In addition to Web 2.0 itself however, we have two more important enterprise software trends: Office 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, coined by Ismael Ghalimi and Andrew McAfee respectively. Office 2.0 represents the increasing use of browser-based software in the office, while Enterprise 2.0 is more Web 2.0-ish in that it specifically describes the use of freeform, emergent, social software to conduct collaboration and share knowledge.
Specifically this means the fact that corporate information tends to be non-shared by default, that the easiest productivity tools to use are the ones that have very little collaboration built-in, and that the information that does exist is often impossible to find and is often structured in some formal, centrally controlled way.
Certainly, increased transparency, some loss of control over information flow, and outright abuse of low-barrier Intranet publishing tools gives enterprise IT and business leaders pause for thought.
And while some of it must remain under strict control, particularly in public companies, much of it is unnessarily — and usually to a fault — hidden, unreused, and unexploited.
Unexploited sources. Action: Implement a Wiki so as to share and keep up to date this wealth of information e.g. manuals, meeting agenda, minutes of meeting. This would act as the memory of the enterprise
Explain the reasoning behind retaining more knowledge, in making it public, searchable, and organizing it via tagging. Describe the benefits of being able to access much fresher and more up-to-date information elsewhere in the organization because their colleagues are managing more of their projects, tasks, and other work via social tools.
Provide useful templates for common activities and reference material such as projects, tasks, resource management, policies, procedures, standards, and so on. You still have to keep template layouts and template usage simple; excessive structure tends to kill the golden goose of contributions quickly. But a little basic structure goes a long way and prevents contributors from having to figure out how to structure all the white space and provide a simple layer of consistency.
The enterprise has not caught up, largely because most enterprise information doesn't allow a hyperlink structure, and links aren't encouraged very much when it does
setting up blog and wiki directories as well as good enterprise search based on link ranking (which is what Google does to make the right information come up in the first few pages of search results.)
Provide your own search engine in the tools only if you must.
, the real issue, day in and day out, with getting Enterprise 2.0 to take off is to educate, evangelize, demonstrate, and most importantly, evolve the interface and structure of your tools until you pick the right formula that resonates with your audience.
This boils down to having some form of moderation, either human or automated, to ensure that the level of discourse remains at some bare minimimum acceptable standard.
A high-profile executive sponsor that obviously uses the tools can also help in a big way.
Triggering an Enterprise 2.0 ecosystem quickly is likely an early activity driver. This can mean a lot of things but the link structure of Web tools allows information to quickly flow, circulate, and mesh together. You can leverage this in a almost infinite number of ways to drive user activity, interesting content, create awareness of what the company is "thinking", and more.
For example, create a blog for every employee in the company and mail the link to them with instructions on how to use it.
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Create a social bookmarking site for the enterprise where everyone can see what is being bookmarked by everyone else that day.
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Create an internal Wikipedia that contains a seperate copy of all Intranet content and let users edit away.
> The possibilities are endless and provide a much greater number of "entry points" where people can get started with these tools.
The problems will be with the business culture, not the technology.
For example, create a blog for every employee in the company and mail the link to them with instructions on how to use it.
Create a social bookmarking site for the enterprise where everyone can see what is being bookmarked by everyone else that day.
Create an internal Wikipedia that contains a seperate copy of all Intranet content and let users edit away.
Allowing the output of SQL queries to be inserted into wikis when they load, calling Web services or using Flash badges that access data resources can turn Enterprise 2.0 tools from pure knowledge management into actual hybrids of software and data
And the reverse should be true as well, getting data back out into traditional tools including Office documents, PDFs, and XML must be easy to inspire trust and lower barriers to use.
factors that differentiate successful Enterprise 2.0 deployments from unsuccessful ones
things that are especially important to get right in order to succeed with E2.0. Italics denote difficulty— aspects of technology, initiatives, and culture that seem to be particularly hard to get right.