Telligent's Community Server for improved blogs and social networks - you end up with reasonably complete coverage of the expected capabilities in a social computing platform (albeit based on "partners to the rescue").

The good news: People have at least one partner option in many of the social software categories to deliver solution which leverage a core SharePoint platform investment.

The bad news: For Microsoft, I think this really does rip the cover off the notion that SharePoint's out-of-the-box social software features are all that good - people can pretty much ignore them and proceed right to the partner gallery. This approach solves a huge tactical challenge for Microsoft but should leave people wondering how Microsoft could have missed the boat so poorly and is essentially asking the market for a "mulligan" with partners taking the new shot. These deals continue to be partnerships Microsoft seemingly directs. I still would like to see more of a viral approach where Microsoft publishes how to swap-out its blog or wiki engine etc. In general, I prefer customers to be able to make their own selection from multiple options rather than have the core vendor offer one lucky vendor in each category.

The ugly news: In terms of market perception, IBM is falling behind on execution (or so it seems to me). I continue to hear concerns regarding how expensive Connections is just to get the Profiles piece for instance. I also am still waiting to see more growth in terms of partner alliances. Finally, some people have told me that they are looking for more of a Connections "stack" that does not require them to navigate through the rest of the IBM portfolio (especially those that are looking at Lotus software for the first time - perhaps not wanting to expand dependencies on SharePoint).

Microsoft goes in and says "whatever your problem is, SharePoint fixes it". IBM goes in and makes it complicated by having to tutor people on its portfolio (e.g., Connections, Quickr, etc). Even though I believe IBM is being more forthright (many business situations are not magically solved by a single product), they are getting out-executed when it comes to social computing even though the competitive product (SharePoint) is not a complete framework.   

Bringing the value of social networking to SharePoint

... Providing a scalable and integrated application your organization can depend upon, these two .NET platforms enhance collaboration and workflow. By positioning Community Server next to your existing SharePoint application, you unlock several key integration points:

• Fully Integrated Experience Community Server is fully integrated into SharePoint through single sign-on and custom SharePoint WebParts along with deep support for SharePoint management of these new capabilities.
• Enterprise Grade Blogging Utilizing Community Server’s Enterprise grade blogging product users of SharePoint can interact with Community Server blog content, allowing the user to view blog content in SharePoint and read, comment on, and post content. Community Server’s built in support for rich media, moderation tools, permissions, and more bring SharePoint blogging to a whole new level.
• Feature Rich Forums SharePoint users will benefit from the incredibly rich Community Server Web 2.0 message boards with full support for read, reply, and posting all within SharePoint. To unlock the full features of the forums, users can still go directly into their Community Server forums.
• Social Streams Community Server’s new Social Streams feature is additionally available in SharePoint. Similar to Facebook style user activity you will be able to browse a chronological list of updates from what your friends are doing both within SharePoint and Community Server.
• Rich, detailed Reporting Utilizing the new Harvest® Reporting Server suite you can now extract a tremendous amount of rich detail about how your users are using Community Server’s social networking and collaboration functionality.

Announcements

Gaming Jumps Into The Talent Pool

Interesting story on virtual worlds that blends student learning with recruitment and talent strategies:

Virtual World Readies Students For Real World

Nationwide, 230 schools and more than 5,000 students are participating in this year's launch of the game called Event! created by Deloitte, a New York-based professional services company. Students, organized into teams of four, will be scored on their business acumen as part of a national competition. Three winning teams will be chosen Thursday, said Casey Carlson, national campus recruiting leader with Deloitte.

The company hopes the game will help introduce high school students to careers in accounting and business consulting.

Virtual World Readies Students For Real World -- Schools, New York, Nighthawk Systems -- Courant.com

Serious Games Dealing With Real-World Ethics & Finance

For Deloitte, it's about helping to develop a more qualified talent pool for the business community at large--as well as generate interest in accounting and business consultancy in particular. The VTCHS is part of the global accounting giant's ongoing Pre-College Outreach efforts--programs that "will help us fill our talent pipeline in the years to come," said Stan Smith, national director of Next Generation Initiatives, Deloitte & Touche USA LLP.

FUTURE-MAKING SERIOUS GAMES: Serious Games Dealing With Real-World Ethics & Finance

Social Software, IT Risk and Millennials

One of the topics not discussed enough is how to manage risk factors associated with social applications that encourage open sharing, transparency, etc. Under certain situations, the need for organizations to comply with regulatory controls, audit demands and privacy constraints will result in security/risk programs to become a core component within any social media strategy (both internally and externally). That does not mean that security and risk factors trump goals related to social applications - but it does mean that decision makers need to prioritize such issues upstream and work diligently on the behavioral aspects as outlined below:

Among the highlights of the study:

• 66 percent of Millennials regularly access social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace at work, vs.13 percent of other workers.
• 75 percent of Millennials access Webmail at work vs. 54 percent of others.
• 46 percent of millennials use IM at work vs. 22 percent of others.
• Less than half (45 percent) of Millennials stick to company-issued devices or software as opposed to nearly 70 percent of other workers. And 69 percent of Millennials will use whatever application/device/technology they want regardless of source or corporate IT policies (only 31 percent of others).
• Three times as many millennials have downloaded software at work for personal use (75 percent vs. 25 percent).
• Millennials regularly store corporate data on personal devices - far more than others. Common channels are personal PCs (39 percent vs. 24 percent), USB drives (38 vs. 14), personal hard drives (20 vs. 13), and smart phones (13 vs. 6).

Findings of this nature highlight the imperative that organizations face in harmonizing the workstyles of their younger workers with the legitimate security, governance and compliance issues raised by the use of consumer-grade technologies in the enterprise.

Emphasis Added : New Study on IT Risk and Millennials

Corporate Social Responsibility: New Application Landscape For Social Software?

Interesting article. Perhaps too early to tell whether a large company can really balance its market objectives with societal expectations. Wal-Mark brings out strong opinions on both sides of the issue re: can a corporate be socially responsibility without such efforts being perceived as cover for an agenda tied to profit motives. Still, the trend is worth monitoring and the article highlights some thought-provoking stories. In the article ad if you keep a background conversation going on how social software applications might help facilitate transparency, community building and network relationships (assuming that the organizational dynamics are being addressed in parallel).   

... Against this backdrop, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. unveiled a new plan to reduce the company’s environmental footprint. In an October 2005 speech broadcast to all 1.6 million employees in all 6,000-plus stores and shared with some 60,000 suppliers worldwide, he announced that Wal-Mart was initiating a sweeping “business sustainability strategy.” The idea was to reduce the company’s impact on the environment through a commitment to three ambitious goals: “To be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain our resources and the environment.” ³

But these weren’t the plan’s only goals. “Sustainability represents the biggest business opportunity of the 21st century,” says Jib Ellison, founder of Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting, which helped Wal-Mart formulate its business sustainability strategy.⁴ His firm pointed out that actively pursuing an environmental agenda would help Wal-Mart differentiate itself from its competition, maintain a license to grow, and make its supply chain dramatically more efficient. In other words, a good business sustainability plan would help Wal-Mart get even better at what it does best: drive down costs to generate profits.

To go green, Wal-Mart, with its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., would have to think outside the “Bentonville Bubble.” For years, the company had operated in relative isolation from its external stakeholders, including nonprofits, government agencies, consultancies, and academic institutions. Without much in-house expertise on sustainability and environmental performance, it would need to involve these stakeholders in its new plan.

...

And so Wal-Mart began to reach out to its external stakeholders. The corporation first identified areas of maximum environmental impact and then invited stakeholders to join 14 “sustainable value networks” – such as the seafood network and the packaging network – to work toward business and environmental sustainability in each area. (See “Wal-Mart’s Sustainable Value Networks,” above.) In return, network participants would gain information about and say in Wal-Mart’s operations.

Elm and Andrew Ruben, Wal-Mart’s vice president of corporate strategy and business sustainability, directed Wal- Mart’s network leaders to “derive economic benefits from improved environmental and social outcomes,” says Elm. “It’s not philanthropy,” he adds. By the end of the sustainability strategy’s first year, the network teams had generated savings that were roughly equal to the profits generated by several Wal-Mart Supercenters, Ruben and Elm report.

Stanford Social Innovation Review : Articles : The Greening of Wal-Mart (March 11, 2008)

Social Software In The Enterprise

Picking up on the continued exchange of perspectives on large platforms vs. more specialized solutions:

...One theme that comes up time and time again when I talk to business and IT decision makers can be summarized as "technology stewardship". IBM and Microsoft represent a large piece of the social software portfolio within large enterprises. The vendor that does the better job of building out the partner ecosystem will win over the long run. The core platform needs to be modular, loosely coupled, open APIs (e.g., REST), etc. Marc Andreessen in a 9/7/2007 post is a good point of reference. The vendor steward needs to allow their modules to be swapped out - for the data to be accessible, etc.

...

There's no clear right or wrong decision. As I pointed out in these posts - people need to define the decision criteria and make these investments in the context of a reference architecture. This problem is age-old: large vendor is already in-house - market disruption occurs - new vendors deliver faster - older vendors take longer and delivers initial solution that is not that great - new vendors get some market share - older vendors finally respond with "full force" and smaller vendors either are acquired, fail or a few actually break out by differentiating themselves, focusing on verticals or extending the larger platform in some way (from competitor to partner).

Global Neighbourhoods: Dennis Howlett & the end of Software