Short notice that I blogged an english summary (and personal analysis) of the third pre-conference interview Joachim Niemeier did with Arne Schümann of Festo. It’s here at my personal site: “Changing organisations via Enterprise 2.0 - Festo“, while you can find the german language fulltext of the interview here at the Enterprise 2.0 Forum site: ”Fallbeispiel: Enterprise2.0@Festo - Biographie eines Projektes“.

Festo is an internationally operating german company which I choose to describe as a “family-owned global player” - the interview covered their approach towards Enterprise 2.0, their context, background, organizational setting and the obstacles and challenges they’re seeing. My main learning from the interview is that changing organisations via Enterprise 2.0 is both hard and (potentially) extremely rewarding - nothing new here for you, I guess … still, there are some interesting points in there, like i.e.

• the role of hierarchy and how to deal with it when it must evolve into something like “guided autonomy” (and yes, I couldn’t resist to voice my doubts, would love to hear your thoughts)
• my take on the small rant objection by Mr. Schümann that “most Enterprise 2.0 consultants are way too theoretical” - and some links to posts by me about the “E2.0 consulting value proposition”

I attended a mashup* Event on Enterprise 2.0 in July at BT’s spectacularly plush little auditorium in London (you can watch the whole event on video at that link). It was a pleasant evening, characterised by hearing JP Rangaswami speak (the man is a walking recruitment advertisement for BT: “This could be your boss. Why work elsewhere?”) — and finally getting to meet him, briefly, in the flesh — as well as by my friend Simon Wardley’s purported swan song of an Enterprise 2.0 talk (and if you know Simon’s love of ducks, you’ll understand why that was a crack most worthy of a wince).

But the most interesting thing for me about the evening was the audience. This was not a tech heavy audience: most of the folks attending were business, with a smattering of vendors hoping to sell to them. And of the business types, the majority tribe was marketing and communications people. They seemed to be there to try and understand how they could use these new tools to enhance their role and control the impact of them (which, if done properly, ought to be a win for everybody: consider the meme of the “Authentic Enterprise”). That was an interesting coincidence for me, as I had, just that week, been engaged in a bruising battle within my own organisation over the idea of opening up the floodgates and allowing the outside world to see (via blogs) some of our talented people actually thinking and working. My primary antagonist in that debate (still ongoing) is marketing (supported by their stormtroopers, the lawyers). So I couldn’t resist the temptation to generate some heat, and, as the panel opened up for questions, the one I posed was this:

“There’s a common refrain heard in the echo chamber of Enterprise 2.0 bloviation that ‘IT is the enemy’: that these tools empower business people to work around a lumbering and prohibitive IT, yada, yada. But are IT people really E2.0’s greatest foe? Or is it marketing / communications? Is it the people in charge of ‘the message’, who are now confronted with (some) loss of control over it?”

That generated some mild uproar, as expected, and a number of “That’s nonsense” responses from the crowd. But to be honest, none of the answers we heard that night from the panel really took a strong stance on the issue. So, to my mind, the question is still an open one.

What do you think?

Two days ago Simon Wardley published a short list of people you want to know for answers to questions within the field of emerging enterprise technologies - while being very pleased that he mentioned this “very young” information ressource I would like to add some more people to his list:

Enterprise 2.0: Sören Stamer of Coremedia (though he is the CEO of a software company - he really changed his company by means of Enterprise 2.0 - he is also the co-editor of the very nice book “Die Kunst, loszulassen!” - see the video with his speach of the Enterprise 2 Open @ Cebit below ) same with Frank Roebers of Synaxon ( a big German based electronics reseller - German video interview)

Sevenload Direkt

As a warm-up dance for the Enterprise 2.0 FORUM on Sept. 18th in Cologne, Joachim Niemeier, the moderator of the E2.0 FORUM, conducted some interviews with our speakers. Below you’ll find a English translation with the key content of the interview with Prof. Dr Michael Koch of the Universität der Bundeswehr, München, who is teaching and researching in the field of cooperation systems.

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Questions by Joachim Niemeier (JN) / Answers by Michael Koch (MK)
JN: What are the key questions within the E2.0 area you are working on?

MK:

• I am working on this topic in two areas.
• First as a researcher (already since the times of CSCW and Groupware) on identifying success factors for the use of social software within the enterprise; esp. for the use of social networking solutions and open-source social software systesms.
• Second as a practioneer because my research group has the task of implementing a social software solution to support the collaboration in research and education at the Universität der Bundeswehr; within this area we are analysing and testing some kind of integrated blog, wiki and social networking solution.

JN: As you work on this topic already for many years let me ask you shortly whether Enterprise 2.0 is not just old wine in new skins?

MK:

• A lot of the questions within this field are the same; e.g. integration of the technical solution within the organization and how-to solve this integration from a sociological and technological perspective.
• But there is a key differnce towards the older days: while office automation, CSCW and Groupware have been set up and made to use within a “top-down” approach, the key idea of E2.0 solution is to let grow the use and utility of social software within a “bottom-up” approach - with the benefits of the individual as key target.
• Therefore the key element of those project is not anymore the acceptance of the technology but the motivation of people getting involved and participating.

JN: How would you explain the notion of Enterprise 2.0 towards a corporate manager?

MK:

• E2.0 is the use of flexible web-based tools to enable a better communcation and collaboration within the organisation.
• Though it is still about technology it is about the notion of technology to change something.
• Social software as the underlying technology approach can change the way communcation and collaboration is organized within the organisation towards a more flexible approach.

JN: How is Enterprise 2.0 changing the enterprise?

MK:

• Within the enterprises E2.0 is leading towards a more flexible, participative as well more integrative (in means of including customers, co-workers and partners) way of collaboration.
• This increase of participation will overcome hierarchical structures and their communicative limitations.
• This will lead towards changes because co-workers can access information easier.

JN: How is the key “promoter” for the E2.0 project in your organization?

MK:

• I think in this point the university is not very much different from any enterprise: the key “promoter” for the E2.0 idea are the member of the organization itself - means the academic research fellows and the students.
• Those know social software tools already from their private use - and want these also for work; e.g. a working groups wants a wiki to collaborate within a research project or others want somekind of blogging tool to support and inform their students.
• Also in a second point the academic organisation is not very different from the corporate organisation: the IT department does not have enough ressources to support these adhoc demands.
• Therefore my group is trying to develop an integrative solution while combining “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches. As in corporations we cannot force any department to use a solution, but we can make it easier to use it. Therefore we are analysing the requirements and want to choose the best solutions and provide advices to how to use this.

JN: What are the key barriers for the enterprise 2.0 topic? What are your advices for this topic?

MK:

• A big danger is that the topic is positioned too technical; a typical pitfal is to provide a technology but not to provide advices how to realize the benefits with it.
• Therefore we are not only installing a central wiki and a multi-user blogging solution within our organisation, but also are collecting “success stories” how to facilitat the benefits with these tools; that is what we call “user-orientated documentation” - we are not only documenting how to use the features of the tools but also what benefits they provide.
• From our experience it makes no sense of pushing the users in some kind of “formal template” approach (means providing templates for setting up informational structures); in the extreme case this will lead towards the avoidance of the new tools; this means we need some new kind of quality assurance for the usage of web 2.0 and social software tools within the enterprise; a good quality method is the “gardening” approach - someone is in charge for structuring the content and assuring the quality while not building barriers for the users.

JN: What are your three wishes regarding a successful E2.0 deployment in your organization?

MK:

• Actually it is just one big, but very concrete wish: social software solutions must be better integrative. So far the existent solutions are very modular in its own concept but very monolithic when it comes to the integration with other solutions; even open source solutions as WordPress or Twiki are very hard to integrate with each other; businesses need more complete solutions therefore I hope the open source solutions will grow together on a higher level.

JN: What are your expectations for the Enterprise 2.0 FORUM?

MK:

• I am looking forward towards an open exchange of information and hope to get to know more E2.0 practioneers as well as their cases and experiences.
• I will talk about two studies where we have evaluated the success factors of the use of social networking services within corporations; within the first study we have conducted an online research on what social networking services are, which functionalities they include and with what expectation they have been set up; in a second study we have analyzed case studies on the corporate use of social networking services and its challenges.

JN: What will happen when the generation Y will enter the enterprises?

MK:

• From my perspective today the students know a lot of tools and services as StudiVZ or Facebook; but IMO it is not clear to many students how these tools can be used effectively within organisations; therefore I believe that the students nowadays are not any further then the enterprises; but this generation will add some more pressure towards the enterprises in order to use social software tools - though they will not enrich the enterprise with some kind of application expertise.

JN: What role is web 2.o playing with the academic processes?

MK:

• I see some kind of single usage of Web 2.0 within the universities but cannot say that a lot of faculties or big parts of the academic institutions are using Web 2.0 intensively.
• There are some examples for using blogs and wikis to support the academic courses; a good appliance is shown by my collegue Barbara Niedner (http://www.unibw.de/sp/lehre/dozent?mid=2&id=29) with her courses on “Generation 2.0 - Kommunikationswissenschaftliche Betrachtung des Web 2.0″ (Generation 2.0 - from a communication science perspective on Web 2.0) or “Uni-Flirt Podcast”.
• With the academic research we are using the whole bandwith of wikis, weblogs (instead of mailing lists) and social tagging services; here you have to distinguish the use of tools within the closed context of academic projects and a public publication of information; we have experienced that the use of weblogs is not favorable for all kind of communications; and weblogs will also not substitute the classical academic publication processes; but if you want to approach some alternative target groups weblogs are a effective way of publication; e.g. in my research field of the “applied sciences of informatik” contacts to enterprises and practioneers is very important and for the dialogue with these target groups weblogs are very helpful.
• Also the networking within the academic sphere is slowly getting in motion; academic weblogs like the Wissenschafts-Café (http://www.wissenschafts-cafe.net) are being organised; and there are a lot of projects going on under different names like Grid, Science 2.0 or E-Science/E-Research - focusing on supporting the cooperation and the knowledge management within the academic sphere (see http://scholarz.net/, http://www.researchgate.net/, http://www.scilink.com/).
• And to mentioned as well - all those projects are been developed bottom-up.

This is just a short notice that I blogged a summary of the interview our event moderator Joachim Niemeier did with Christian Kuhna, Head of Internal Communications of the adidas Group, who is presenting at the upcoming Executive Forum at my site:

• usage areas of Enterprise 2.0 at Adidas
• Adidas’ current intranet situation, and the aims and goals they are pursuing
• who is engaged as an inner-company proponent of Enterprise 2.0
• Mr.Kuhna’s expectations for the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 Forum

As the interview is only available in german language (you can find the full text of the interview at the conference site) I thought it a good idea to try giving you an english writeup - and I couldn’t resist adding some remarks and thoughts to it. So while I am looking forward to meeting Mr.Kuhna at the event to discuss things, until then I would also appreciate your take.

On my personal blog, I wrote up a thesis on the idea that the proper mix of business process management (BPM) and social networking + collaboration software might be the “killer app”, at least in the near term, for the Enterprise 2.0 domain.

As blog posts tend to be (especially mine), that’s a quite wordy post — long and dense, and not light reading. For my inaugural post here, I’ve chosen to present the same information, but in a slightly more digestible format (I hope). I’m a fan of using different modes of discourse — I hope this one will prove interesting and / or useful to you.

1. What is your name?

Suw Charman-Anderson

2. Who are you and what are you doing?

I’m a Web 2.0 expert, and I provide advice and consulting for companies interested in improving collaboration and communication within their business.

3. How did you get to the E2.0 topic?

I’ve been working as a Web 2.0 consultant for over four years, and I have focused much of my attention on understanding how and why some people adopt social tools, and others don’t. Social software is ‘elective’, so people can choose whether or not they want to use a blog or a wiki, so how do we introduce these tools in such a way that people are drawn to them? It’s an important question to address if social software is to be a success in business.

4. What is your understanding of the core concept of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

For me, Enterprise 2.0 is really about mending some fundamentally flawed business management ideas and practices. For decades, there’s been this idea that competition between teams and departments increases production, but instead it can cause unhealthy competitive behaviour that damages the not just the company’s profits, but also creates an unpleasant working environment. Co-operation and collaboration, on the other hand, can both help businesses become more efficient and productive, and can create a more collegial atmosphere which is more enjoyable to work in.

5. What are the main potentials of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

The careful application of Web 2.0 tools to the enterprise is a challenge, but companies that do so successfully can reap many rewards, including:

• reduce the duplication of effort by ensuring teams working on similar projects are talking to each other
• capture knowledge and wisdom through people’s natural desire to communicate, thus helping new starters get up to speed more quickly and ameliorating loss of knowledge when people leave
• easily share that knowledge across teams, departments and countries
• form tighter, more loyal teams by improving interpersonal relationships
• decrease the amount of email being sent by moving communications on to more appropriate tools
• improve collaboration by providing better environments for working together
• make data more findable, and re-findable, thus decreasing the amount of time wasted looking for information

There are many benefits to Enterprise 2.0, some of which can be realised very quickly and easily, but all of which can help create long-lasting positive change.

The main potential of the Enterprise 2.0 idea is something that I have touched on above briefly as well, which is capability to disrupt the traditional corporate space, bringing into the game concepts like corporate responsibility, ownership, accountability, trust, openness, flexibility in such a way that every single knowledge worker has got the opportunity to build further up on their passion for whatever the subject matter by reaching out, connecting and collaborating with other peers, in an environment where openness & transparency are key to help nurture a trustworthy environment where innovation is the main beneficiary. That’s the potential that Enterprise 2.0 has been having all along. Nothing to do with the tools, nor the processes. Just the people

6. What are the main challenges and threats of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

Adoption can be a real challenge. The technology is cheap and easy to install, but unless some thought is given to what the tools are going to be used for, and by whom, they can end up languishing on the intranet, unused. Companies are happy to spend money on servers, software and licences, but are often reluctant to spend on the one thing that all Enterprise 2.0 projects rely on - people. I always recommend that companies start thinking about implementation, roll-out and adoption even before they have decided on what tools they are going to install. They have to have a comprehensive strategy that is focused on the users and how the tools are going to help them do their job on a daily basis.

7. Please give us three tags that describe your person and work best?

collaborative, creative, curious

8. Please give us three links to articles/contributions that describe your views best?

Google Tech Talk
Adoption Strategy for Social Media
The Importance of Pigheadedness

9. Please give us three names of collegues that you would refer to as brother-in-spirit?

1. Euan Semple
2. Stephanie Booth
3. Kevin Anderson (my husband, so I’m a bit biased, but he’s done some truly ground-breaking work in the field of Journalism 2.0)