To support our efforts in bonding the community we organizing some bi-monthly “Enterprise 2.0 Community Luncheons” in different cities in Germany - and would like to motivate anybody who is interested in doing so elsewhere. We announced the first round of Enterprise 2.0 Community Luncheons for Hamburg, Cologne and Frankfurt on our XING group “Enterprise 2.0″.

I am happy to see anybody at one of these events - or organizing some more community bonding events elsewhere.

In an internal discussion of our Advisory Board regarding the topics of the E20 SUMMIT program Joachim Niemeier posed the question whether classical economic measures are suitable to measure and verify Enterprise 2.0 effects. Though cases like the TransUnion project (cited by Dion in his blog post on determining the ROI [cross-referencing to the post of Ross Mayfield]) give a proof of evidence for measuring the E20 effects with the classical ROI formula - many projects have difficulties in measuring it. As from the discussions about this problem at E20FORUM the main difficulties in measuring are perceived as the difficulties in identifying and quantifying the “net profit” from Enterprise 2.0 activities - as the nature of effects is mainly soft and intangible. As this is planned to be a major discussion at E20SUMMIT I would like to sort my ideas on this to stir up the discussions upfront.

In regards to a distinguished discussion I’d like to differentiate the notion of Enterprise 2.0 into two dimensions of impacts. In a recent German article for the T3N Magazin Martin and I have discussed (as already a lot of other people before) the characteristics of Web 2.0 apps and social software in comparison to classical “information management systems”. Besides mentioning the leveraging characteristics of being mainly open-source concepts with light-weighted architecture and a “simplified user experience for the masses” we focussed on Tim O’Reilly’s main point: the supplement of the social dimension and the network effects. This lead us to the point that the usage of Web 2.0 tools within the enterprise (as the notion of Enterprise 2.0) results into a more transparent and outward focussed information gathering that itself implies again a more transparent and effective collaboration. We quoted Lee Bryant at this point who is talking always about the change from a world of “content objects & processes” towards world of “feeds & flows”. So in regards to the ROI discussion we have therefore to distinguish the impact on information management & distribution within the enterprise from the impacts on collaboration.

At this point I would like to focus on the part of “information management & distribution” as this is a precondition for the impacts on collaboration and also seen as the more difficult part to measure.

Measuring the value of information management & distribution

For the further discussion I’d like to equate the term of “information distribution” to the technical dimension of “communications” - leaving out the social, emotional and intential aspects of communications. Why am I doing this? Because the “communications” discipline within the enterprise has a long time existant valuation problem which is recently addressed by “value based” approaches (see a explanation on “value based management”) that might be very suitable towards the valuation of Enterprise 2.0 effects.

At least within the German speaking PR community there is a controlling (or better KPI) model - based on the ideas of Walter K. Lindenmann and Norton/Kaplan. The latter have discussed a “strategy map“, a concept that illustrates the causes and effects on the building of business values. “The strategy map links the long-term game plan or competitive strategy of a business with its operational activities.”

In referring to this strategy map and its different “perspectives” Walter K. Lindenmann has developped a three-level KPI model for the valuation of PR effects, that constitutes the foundation of valuation for the IPR toolkit (IPR = Institute of Public Relations) as well as the German PR association (GPRA / more German background papers at CommunicationControlling.de). The model consists of three interdependent levels of impact:

1. output level: e.g. questions whether the message has reached its target group
2. outgrowth level: e.g. questions whether the message has been perceived and understood
3. outcome level: e.g. questions whether the message has changed the knowledge, opinion or behavior of the target group

As this model is not including any reference to the financial dimension of the strategy map Lothar Rolke added in article in 1997 the term “outflow” as a forth level that questions the business effects. While the GPRA is nowadays not differentiating between level 2 & 3 and therefore proclaims only a three-level model (output / outgrowth & outcome / outflow), for a further discussion on how Enterprise 2.0 is effecting the business value a differentiated four-level model would be more suitable.

The connecting pieces of these levels are the “value links” that constitute a causes and effects diagram like this example for the “value links” in communications by Mirko Lange:

I won’t translate this model as it is only a fictional examples of a value link system. Actually the causes and effects differ from industry to industry and from company to company - as the value generation differs in all kinds.

I first heard about the practice of this model in a non-PR context from the people of aexea at our Swiss Intranet Management FORUM about Intranet governance & controlling. They are using it to evaluate the effects of an Intranet project which in return resemble the targets of Enterprise 2.0 projects but mainly driven from a centralized viewpoint of organizing it.

As from the common practice of working with this model they have added a input level to the diagram that discribes the denominator of the classical ROI formula in terms of costs for the Intranet management. “Output” describes the produced content by the input - in quantity, frequency, reach & actuality, comprehensability & usability. “Outgrowth” explains the perceived messages from Intranet output - measured for example by the knowledge about the contents of the distributed messages/information. “Outcome” indicates the effects from the “outgrowth” in regards to the changed behavior in terms of participation in any Intranet services. At the top of the model “outflow” pictures the business effects of the changes in behavior.

Evaluation approach towards Enterprise 2.0 activities

Returning to the starting point I think this model is a very good approach in describing the effects of the impacts of E20 activities on the corporate “information managenet & distribution”. In contrast towards the classical ROI formula the model takes into account the “soft effects” of the activities.

In the following I put together some potential key indicators on the (for me) four main E20 activities: tagging, blogging, “wiki”-ing and “social network”-ing:

I think this little practice shows quite nicely that using a more differentiated approach to the valuation of Enterprise 2.0 is very useful as it illustrates the achievements made in an earlier stage.

During the last week I was pushing the finalization of the first draft of the programm for the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT (still waiting for some feedback from my advisory board!). We are still far away of having a complete speaker’s list but we have thoroughly discussed the topics for the conference (you might want to have a sneak preview at looking at this Google Doc!) - as this is the foundation to select the right cases and speakers. While researching a little for this matter I came along an older post of Susan Scrupski from the ITINSIDER blog: “Reality Check 2.0” - that she wrote in Nov last year as the on-going economic downturn had not yet reached the sentiments of the E2.0 evangelists in the US. It’s a very good analysis of the situation esp. the comparison towards former IT development like the emergence of BPM, Outsourcing or ERP during the economic crisis of the late 80s and early 90s:

Now, no disrespect to my late GenX and GenY readers and friends, but Boomers have some experience here that may prove helpful. Those of us who were engaged in the technology workforce in the late 80s and early 90s had to move fast to help our customers cut costs and work smarter. For me, that meant the birth of Business Process Reengineering and Outsourcing. For others, it meant the birth of Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP. Now, you could argue whether any or all of these initiatives actually delivered the results intended, but the fact remains: lots of software developers and consultants made a huge market in downtime adversity.

From there she argues by citation of some other E2.0 thought leaders as Mike Gotta and Stowe Boyd that E2.0 could be a chance to lead towards “business transformation” (as mentioned by Mike Gotta) or to “reinvent the Enterprise IT” (phrased by Stowe Boyd) if focused on the bottom line. Mike Gotta answered to this in a later post that it’ll be “time for ‘pragmatic due diligence’ when it comes to social software”.

As from my observations for Europe and esp. Germany I can firmly support the line that some E2.0 enthusiast need to get more realistic on what can be achieved with Enterprise 2.0. A lately discussion (unfortunately only in German) in our XING Enterprise 2.0 group shows how theoretical and therefore “soft” the discussion is about the outcome of Enterprise 2.0. But then I also have to adjust that as Europe and esp. Germany is always lagging behind the adoption of new web-based business ideas and esp. Germans are more critical about innovation the hype about new approaches never reaches that far as in the US - therefore we are probably already closer to the bottom line. But still the discussions about the potentials regarding Enterprise 2.0 are not anymore concrete than in the US. And a lot of people are looking for the savior when it comes towards Enterprise 2.0.

The last two Enterprise 2.0 FORUMs have shown that there are some reoccuring characteristics of sucessful perceived E2.0 projects that - from a qualitative perspective - might turn out to be the critical success factors. In regards to our on-going discussions about the topics of the Enterprise 2.0 programm I would therefore like to make some summing-up on these aspects:

• Competitive ways towards Adoption: Mike Gotta brings it towards a nice point: “IT organizations usually follow a Plan-Build-Run framework that often means Plan-Build-Runaway after the system is deployed. But since many social applications are not transactional or process-specific in a traditional sense [..] it means we need to establish methods around adoption practices to gauge how people really get work done and how work models change as a result of social applications.”  IMHO social applications always rely on the momentum of the interaction of a critical mass therefore the good old P-B-R will tend to be less successful than more hands-on approaches like “think big and start small”. For this I always like to refer towards a conversation with JP Rangaswami at reboot last year (that I have unfortunately not have registered!). He explained to me that he is quite fine with people installing and trying out new applications. Choosing the right technology is a competitive approach - the winner is the solution that has the biggest impact and critical mass.
• Leveraging the power of feedback: At the last Enterprise 2.0 FORUM Frank Schönefeld brought up a nice systematization for the feedback mechanisms of social applications. It structures the benefits of feedback on five levels (from the more concrete to less concrete) :  “social creation” (benefits from the collective intelligence and actions in creating information, cross-links etc), direct feedback (benefits from cross-linking people and information by trackbacks, comments, bookmarks and feed subscriptions), systemic feedback (benefits from new relations/interconnections between people and information) and social feedback (benefits from gaining positive feedback, authority and acknowledgement). So IMHO the success of projects tends to relate to the realized level of these feedback mechanisms.
• Changing organizational patterns: At CeBIT there has been a nice panel discussion on the “Future Workplace” including the above mentioned Frank Schönefeld as well as Dion Hinchcliffe, Willms Buhse and Philip Vanhoutte. Moderated by Sascha Alexander (Computerwoche.de) they talked about the changes that are deriving to companies as Enterprise 2.0 and GenX/GenY are entering the workspace. The focal point of the discussion led to new organizational patterns (more remote, open and collaborative, project-based, interdisciplinary working) that have to be created within the enterprises to lever the potentials of Enterprise 2.0.
• Being Complementary and Integrative: This is probably common sense for all IT-based activities but from the critics regarding the E2.0 hype paroles this need to be said: No one can run a business only with social applications - social applications are a supplement and enhancement for existing information technology. Therefore it needs to be integrate at some point with business applications to be business-critical in the long run.

Well - these are my 2 cents on “Enterprise 2.0″ and the economic crisis. BTW - I guess I will choose the title of this post as the title of the introduction panel for the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT. As this discussion might be a good start for the conference.

Underneath the curtain of a static web announcement lots of content-related discussions regarding the program of the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT 09 are happening. From a small circle we have now extended our advisory and feedback board to a number of well-known Enterprise 2.0 experts including (in alphabetical order of their lastname) Lee Bryant, Willms Buhse, Bertrand Dupperin, James Governor, Dion Hinchcliffe, Martin Koser, Mark Masterson, Joachim Niemeier, JP Rangaswami, Frank Schönefeld, Luis Suarez, David Terrar, Thomas Vander Wal and Simon Wardley. After this preparation we will enter a more public discussion about the to-be-discussed topics as well as speakers and panelists to get involved at the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT - as the idea of the E2.0 SUMMIT on Oct 6-8th is to represent a community and expertise hub for the European Enterprise 2.0 community. This means we want to reflect the common E2.0 discussions esp. from a European viewpoint and to attract big parts of the E2.0 industry members.

A already finalized thought about the E2.0 SUMMIT is the main emphasis on structuring the discussion around the “ROI” (and its synonyms like ROC, RONI, metrics, value/benefits) question of Enterprise 2.0. And we found our own notion for it - we want to discuss the “collaborative performance”. Therefore I already invited Kjetil Kristensen, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He holds a PhD from the Department of Engineering Design and Materials at NTNU, and is focusing on collaborative performance in dispersed teams. He will give us an insight talk to his research results.

But the idea is not to stop the discussion on the conceptional and theoretical level. As Joachim Niemeier has put it in our internal discussion:

“bridging ’strategy’ and ‘implementation’ by modern (management) thinking is critical. [Discussion the performance and metrics of E2.0 .. ] we should at least start with the classical candidates: Balances Scorecard, Maturity models, (European) Excellent Models, Staged Approaches. Even more: we could organize a ‘metrics workshop’, we could have a look at ‘Wiki visualisation’ and so on.”

Does anybody has some further practical insights on these approaches?

Some other question that is still driving the advisory and feedback circle is the discussion about to what extend we have to discuss the infrastructual convergence and commoditization of Cloud Computing, Unified Communications and Collaborative Systems at the event. If you know Simon Wardley, you know his comments about this in advance - as he argues:

“There is a strong connection between E2.0 and Cloud Computing but it is in the underlying themes.”

My question is not the relevance of the underlying developments in general but the relevance to the corporate world in continental Europe. As I see most of the E2.0 interested corporate people at the very beginning of the E2.0 (r)evolution, I don’t (yet) see this aspect as a more than 1 or 2 sessions covering topic. Or can anybody give me some counter-arguments?

And while we are discussing about E2.0 services - I also have the question about the importance of a “launch pad” for E2.0 services at the event. The boundaries of the enterprise in terms of integrating external application in business processes are very tight IMHO - in continental Europe. But as an industry event we need to leverage the chances for the service provider … so yes or no?

I would be very happy if I could stir up the discussions about the program with this post - so I am eager to read your feedback.

Though targeted on the adoption of social software, the discussions at last week’s Enterprise 2.0 FORUM have always emerged to the question about the ROI of the Enterprise 2.0 strategy very quickly. Especially the talk of Dr. Frank Schönefeld turned the discussion towards the economic measures and dimensions of Enterprise 2.0 (he promised to me that an English version of his talk will soon be available on Slideshare!).

In times of budget limitations and reductions this is quite sensible - but no clear and satisfying answer can yet be given for this question. Therefore the already defined punchline “Improving Collaborative Performance” of the planned Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT in October is more than relevant for these times of economic tension and I want to share my thoughts about the concept of this planned event with you on this weblog as well as to encourage you to give me some feedback.

So what’s the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT with the claim “Improving Collaborative Performance” about? The core discussion of this year’s E2.0 SUMMIT addresses the conceptional and organizational dimensions of gaining collaborative advantages and efficiency by adding social and collaborative action as well as intelligence to the company. Cutting it down - the questions to be discussed are the following:

1. How to conceptionalize, realize and gain collaborative performance?
   => discussing the value chain of an collaborative enterprise, the economics of sharing, processes of open innovation
2. What are the main drivers for collaborative advantage and efficiency?
   => discussing communications, processes, infrastructure as well as (self-)management
3. What are the key values of a collaborative culture?
   => discussing the key characteristics as open, transparent and decentralized as well as others - and how to realize the cultural change in a multinational environment as we have in a lot of European companies
4. How to introduce and adopt social and collaborative approaches within the company?
   => discussing the steps of adoption especially in the context of multinational companies

As you might realize - I am very much focussing on the extracting the economic benefits of Enterprise 2.0. I have therefore invited Kjetil Kristensen from Norway who did very interesting academic work on this topic. Furthermore Dr. Frank Schönefeld of T-Systems MMS is also working on a conceptionalization of the business values of Enterprise 2.0. Who else is focussing on this topic - please contact us!

Besides the visionary talks I am also looking for straight-forward cases as the high-procentage of practice talks is one of Kongress Media’s own key value propositions - in comparison to other conferences. So I appreciate any proposal of anyone or any matter for this visionary event. We hope we will support and trigger innovative ideas before and after the event - it’s our goal to help bond the European Enterprise 2.0 community more closely together.

1) What is your name?

James Governor

2) Who are you and what are you doing?

I am an industry analyst, who founded my own company, RedMonk, which we like to think of as “open source analysis”

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

We live it. RedMonk began as a pretty traditional boutique analyst firm looking at enterprise IT, but our extensive use of blogs and social media, and deep exposure to open source business models, led us into the Enterprise 2.0 space. We see ourselves as bridge builders between the traditional enterprise and the “cool kids”.

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

E 2.0 is about focusing on people and community, within your organisation, and investing accordingly. IT shouldn’t be there to replace people through automation, but to augment their capabilities.

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

To become more creative. Is it likely a traditional enterprise would create a Google for example? With E2.0 thinking it’s a lot more likely. Traditional organisations often require employees to leave in order to innovate. Enterprise 2.0 encourages and nurtures employee innovation.

6) What are the main challenges and threads of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

The cultural changes required to support less hierarchical working patterns are the biggest obstacles to *anything* 2.0…

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

Extrovert, wide-ranging, fun

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

• http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2005/01/13/things-to-do-in-the-analyst-busi ness-when-you-are-dead/
• http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2007/07/27/why-open-source-software-is-soci al-media/
• http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2008/03/13/15-ways-to-tell-its-not-cloud-co mputing/

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

I will give you 4 -

1. Stephen O’Grady, co-founder RedMonk
2. Michael Coté, RedMonk analyst
3. Tom Raftery, RedMonk analyst to cover our new sustainability business
4. Tim O’Reilly

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?

1) What is your name?

Lee Bryant

2) Who do you are and what are you doing?

Co-founder and director of Headshift

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

I founded and ran a web agency in 1996 that specialised in knowledge communities, as we called it then. I left to set up Headshift in 2003 when we saw the beginnings of social tools and their impact. Prior to that my background was in politics and media, where I learned the value of building your own networks and how to write by synthesising and linking. This all led me to conclude that introducing lightweight, human-scale social networking techniques to enterprise IT could have the potential to transform the inner workings of modern organisations.

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

E2.0 is about the consumerisation of enterprise, in the sense of transferring what has been shown to work well in the Web 2.0 world behind the firewall. It is about smarter, simpler, social tools that support individual needs and empower people to get their job doen easier and faster and with less time cost, but in a connected way that enables the organisation as a whole to benefit from the network effects of aggregate behaviour.

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

• Cost saving
• Time saving
• Greater ambient awareness leading to collective intelligence
• Simpler, low friction collaboration
• Bringing greater flow to information sharing
• Generating signals of relevance and importance to create more focus
• Building a web of links between people and content that can enhance organisational DNA

6) What are the main challenges and threads of the Enterprise 2.0 idea?

The biggest threat is from entrenched, backward IT departments who are not focused on business needs Related to that is the threat posed by misunderstandings of the nature of risk In terms of operationalising E2.0, the culture of shrink-wrapped software sales is potentially a problem, as this has conditioned IT people to believe that tools solve problems, which means they are always looking for a one-size fits all software solution to human problems.
Finally, business cultures that place process above people and do not trust them to fulfil their work can also pose barriers to adoption of social tools.

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

participation, human, engagement

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

• http://www.headshift.com/blog/2008/07/free-the-battery-humans.php
• http://www.headshift.com/blog/2003/04/readmedoc.php
• http://www.headshift.com/blog/2008/06/is-enterprise-20-about-selling.php

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

• Ross Mayfield
• Jevon MacDonald
• Livio Hughes

Lots of information have been already distributed through out the net about the Enterprise 2.0 FORUM / Cologne, that took place already nearly two weeks ago. Now we finished cutting and setting up all the recorded video materials - so here we go with the presentation of Suw Charman-Anderson talking about the “adoption strategy for social software”.

Well - actually she was talking about “training a cat” - and how the cat will not do anything without a reward for doing it. So as the first key point of successfully adopting social software she advised to think about a rewarding system. Further aspects she is talking about were

• the importance of identifying the problem on the day-to-day work of the individual that can be solved by social software
• the user-centric adoption as bottom-up approach that has more potential to be successful than the top-down approach
• the need of a leadership by engagement - I would do the reference towards Rod Beckstrom’s catalyst personnas
• for the implementation of social software projects she proposes a “trojan mice” aproach in the means of small projects introduced into the ongoing organisation (to grow securely)

Many more interesting advices may be taken from the video:

Video

Actually the importance of the rewarding system was also a big issues being discussed in the open space session. (I am just working on a transcript of the discussions - will translate this also to English soon!)

There are two aspects regarding the rewarding system I’d like to share with you:

1. the grade of participation in social software projects must be part of the evaluation by the objective agreement
2. participation in social software projects must be transparent to be socially acknowledged (means the need for activity streams!).

What advices do you have on this?

Following a link on Martin’s Delicious recommendations I stumbled upon Richard Dennison’s note about the new BT case study - which is already quite interesting to read (see also this video!). While being on Richard’s site I came along another interesting post about the Intranet evolution which again hijacked me to some thoughts about the decentralization of information systems as underlying idea of the Intranet 2.0 evolution. Have a look at my other post and let me know about what you are thinking.

Note: See this as a practical example of the creative power of social media - talked about here.