Enterprise 2.0: Declaring War Does Not Work

Written by Alex Williams / November 3, 2009 11:20 AM / 6 Comments

At the Enterprise 2.0 conference Andrew McAfee made a few points about the approach to enterprise technology and how it might be changed a bit.

McAffee, of the Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, is considered the father of Enterprise 2.0. His views reflect how Enterprise 2.0 is evolving but still with a fair degree of resistance for its adoption.

Here they are...

Declaring War On The Enterprise

This definitely does not work. Do you think that you will get a project with such an approach?

Allow Walled Gardens to Flourish

Data silos prevent the ability to find and share information. You need to look across the organization. It's a reason why enterprise search and collaborative search will continue to grow in demand.

Accentuate the Negative

We tend to talk too much about the challenges with Enterprise 2.0. This causes some issues with company execs who are a bit wary in the first place. It's time for more customer stories to show the business benefits of this new breed of enterprise technology.

Try to Replace Email

Too often we try to replace email in the enterprise. But people do use it. It's time to accept that email is part of a work style familiar to most users.

Fall in Love With Features

We get too feature crazy. It's like that remote for your TV. How do you use this thing? With too many features, the user can get confused, turning them off to the technology.

Overuse of the Word Social

Executives get nervous when they hear this too often. They are not in the business of running a social club.

The data silos issue hits home the hardest for us. The corporate world is document-centric. How can data silos be fragmented into bits that people can easily consume and use? That's a major challenge facing Enterprise 2.0.

Comments

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I want to go, because I’ve read a lot about Enterprise 2.0 and I do think that it’s the future of enterprise technologies. I think that adoption of some of these technologies might do our company good. I want to explore the possibilities and evaluate options.

Posted by: xmas presents | November 3, 2009 8:22 PM

very truthful

Posted by: coria | November 4, 2009 5:48 AM

On the small business and consumer side, Web 2.0 did a good job with keeping it simple. To McAfee's point, Enterprise 2.0 will need to follow suit with simplicity. Enterprises still send out RFPs with hundreds of feature requirements during package selection. Is this from the influence of Gartner's and Forrester's "vendor maturity" requirements? Or are we guilty of giving feature requirement responsibility to the super users and tool geeks? I think this is all from traditional IT practices. Would Enterprise 2.0 vendors be more successful targeting the business units decision makers rather than IT? Maybe we should go to front-line business folks and ask them what provides real value (what they are willing to put up with) when we shove new technology onto their already full plates.

Posted by: Paul | November 4, 2009 5:58 AM

I think the biggest problem is: not proving you can save your customer money. Why do you imagine they will pay you for software if you can't prove it will do that?

Posted by: Anonymous | November 4, 2009 7:36 AM

I agree with the point "Try to replace email".

Email has been around for a long time and it is very much part of the life of people both in the professionally and personally.

Have heard lots of negative things about email. I agree with some of them but I think the crucial thing is how to new enterprise tools can be deployed to complement email and to reduce the load of emails one gets.

Posted by: Sunny | November 9, 2009 4:52 PM

This is a great post, Alex! Many great points that hit home for Visage Mobile. I just wrote a post on our blog that jumps off many of the issues outlined in the article and explains where we see it playing a role in corporate mobility management.

If you'd like to learn more, please take a look at our post: Putting Enterprise 2.0 Right In Your Playbook

All the best.

Posted by: Matt Kapko | December 3, 2009 12:31 PM