I just stumbled upon an interesting research paper of the Harvard Business School (via Collaborative Thinking of Mike Gotta) that discusses the “struggle of balancing the conflicting demands of efficiency and innovation”. While it’s clear that efficiency (in the means of constant or better business results at less or at least constant expenses) and innovations (in the means of new or better products or processes for new or faster exploitation of the markets) are the two main strategies within highly competitive markets, it is mainly unclear how to enhance both in the same matter as it seems that they are two ends of a bi-polar scale.

The HBS paper concludes this with the following:

Organizations can become more efficient in the short run by replacing costly, unpredictable problem solving activity with consistent, streamlined routines. However, this efficiency often comes at the cost of long-run adaptability. The more organizational activity is dominated by stable routines, the less the organization learns, and the more rigid and inflexible it becomes.

For the solution in the middle the authors discuss the role of perturbations as novel stimuli that disrupt organizational routines and drive innovation. In regards to this the authors submit the following:

“… highly disciplined organizations can sustain exploration by deliberately perturbing themselves and by creating knowledge for exploratory interpretation that translates perturbations into problemsolving, learning, and adaptation”

As lever to this the organisation needs to reach “ambidexterity - the capability to sustain both exploitation and exploration simultaneously” by inforcing a “lively intellectual debate”. As research object the paper discusses the production system of Toyota and its application of the “principle known as autonomation or jidoka”.

Processes are designed to stop production when faults occur, thereby calling attention to accidental perturbations.

Means every occuring problem within the production process leads towards a complete process stop of the production line (by ringing the “andon cord”). That drives the full awareness of all workers and managers towards this problem and leads towards a more immediate solving-process.

The authors conclude:

Perturbations disrupt exploitation and create opportunities for exploration. Thus, they impose a short-term cost in the form of reduced exploitation performance in order to obtain a longer-term benefit in the form of new knowledge. If such new knowledge enables more effective exploitation, then exploitation performance in the presence of perturbations may quickly rise above the level that would have been obtained without perturbations, even after taking into account the cost of perturbations.

The question is how do organization induce perturbation - and therefore the exploration of new ideas and innovations:

Organizational exploration can be sustained in two ways: unconsciously, through natural processes of variation, selection, and retention (C.f. Campbell 1960); or consciously, by intentionally influencing the flow of perturbations that the organization experiences or the exploration undertaken in response to perturbations.

In regards to Toyota the authors come up with the following statement:

A former executive VP at Toyota notes, “Toyota’s top managers berate people who don’t try to come up with new ideas or who don’t take up new challenges, but not people who try something and fail. The role of senior managers is … to help subordinates with new ideas or challenges … That’s what makes trial and error possible (Hino 2006: 91-92).”

Therefore a culture or organizational scheme of accepting trial and failure supports perturbation and exploration of innovations.

[At Toyoata] routines for inducing perturbations include shortening cycle times, shrinking buffers between process steps, and training programs that teach front-line workers to formulate and conduct experimental changes.

But perturbations needs to be induced carefully:

As Nonaka observes, “Without reflection, the introduction of fluctuation [perturbations] tends to produce ‘destructive’ chaos” (Nonaka 1994: 28). Organizations that possess such knowledge respond to minor perturbations with vigorous exploration, while organizations without such knowledgestubbornly revert to established processes even in the face of severe and highly destructive perturbations.

As key levers for exploiting the relationship between perturbations and exploration the paper concludes two five aspects:

• Agency: including commitments of the members of the organization, heuristics asat Toyota that valorize the pursuit of seemingly-impossible goals or the obsessive elimination of waste, even in miniscule amounts and routines that determines the degree to which perturbations drive productive exploration.
• Saturation Frequency of Processes: defines the maximum rate at which organizational units can learn from perturbations
• Dispersion of perturbations:Perturbations contribute most to long-term organizational adaptability when they are widely dispersed across the organization’s process hierarchy, instead of being concentrated in particular levels or functions
• Upward and Downward Filtering: determines how perturbations propagate through the organization’s process space
• Signal Content of Perturbations

Concluding implications made from the authors are the following:

• To sustain adaptability in the long term, perturbations must occur throughout the organization.
• In highly disciplined organizations, adaptability depends on the active participation of organization members in inducing and interpreting perturbations.
• Management must trust employees to perturb processes, teach them to detect and interpret perturbations, and motivate them to do so.
• In the long term, business success depends as much on the commitment and knowledge of frontline employees as on strategic decision-making by senior management.

While this research gives a very organizational approach to the topic of how to change organization while still being efficient, I see also some implication in regards to the Enterprise 2.0 discussions. I think the paper gives a very sharp insight towards the underlying mechanisms that can be realized by introducing social software within organization. Because the instant and collaborative approach of social software tools help to build up a constant and to all members of the organization transparent level of perturbation - wikis,  weblogs and micro blogging that are distributed and aggregated by RSS and social presence solutions as internal lifestreams supporting the distribution of organisational knowledge and keep up a steady stream of disturbance in the streamlined organization that may lead to problem-solving solutions across the organization.

There’s an english summary of the latest pre-conference-interview up at my site (”Pre-Conference interview: dbWiki - building a Web 2.0 corporate knowledge base“). Joachim Niemeier talked to Dr. Matthias Büger, Vice President, Group Technology and Operations and Jamil Ouaj, GTO Communications of Deutsche Bank AG.

One thing I analyzed is the understanding and rationale that’s standing behind the support and introduction of corporate social networks. Well, as always there are different takes on this subject, and you may find flaws in my analysis, from the blog post:

[...] I guess that for employees it’s important that their professional networks aren’t confined by the narrow limits of one organization (they’re no life-timers, are they?). And I am seeing more and more “natural optimizers of personal professional value” - these people value and master relationships no matter what company the other nodes are in, companies need to loosen up their borders anyway and they’re doing it in other places too [...]

The other thing relates to project management for Enterprise 2.0 initiatives, here I would argue for a more light-weight approach, but I can surely see their point too. Here’s a clip of what I wrote:

[...] Banks they put so much attention on risk management, governance and diligence that it seems hard to approach things differently. See, while I hold project management dear, I also like the light-weight aspects of Enterprise 2.0 and the swiftness it brings. Hence I would rather argue for the creativity and agility of “planned and controlled experimentation” than the security of coordination meetings, processes and all (”Abstimmungsrunden und Teilprozessen”).

Well, this promises to be an interesting conference, let’s explore this space in real-time and if you’ve got remarks and/or ideas feel free to leave them here or over at my personal site.

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

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.

… and this blog continues it’s mission to bond and connect the Enterprise 2.0 community (now at the CeBIT 2009).

So we’re collecting material and ideas - stuff that matters and that’s interesting to discuss about - for another take. Feel free to add your thoughts and your ideas  - for this blog but also for the upcoming Enterprise2Open events at the CeBIT 2009.

Yes, there will be another open format, just as this year, but probably on a wider and expanded scale, so we’re looking forward to many of your ideas.

And while I am taking a little summer break, my co-blogger Björn Negelmann will continue on this theme.

The videos of the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT are now online, check them out, nice stuff and worthwhile content in there, including Simon Wardley’s introduction

Link: sevenload.com

and Dion Hinchcliffe’s keynote:

Link: sevenload.com

Sören Stamer von CoreMedia AG wird auf der Enterprise 2.0 Open als Special Guest um 13:45 Uhr eine Keynote Session halten:

Überleben in der Informationsflut - schneller, kreativer und wirkungsvoller zusammenarbeiten

1. Welche Mega-Trends in der Gesellschaft bestimmen die Zukunft.
2. Welche Konsequenzen ergeben sich konkret für Unternehmen.
3. Welche Lösungen nutzt und bietet CoreMedia.

Das Wissen der Welt wächst weiter exponentiell. Es explodiert geradezu. Digital und kostenlos. Klingt wie ein Traum. Ein Albtraum sind dagegen überfüllte Mailboxen und Informationsschwemme. Wie soll unter diesen Bedingungen wirkungsvolles Arbeiten noch möglich sein?

Sören Stamer geht in seinem Vortrag auf die Megatrends und die Konsequenzen für Unternehmen ein, die sich aus den Veränderungen ergeben. Weiterhin skizziert er die bei CoreMedia gemachten Erfahrungen bei dem Wandel zum Enterprise 2.0.

Zum Abschluss stellt Sören Stamer die entsprechenden Werkzeuge vor, die CoreMedia zu diesem Zweck bereits bietet.

Weitere Informationen

• Web 2.0 Expo - Killing the Org Chart: Organizational, Cultural and Leadership Models on the Bleeding Edge
  Bericht im INJELEA.de Blog von der Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin am 06.12.2007: Sören Stamer, CEO CoreMedia AG, und Nicole Dufft, Managing Director Berlecon Research, stellen die Ergebnisse einer Studie vor (Pressemitteilung und Link zum Download-Center CoreMedia).
• CoreMedia Blog (”CoCo”) Die Blogging- und Socialize-Plattform von CoreMedia, mit der die Mitarbeiter, Partner, Kunden und Freunde von CoreMedia kommunizieren. Auch Interessierte können sich mit einem OpenID- oder Facebook-Account einloggen.
• Werte statt Macht
  Im Nachgang zur Next07 gab Sören Stamer auf Fischmarkt ein Interview. Auf der Next07 hielt Sören Stamer einen Vortrag - das Video der Session ist im Artikel eingebunden.

We’re glad to present the enterprise2open book you’re all waiting for, and we’re quite happy that we’ve found such an excellent publisher, well it’s the silly season after all, so please forgive me

Joking aside, the tagline of this book is both catchy and inspiring: We need to ask ourselves whether Enterprise 2.0 can prevail as a concept and possibly as a vision for a better enterprises, given that organizational barriers and deep-seated resistance are present, and what we can do about it.

What’s your opinion on this, and what are your ideas? We’re prepared to honor the best and most comprehensive contribution - KongressMedia has sponsored a VIP-ticket to the March 4 Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT, which we’ll happily send out to the winner in this contest of ideas.

So put down your thoughts, blog about it and trackback this post. We’re looking forward to the discussion.