It’s been a long time for this “sleeping beauty” to awaken again, but now it’s just the time to get things going again - because there are some exciting community events ahead. For example the second Enterprise 2.0 FORUM on Feb. 12th in Cologne with Dave Terrar and a lot of different German cases - starting from A as ABB to V as Vodafone. We have just begun with our pre-conference interviews - and in the notion of the community blog I’d like to publish an English transcript of the interview with Dr. Frank Schönefeld, COO of T-Systems Multimedia Solutions:

1) Dr Schönefeld, you are a speaker at the upcoming E2.0 FORUM in Cologne and will be having a talk about the de-mystification of Enterprise 2.0. What can we expect? Can you give us three keywords prospecting your talk?

The notion and idea of Enterprise 2.0 has been recently surrounded by some myths - for example we are speaking of “the dawn of the emergent collaboration”, of “wikinomics” or the power of “everybody”. What I am aiming for is to clean up the myths to reveal the core idea - in the hope something will rest.

2) Your talk is focussing on the structuring the value proposition of enterprise 2.0. What is your motivation behind this approach?

Enterprises are not buying any myths in times of crisis. They only get convinced if they understand what costs savings, productivity increases or new opportunities can be realized [by this apporach] within the organization or with partners, customers or any other stakeholder.

3) The last E2.0 FORUM has shown, that successful E2.0 projects are characterized by the following: “Think Big, Start Small and Move Fast” What do you think about this statement?

I believe that the initial phase of social software as the new thing has already passed the enterprises. Enterprises have made their first experiences and for the most of them it was just another YANT - Yet Another Nice Tool. In my opinion we have to settle the ground for the conviction that todays known Intranets will change within the next five years and that Enterprise 2.0 will give a lot of input to these. Therefore - “think different and act” - would be a better statement in my beliefs.

4) In regards to your systematisation what is your initial point to start from? Is it the target dimension to start from to gain the needed momentum for the project?

I believe you have to analyse the target dimension closely to understand and target the benefits. But in the adoption process the benefits can be realized and summed up on different dimensions.

5) How do you think about Enterprise 2.0 regarding the ongoing economic situation? Is enterprise 2.0 a way out or a deadlock for the situation?

Forrester has reduced its optimistic market forecast during the last weeks but is still predicting 15 to 25% growth for the Web 2.0 Collaboration Software Market. Not bad for a crisis, isn’t it? But all jesting aside we are just testing the acceptance for the topic in the market ourselves. And we have to constat, that the interest is stll existent but the path towards a decision is a long one.

What do you think about the myths and the value proposition of Enterprise 2.0?

Or France, or Japan, or Brazil? Or, indeed, anywhere that is not an “Anglo/Saxon” culture? Now, wait, wait — before you flame on! (or worse), hear me out. It’s hard to talk about the issue I want to raise here without raising some emotional reactions as well — often rather heated ones. That’s understandable, but it may also hinder us from having a conversation about a very interesting topic.

Important caveat number one, therefore, is the one I raised in my very first sentence — despite my (deliberately) provocative headline, I think that what I’m about to speculate about applies to some degree in any society that that is not a progeny of England (and even that formulation will be fighting words for some in the USA, Canada, Oz, New Zealand and particularly Ireland or Scotland — but I am thinking in almost biological terms, here. You may well dislike your parents, but you can’t change who they are). I will use Germany as the basis for my speculation, because it’s the non-Anglo/Saxon culture I know best, and not because I want to pick on Germany or Germans in particular. I love Germany — it is my home; my wife, daughter, large parts of my family, and many close friends are all German. But I do believe that certain aspects of German culture, and their implications with respect to social software, can be used to illustrate points about a broader theme, and so I will use them to try to do so. OK?

This is slippery, and dangerous terrain, and it is essentially impossible to venture out onto it without falling, and making a fool of oneself. I will surely be no exception here. But I am convinced that there is something important lurking out on those dangerous plains, and I think we would all be well served by finding some way to call attention to it. What is Anglo/Saxon culture? What is German culture? How do they differ? Frankly, I’m no expert in such matters, and not really qualified to voice an opinion on them, in many people’s eyes. But I will now proceed to forthrightly go ahead and do so anyway.

And therein lies a fascinating difference between the two cultures: Anglo/Saxon culture encourages — even lionises — such acts. German culture does not.

Now, having said that, here comes important caveat number two: there is no such thing as absolute truth, and there are certainly no absolute truths with regard to sociology or politics or cultural differences. These are not binary states, of which I speak, but points near the median of a very analogue — Gaussian — distribution. For every rule, there is an exception, and indeed, the exceptions sometimes make the rule. Etc. I understand and acknowledge that. However, there is nevertheless value to be found in examining the median in such distributions, and when I say “German culture does not”, that’s what I am aspiring to do. OK?

It may be impossible to ever come up with “the” definition of something as amorphous as a human society or culture, but any fool can see immediately, upon leaving the one she was born into, and visiting another, that they exist. And that they have differences. These differences are typically expressed as stereotypes and prejudices, many of which are the product of nothing more than ignorance (and often, its correlate, fear). But some of these stereotypes will have a kernel of something approximating truth at their core.

Thus, for example, in 1758, the Württembergischer publisher Karl Friedrich Moser wrote: “Every nation has its principal motive. In Germany, it is obedience; in England, freedom; in Holland, trade; in France, the honour of the King”. This is an absurd exaggeration, verging on hyperbole, and particularly in the modern world, one which many Germans would vigourously object to — and rightly so. To the latter point, and despite that, I might respond by doing the following: let us fast forward the lens of our attention to the early 1970s. And turn that lens on the anarchist and terrorist elements that surrounded people like Baader and Meinhof. Even before violence became a tragic element of the student protests in the late 1960’s, there was an element of distrust and frustration with the established order that took the form of an outright contempt of reason — a disdain for Wissenschaft, and a belief in the instincts of the Basis (the collective) as a useful guide to behaviour, as opposed to reason. These sorts of ideas are the clear and unmistakable descendants of German Romanticism of the late 18th and early 19th century. And the contrast between these stereotypes — the idea of an extreme affinity for obedience versus the inchoate Sehnsucht and open contempt for reason embodied by Romanticism — is profoundly illustrative of the complexity of German culture. This is a culture that produced both the Prussian hierarchies of Bismarck’s Ämte, and the theories of Karl Marx. It has a long, complex and unique history, of which one quite prominent thread is an ongoing, recurring struggle between the needs and desires of the individual, and those of the group in which that individual resides.

The history of Anglo/Saxon culture contains such a thread as well. It is not necessary — or even useful — to engage in a conversation about the merits of these two contrasting threads. All that I wish to do is make the following point: in each of the two cultures, the thread exists, and they are different from one another. The history of the the struggle between the individual and his society is a different story in Anglo/Saxon culture than it is in German culture. And the product of these respective threads — the day to day realities in which we now find ourselves — are also different.

To what extent, then, can we expect that practices regarding social software, as developed and espoused by an English-speaking, Anglo/Saxon culture, to be a seamless fit in a German-speaking culture? I think it must be obvious by now that I think the answer is: to no extent at all. Indeed, to the extent that software of any kind embodies social and cultural norms, to what extent is it reasonable to expect that the design of a software artefact produced in an Anglo/Saxon culture will be optimal in a German one? Again, I think the answer is clear: it is not at all reasonable to expect such a thing.

On the other hand, we live in a “globalised” age, one where every culture is exposed to many of the same influences, to an extent never before known in the history of our species. Communication technologies — particularly television and the Internet — are the enablers of this. No culture now exists, on the planet, that has not been exposed, to some degree, to Baywatch. Many cultures — and certainly all of the more affluent cultures — have their own version of Big Brother — in Germany, this past month, the local version of the British reality show “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!” was watched by an extraordinary number of people.

And lurking within that observation, I think, is the essence of a problem currently confronted — and as far as I can tell, largely unacknowledged — by social software systems in general, and certainly Enterprise 2.0 punditry in particular. Most of the social software currently “in play” in the market, and certainly virtually all of the commentary on the themes it provokes (like Enterprise 2.0) are products of Anglo/Saxon cultures — representative of Anglo/Saxon thinking. This is an understandable consequence of their provenance, perhaps, but it is nonetheless insufficient. Just as “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!” can only be successful in Germany in a version that is German in nature (and then it can be very successful indeed), we are in need of an articulation of Enterprise 2.0 that is German in nature. And one that is Spanish, one that is Japanese, Russian, Chinese and so forth. Lacking such an articulation, we are likely to find ourselves lost in the quagmire of discussions that purport to be about “das Ding an sich”, but which are (also) about differences between two cultures. We need to tease those two thing apart from one another — such that, hopefully, we can concentrate solely on talking about “das Ding an sich”.

And to those Germans reading this who are now shaking their heads, perhaps annoyed, perhaps merely perplexed (and perhaps both), and thinking, “Why? Why do we need such a thing? What value is there in the Anglo/Saxon definition of ‘Enterprise 2.0′ that could possibly prompt me to want a German version of it?”, I would say the following. As someone who is in the rare position of being able to read something like Andrew McAfee’s definition of Enterprise 2.0, and “see” it with both the eyes of a native Anglo/Saxon, and (to some debatable but undeniable extent) the eyes of a German, I say to you: if there is a concept that is more uniquely, perfectly German than the one of “emergent structure”, implied by McAfee’s theory, then I would like to hear about it. ;D

So what would a German version of Enterprise 2.0 look like? What would it entail? Well, I’m not sure. But this forum is as good a place as any to debate and define it. Certainly, there are some obvious characteristics — German social software will need to have a slightly different relationship to hierarchies, authority and expertise than Anglo/Saxon software will. And German social software will have to take into explicit account both such “soft” factors, as well as the “hard” realities of everyday existence — such as German laws, customs and norms regarding things like privacy. But I am sure of one thing — without it, social software will not “work” in Germany. Or anywhere else.

What do you think?