1.) What is your name?

Jenny Ambrozek

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

I am @SageNet, the name of my consulting company since 1996. I help enterprises strategically use collaboration tools, to engage internal and external stakeholders in solving business challenges and co-creating products. In our connected world, it’s my experience that each individual’s time and attention is the most limited resource. I focus on architecting participation to ensure key people are actively involved, and contributing, for project success.I’m an independent consultant and writer and I help organizations make sense of the Web for community building, collaboration, professional development and communication.

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

I learned the online business, pre-Web, at pioneering online service PRODIGY, and helped early Web businesses use forums to engage customers. By early 2004, when Joe Cothrel and I conducted an Online Communities in Business study, it was clear low cost, emergent tools (wikis, blogs, social networking) were starting to change the way people worked and did business. In 2006 I co-founded the 21st Century Organizations to explain Web 2.0’s impact on enterprises.Online Communities in Business study, it was clear low cost, emergent tools (wikis, blogs, social networking) were starting to change the way people worked and did business. In 2006 I co-founded the 21st Century Organizations to explain Web 2.0’s impact on enterprises.

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

While a 2.0 enterprise is driven by emergent technology, for me Enterprise 2.0 is achieved when an organization succeeds in operating open; enables and values employee and partner knowledge sharing, creativity and contributions; and manages with respect and “controls”, rather than “control”.

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

The potential, in adopting emergent social software platforms, is connecting people and expertise at enterprise edges, increasing productivity and employee satisfaction, while reducing costs and enabling innovation. Ideas and knowledge can be unleashed from organizational silos, to have greater value by reaching those who can put them to use. Externally Enterprise 2.0 tools enable bringing in fresh perspectives, expert and customer insights to fuel problem solving and new product development.

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

Successful enterprise use of Web 2.0 tools demands being open and participatory. As these platforms empower individuals, they impact the locus of control in an organization. For companies used to high levels of centralized control, becoming a 2.0 enterprise is a cultural challenge, especially in regulated industries.
Individuals also must adapt to think “sharing” rather than “hoarding” knowledge.The network benefits of social platforms emerge with significant use. Engaging project sponsors and influencers to model and encourage participation is essential, as is ensuring initiatives are not peripheral, but embedded in the way work gets done.
Social technologies enable people connecting and building valuable relationships. Applying social network science to strategically facilitate the human networks using the platforms, maximizes the potential.

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

Open, net∞WORKing, Collaboration

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

• Lessons in Enterprise Social Networking from a Facebook Groups in Business Investigation
• Open net∞WORKing Organizations
• The Sustainable Enterprise FieldbookSee Ch.8 “Transorganizational Collaboration & Sustainability Networks” pp 235-262

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

1. Victoria G. Axelrod
2. Patti Anklam
3. Martin Koser

1.) What is your name?

Harold Jarche

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

I’m an independent consultant and writer and I help organizations make sense of the Web for community building, collaboration, professional development and communication.

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

I have seen over the past two decades how work and learning are merging as we become more networked and our roles get more complex. I believe that democracy is our best structure for political governance and that it should be the basis of our workplaces as well. As work and learning become integrated in our networked society, I see great opportunities to create better employment models. I know that we can do better than structured hierarchies of power and control, cookie-cutter job descriptions, generic work competencies and boring, dead-end jobs.

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

E2.0 is about a shift in how we do work, moving from hierarchies to networks. Complex work in networks means that information, knowledge and power no longer flow up and down. E2.0 means giving up control and harnessing the power of networks. It is as radical as was Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911.

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

The potential of E2.0 is organizational survival. Enterprises that don’t share knowledge and power will meet the fate of Enron, BP and others. They will be overcome by complex events that cumbersome industrial age decision-making processes cannot manage.

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

The main threat is cultural. People in charge of most organizations today got there by doing things the traditional way of the MBA mindset. They feel they do not need to change and few are willing to give up power and authority, even if it is for the good of the organization.

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

Networks, Wirearchy, PKM

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

• A framework for social learning in the enterprise
• A personal learning journey
• Agility and autonomy

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

1. Jay Cross
2. Thierry de Baillon
3. Jane Hart

1.) What is your name?

Cai Kjaer

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

I am a Partner in Optimice which specialises in optimising business relationships. We use Social Network Analysis and Value Network Analysis as two of our key techniques to identify relationship patterns and then improve business performance. On the ‘fun’ side we assist event organisers accelerate networking by connecting people who share overlapping interests. You can see an example of this here. We are also the company behind one of the leading survey tools to collect survey data for organisational network analysis, ONA Surveys.

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

We are passionate about networks and communities and have been on the forefront of this movement for many years. The rise of Enterprise 2.0 and the enabling technologies have really made the term “social networks” much more real for business executives.

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

Exploiting the capacity to connect people within the organisation, between organisations and between the organisation and its stakeholders (customers, investors etc).

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

The ability to staff to connect and collaborate are cornerstones, so the potential is substantial from many perspectives, e.g. business improvement and innovation. But in addition to allowing staff to easily connect with each other, companies also have the potential to be much more proactive in the way they support collaboration. This is because participants leave a ‘digital footprint’ that can be analysed and support focused where it will generate the highest return.

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

I remember in the early days of Knowledge Management how the focus was actually on sharing of knowledge. But the concept was new to many organisations, everyone was trying to align it with something tangible.
The technology community then threw tons of IT at it and for many organisations KM then became the implementation of a database or a document management system containing lots of ’stuff’, but little of real business value.
This is the greatest fear I have for Enterprise 2.0. That what is essentially about letting people connect and collaborate becomes an IT initiative centered around rolling out a blog, wiki or similar. We need to ensure that we work out WHO needs to collaborate and WHAT value should be exchanged between the participants. Then we can look for the most appropriate Enterprise 2.0 tool to help achieve this.

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

Business Relationships, Social Networking and Collaboration

8.) Please give us a link to articles/contributions that describe your views best?

• Read our papers on Managing Sideways and The Partnership Scorecard

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

1. Laurence Lock Lee
2. Ross Dawson
3. Rosario Sica

1.) What is your name?

Michael Dekner

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

I am a scientist for a small biotech company in the antibody engineering field. Although I am an active member of the Austrian Web 2.0 community with a focus on twitter, I would describe myself more as a social media enthusiast than as an Enterprise 2.0 expert. I try to evangelize people about E 2.0, Web 2.0 and bring people together who are interested in these topics. I also tweet under the nick @querdekner

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

I started to take an interest in E 2.0 at around the same time I started to study applied knowledge management. After joining the Enterprise 2.0 Forum on XING, I went to the E 2.0 SUMMIT in Frankfurt. Currently I´m working on my master thesis connected to E 2.0.

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

Tapping into the knowledge that resides in all the people working for one organization and thereby improving collaboration, innovation and knowledge management.
As McAfee puts it, it is not primarily about technology! I see E 2.0 more as a cultural phenomenon than a technical breakthrough.

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

Increased employee engagement, faster and better collaboration and problem solving as well as improved decision making processes.

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

Cultural issues in every imaginable form.

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

Social media enthusiast, learning, biotechnology

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

• The Content Economy by Oscar Berg
• Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration
• Enterprise 2.0: Collaboration and Knowledge Management Renaissance

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

There are quite a lot of people I would like to mention but since this list would be very long I just pick the first three who come to my mind:

1. Stephan Schillerwein
2. Martin Koser
3. Haider Shnawa

1.) What is your name?

Ellen Trude

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

I am a teacher by profession. I have been working for the education department of Bayer Business Services GmbH (formerly Bayer AG) for 25 years. At present, I am a training consultant for social media and special projects concerning collaborative platforms. Besides I am (micro-)blogging and co-working in different networks with a focus on education, Enterprise 2.0 and social media.

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

When I started to have a look at “Web 2.0″ in 2006 and to take part in blogging, sharing and so on, I got an idea of how my experiences could work in my enterprise, too. I began to change my working practice in two ways: First of all, I had to overcome myself and to “enter the Web 2.0″, to visualize myself with my digital identity and to gain a lot of experience and especially learn from experts. The second change affected my job as the manager of an internal project where we build a collaborative working-platform. As a result of my interests, I could and can combine my full-time and part-time activities and integrate my knowledge and experience in my working day, my projects and especially in social media training concepts.

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

IMHO we need a company culture which is based on trust, networks, communication, collaboration and sharing knowledge, ideas and experience using the powerful social media tools. The core concept is not an organizational change, it is not a software-concept, but it is the idea and the need of human and social enterprises and consequently very successful enterprises.

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

An important strategy for social media marketing is listening to the customers. But why don’t we listen to employees and colleagues? “Too much work”, “time pressure”"too many e-mails”, “inefficient or complicated processes” etc. It is my firm conviction that living the “Idea of C’s” (communicate, collaborate, collect, community…) within the enterprise from top-down and vice versa will disclose the creative potential and engagement of employees and the management and will be a more efficient way to achieve one’s targets.

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

Allow me to list: patience, trust, common goals, training, focus on behaviour and ways of (co-)working, enthusiasm; identify and invite those employees who are already active in social media; define clear and commonly agreed guidelines.

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

Willing to experiment / curious, pragmatic, encouraging.

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

• Lutz Berger im Gespräch mit Prof. Dr. Peter Kruse
• Business 2.0
• Enterprise Web 2.0

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

1. Prof. Dr. Andrea Back
2. Prof. Dr. Joachim Niemeier
3. Dirk Röhrborn

1.) What is your name?

Dr. Frank Schönefeld

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

I am the CTO of T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, responsible for delivering innovation inside our organisation as well as outside - for our customers.

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

Just by the pure needs of my organization.

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

For a group of N people you have potentially 2**N (-N-1) interactions among individuals, subgroups and groups. Try to structure, leverage and exploit that huge number of opportunities.

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

Bringing the social potential of an enterprise to its optimum - by better collaboration, creating better customer experiences and using the creative potential of other stakeholders.

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

In the beginning you need trust. The rest is (good) project management.

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

Curious, encouraging, 2.0.

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

• An Interview about my book on Enterprise 2.0
• My blog
• On the reasons for business and rules for long living companies

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

1. Dion Hinchcliffe
2. Dirk Rörhborn
3. Joachim Niemeier
4. Willms Buhse

Sorry - I can’t count to three for this.

1.) What is your name?

Craig Hepburn

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

I am currently Director of Social Media Strategy at Open Text focusing mainly on how some of the worlds largest companies are adopting social media strategies for their business both internally for collaboration but also externally facing for their partners and customers. My role is to develop the business use cases and help these companies implement social media solutions.

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

I have over 10 years experience in web development and online business where I have helped some of the worlds largest companies such as STA Travel, BAA and Rentokil Initial develop their web business strategies but it was only a few years a go I realised the potential of Web 2.0 while head of Web Strategy at STA Travel. I soon realised that web content when integrated with social networks provided a very powerful communication network, we were lucky enough to develop some of the very first cutting edge 2.0 applications at STA Travel with Facebook, Google, MySpace and Travel Blogs which led me to be featured on the cover of Revolution Marketing magazine in the January 2008 Edition and was voted one of the UK’s rising stars in the digital marketing sector. It was at this point I was approached by Open Text to help develop their 2.0 strategies with customers and it soon became apparent that social business design and Enterprise 2.0 was far more exciting than I had ever realised. We are currently going through a major shift in how people and business come together, we are seeing the start of the human API where companies need to integrate with their employees and customers via social constructs and connected networks.

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

To me Enterprise 2.0 is much simpler than people realise - How can any company bring together Content, People and Process in a more social application to output a more efficient, innovative or engaging experience that benefits that core companies business.

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

When planned and implemented correctly the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 are massive in my opinion, we will soon see the rise of social customer service solutions where a global company can tap into their connected networks to support themselves, product development can engage with their partners, customers and employees to get realtime feedback on products or services that can be improved and developed at a lower cost more efficiently or simply how a marketing departments can engage with their customers directly through social networks and online widgets.

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

Our biggest challenge is education, understanding and readiness, some companies are still trying to figure out 1.0 but as some of the more innovative companies start to showcase and realise the real ROI of business we will see E2.0 mature and evolve as its an organic principle that will constantly be developed by the thought leaders and community.

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

Innovative, Inquisitive, Passionate

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

1. Social Media brings new hope to the Commercial Enterprise
2. Technology in 2010
3. Social Business Design: The Enterprise is Dead. Long Live the Enterprise!

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

• Daniel Kraft
• Antony Mayfield
• Mark Finch

1.) What is your name?

Anthony Poncier, I’m based in Paris, France.

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

I’m a management and organization consultant, specialized in Management 2.0 (impact of social media on management, processes…). I’am also a blogger, on those topics (http://poncier.org/blog).

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

I have been browsing the internet since 1992-93 and I’m still thrilling about the evolution of the net. I have collaborated for several years with NGO’s about community, social network, participative processes, identity management on the internet… I am now focusing my activities on the web 2.0 tools and services and their impact inside organizations. Both during my Phd and when I was teaching at the french university, I have appreciated and developed the use of Knowledge Management.

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

Collaboration, empowerment of employees and partners/customers are the core concept of E2.0. At this time these aspects are still a cultural shift to be achieved. Social media have triggered those concepts to exist.

Enterprise 2.0 is also, a way to capture informal knowledge, conversations and identify experts and expertises, to enable co-innovation and co-creation.

Therefore it’s a new way to manage people and information inside/outside the enterprise. What matter is not the marketing concept of “enterprise 2.0″, but the reality of the way people think and interact.

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

Involvement of all the stakeholders through trust and autonomy.

Creation of a more participative management.

Developpement of people leadership through empowerment.

In addition, I hope that people will be happier inside the enterprise. If it’s only a way to get more profits, it’s a non sense, it has to be a win-win strategy.

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

Governance, fear of loss control (top-down), fear of change. Installment of social media tools inside the enterprise without adapting the management attitudes (tools do not mean collaboration).

Convince the middle management that E.20 is not their enemy. More leadership and coordination instead of micromanagement and Gatekeeper attitudes.

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

Management 2.0, sharing, openness

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

1. Management 2.0 : Manage Collaboration inside Enteprise
2. Management 2.0 : quel rôle pour le management de proximité dans les organisations collaborative
3. Management 2.0 : leadership et collaboratif

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

• Dion Hinchcliffe
• Jon Husband
• Rachel Happe

1.) What is your name?

My name is Jon Husband, and I live in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

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

I am a middle-aged man who considers himself an observer of human systems and human behaviour, a systems thinker, a listener and facilitator, and a techno-anthropologist.

In less fancy language, I am a strategy, organizational design and change researcher and consultant.

I am also a member of the ITA Alliance, a brain-trust of 5 organizational-and-social learning thought leaders and practitioners, with me as the sixth ‘hanger-on’.

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

Getting to the E2.0 topic has been a (very) long road for me. I got interested in the “sociology of work” in the early 70’s at the beginning of university. Ten years later I found myself at the start of my career consulting to and facilitating in organizations.

From the mid-80’s to the mid-90’s I was a Senior Principal with the global HR and organizational effectiveness consulting firm Hay Management Consultants. Thus, I was equipped with the theoretical and practical background of organizational design and all of the core elements of how an organization’s strategy, its capabilities and the motivations and competencies of its people converge into more (or less) effectiveness.

From the mid-90’s on, I have been an independent thinker, writer, consultant and change agent. I have worked with OD (organizational development) principles and processes, immersed myself in the Internet and social media, and I began thinking about the large and long-term impacts of the interconnected digital infrastructure we call the Web on our established ways of doing thins, our core assumptions about how humans live and work, and what this means for established institutions and the institutions yet to be created.

I created the word and the concept of “wirearchy” in 1999, as I began to realize that massive change would eventually be visited upon information-and-knowledge intensive enterprises of all stripes. Over the next 5 or 6 years, I began speaking about the concept, and also created a blogging / KM-related start-up. Then, in 2006, along came the term Enterprise 2.0 and it seems clear that it fit alongside what I was already doing. I have been writing and speaking in that area since.

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

Let me first say that generally, I think the term Enterprise 2.0 is relatively vague and may be as much of a hindrance as a help in assisting organizational leaders and decision-makers see and deeply understand that large and important changes to the nature of knowledge work are underway, and are accessible to the objectives of improving productivity, capability and effectiveness. That said, Andrew McAfee’s recent new book has helped frame the issue in more accessible and practical ways.

Effective collaboration in the face of constant competition, turbulence, and change has been an issue for the last twenty years. We have seen successive waves of calling for … continuous learning, learning organizations, flexibility, resiliency, knowledge management, improved speed-to-market, employee engagement, the critical need for innovation, and so on.

It’s clear that hyperlinks and the Web, improvements in user interfaces, database capabilities, search, etc. have brought the possibility of large increases in the effective use of information and knowledge by knowledge workers. It’s also clear that many organizations have completely “wired” their processes with information systems. And further, it’s also clear that the Web (cloud computing) and ecosystems of increasingly-interconnected information systems bill bring further changes and new models to the game.

But, most organizations still use work and organizational designs coming out of the period dating from the 1930’s through the 1960’s (see Hamel, Malone, Drucker, Stan Davis, etc.)

For me, the notion of Enterprise 2.0 denotes a growing understanding that the enterprise will be surrounded and embedded in ecosystems of electronic / digital functionality and capability which also includes humans as core participants in interactive co-creative processes.

That, to me, means massive (eventual) change to organizational structures and rhythms, not to mention leadership and management philosophies and practices .. and I think the notion of “2.0″ denotes the next version, no ?

In short, organizational transformation towards the (often distant) responsiveness and effectiveness suggested by the promises held out by an engagement-driven information-and-knowledge based society.

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

Greater and more pertinent and practical involvement and engagement of customers and employees in what an enterprise produces / provides, how it creates the offerings, how it rides the waves of (continuous) change and how it becomes and remains a vibrant living system in a larger eco-system.

It also, I think, holds the idealistic potential of making many aspects of ‘work” more interesting and more engaging for many individuals, which I believe is a critical issue in an increasingly knowledge-based society where talent will always be at a premium.

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

There are several important ones, I think.

1. The core assumptions about how organizations are structured … in other words, the core design principle(s) of hierarchy, division of labour, measurement of (increasingly) intangibles that make up significant proportions of economic value.
2. The deep (current) embedded-ness of increasingly questionable core assumptions about power, status and decision-making.
3. Effective and sustained “culture change”
4. The knotty problem of what and how established management concepts and practices (may) need to change, i.e. work design, compensation, performance management
5. The impact of customers and markets in perpetual motion combined with hyperlinks, open API’s, the Web, etc, on business processes
6. Transition to a new paradigm for the IT function .. less gatekeeper, more facilitator, business partner with line management and HR, cloud computing, managing the line between ‘open’ and ’secure’.

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

Open, collaboration, respectthepastbutseizethefuture

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

I write on a regular basis for one of the E2.0 arena’s well-known blogs, FASTForward .. www.fastforwardblog.com. The 3 articles below are drawn from that blog.

Will Enterprise 2.0 Drive Management Innovation ?

Employee Engagement as a Core Goal for Enterprise 2.0 Adoption ?

Exploring an HR Framework for Enterprise 2.0

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

• Euan Semple
• Stuart Henshall
• Harold Jarche

1.) What is your name?

Oscar Berg

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

I live in the city of Lund, Sweden, and work at Acando, a Swedish management consultancy with operations in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. I work as consultant with strategy, business development, architecture, conceptual design, and change management, primarily with global businesses.

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

I think it was quite a natural move for me, something that happened almost without me noticing it. I have worked as business analyst, usability architect and business developer with improving content management processes, collaboration, knowledge management and communication with the help from IT and web technology in particular since the mid 90ies. My passion for creating solutions to make people communicate, share and collaborate across barriers such as time, location and culture has led me to Enterprise 2.0. As I started blogging about things that interest me such as Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, KM, ECM, Collaboration and Enterprise Architecture in early 2007 on my blog www.thecontenteconomy.com, I got in contact with a lot of other people within the emerging Enterprise 2.0 community which has been very stimulating. It has made me invest a lot of time and effort in this field, because I feel I am getting a lot back from other people in the Enterprise 2.0 community. I also see an intersection of all my interests in Enterprise 2.0.

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

The Internet and the web in particular has enabled a shift in how people communicate with each other, enabling rich and frequent two-way communication with a reach, immediacy, usability, and accessibility (due to low production cost) that can’t really be compared to any advance in communication technology in human history (yes, that might provoke some, but that is my personal opinion). We are no longer limited to the previously bad scalability of communication, cooperation and collaboration technologies, something which not only makes us question large and hierarchic organizations but also makes it theoretically possible for a single individual to manage and operate a business on a global scale – with the help from a network of contributors, including customers.

To me, Enterprise 2.0 is fundamentally about trying to understand and using what we know about this shift today and to apply it in an enterprise context to help enterprises fulfill their purposes. It is not just about implementing social media or deploying social technologies in an enterprise. Rather, it requires a thorough understanding the values, principles, culture and human behaviors that make communication, sharing and collaboration happen in such an easy and natural way on the social web. We need to look at what kind of values can be created for enterprises and how they will need to transform themselves to enable this value creation.

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

Given my understanding of the core concept of the Enterprise 2.0 idea, there is a diversity of potentials. Here are some of the potentials that I am currently focusing on to help customers utilize:

Improving findability, discovery, maintenance and reuse of information, thereby reducing human latency and avoiding time spent on searching and managing information, reducing waste and rework, and avoiding reproduction of information that already exists.

Creating ambient awareness that allows people to know what goes in in their work environment and when it is their turn to contribute - despite that the people and resources are physically disconnected by time, location, culture.

Facilitating the capture and sharing of tacit knowledge, as well as allowing ideas to flow and finding their way to people who can make them happen, thereby fueling innovation.

Enabling more efficient and effective communication, sharing and collaboration within teams and within an enterprise as a collective, as well as allowing new co-operations and collaborations to emerge by allowing people who otherwise would not find each other to find each other, connect, and build trust in each other.

Enabling the people within an enterprise to aggregate, maintain and share a collective body of knowledge and intelligence with the enterprise as a collective.

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

The technocratic focus on Enterprise 2.0 that believes that the tools and technologies themselves will help to solve the kind of problems we are addressing that I am seeing all over is worrying me. Installing a social software platform won’t make a difference unless the enterprise as collective is not ready for a transformation of its culture, practices, attitudes and behaviors. It won’t be possible to create real value from Enterprise 2.0 technologies without such a transformation taking place.

Lack of leadership commitment and alignment with business vision and strategy is a key challenge when trying to create value with Enterprise 2.0. Grass-root adoption is not enough – although value can emerge as parts of an enterprise transforms itself, the enterprise as collective won’t transform unless the leadership supports this transformation. So any grass-root approach to Enterprise 2.0 must always be complemented and supported by a top-down approach which is supported by top management.

Finally, fear of making mistakes that prevents a more agile and pragmatic way to explore, understand and validate potential business benefits is a major obstacle to creating value with Enterprise 2.0. Failing is inevitable, and daring to fail is crucial to succeed.

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

simplicity, collaboration, web

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

• Enterprise 2.0 and Collective Collaboration – Part II
• Winning with employee engagement
• The Age of Transparency – Rebuilding trust

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

I have so many people I admire and respect in the Enterprise 2.0 space, but since I must pick three names:

1. Gil Yehuda
2. Paula Thornton
3. Sameer Patel