I’ve just been looking over the (very high quality) video archive of the debate this morning between Tom Davenport and me over Enterprise 2.0, and I have to say it’s pretty good! Most of the credit for this goes to our moderator Dan Farber, who asked exactly the right questions at the right times and kept the event flowing, and to Tom himself. He stepped into a room full of E2.0 partisans and engaged with us instead of retreating to talking points or blanket dismissals. This is far from easy to do, and we all owe Tom a debt of thanks for encouraging us, at the high water mark of our enthusiasm, to stop and think carefully about why we’re enthusiastic, and to make sure that we’re not just enamored of a new set of cool technologies. To the surprise of no one who knows him at all, he was a gentleman and a scholar, and a pleasure both to agree and disagree with. Thanks, Tom.
And thanks also to event sponsors BSG Alliance and Veodia.
After one review of the video, it seems to me that our main point of disagreement concerned the extent to which the E2.0 toolkit really is something new, or whether it’s just an incremental extension to the longstanding set of technologies for collaboration, interaction, and information sharing. Tom stressed repeatedly that companies have been deploying such tools for decades, and he kept explicitly and implicitly asking the important question: what, if anything, is new now?
In my opening remarks and a few times subsequently, I tried to articulate my answer to this question: that digital platforms that initially impose little or no structure on interactions, but that contain mechanisms to let patterns and structure emerge over time, are actually quite new. I’ve written about this a few times before, and for me it’s the key to understand what’s going on currently, and why so many of us are hopeful that the new toolkit will take off within companies. The idea of using group-level technologies not to impose structure (roles, identities, hierarchy, workflow, data formats, taxonomies, etc.) but instead to try hard to get out of the way and let structure emerge is, I maintain, a pretty novel one. And, I further maintain, a pretty important one.
What do you think? As you watched the debate, what struck you? Where else did Tom and I truly seem to be disagreeing, and what side do you come down on? Leave a comment and let us know.
{ 35 comments… read them below or add one }
Andrew, I side with Davenport, and believe that you are ignoring previous examples of other technologies, eg, Lotus Notes, that have offered emergence constructs for 15 or more years … and also academic research that addresses the “emergence” question, of which I reference two studies. See my reasoning and analysis here: http://www.michaelsampson.net/2007/06/mcafee_vs_daven.html
Hope to say “hi” in person tomorrow or the next day.
I was disappointed that Tom seemed to be ‘stuck’ in what I would term old style KM thinking. Isn’t the reality that KM has been about command and control where the notion of wiki is far more about self organising useful information that people can and will use?
I do see the distinction between what I would prefer to call ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ information. For example parts of the tax code may well be pretty static but new interpretations come along and change our perception of what those codes mean.
I’m less cautious about how the new generation of people will respond to these technologies. In my world I see pockets of thinking that are challenging the status quo. Nevertheless, I would agree that for the more bureaucratic organisations, this ‘stuff’ many not happen – at least not for many years.
The cultural dimension across geographies and inside organisation wasn’t discussed and this is an area I think could prove fruitful.
I’m at the Enterprise 2.0 show, but unfortunately missed the debate, so thank you for posting the video!
What I enjoyed about the debate is that both of you are realistic about the use of 2.0, what it means in the overall scheme of things, that there is optimism for the future, but we need to question our enthusiasm.
You see the slight differences between the both of you during the NASA example. To me it seems as if you both agree that 2.0 tech could change the way in which people think, gather and use information. However, for Tom this will never be enough to change the use of this information by those in leadership positions, while you seem to believe that with the evolution of technology there will be a change in personal use of information when presented with it.
At the end of the day is this more a question of ‘optimism vs. pessimism’? Someone else might place it as ‘blind hope vs. predictive realism’. I realize I’m simplifying a complex topic, but that does strike me the most.
Thanks to you both for contributing to the conversation!
/kff
Hi Andrew,
Is it worth the debate? I do not think so. It does not contribute anything to any field except for maybe philosophy.
This kind of debate is some along the lines very similar to Object Oriented languages and the C Language. Was C the first OO computer language with the definition of the “type”?
As for me all the new applications of science and technology have their root on previous discoveries. Today E2.0 is based on application on the web. They used to be on the servers and local networks.
Mario Ruiz
Andrew,
It is me again. I was thinking about giving you a full report of my view of the debate instead just giving a simple commentary as the one before.
1. Is the corporation going to be transformed to E2.0? There 3 questions here:
a. What is an Enterprise nowadays?
b. what is Web 2.0′
c. How one will affect the other?
This questions, especially the first two have such broad understanding so there is no room for a formal answer.
2. I am working in project to be have the prototype ready which is a collaborative, corporate, web 2.0 spreadsheet. This project aims to correct the errors of companies spreadsheets that has been reporting:
a. To comply with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Businesses.
b. To ensure certain errors reported by Raymond Panko, a professor at the University of Hawaii, shows that over 90% of spreadsheets contain errors of some kind; or PricewaterhouseCoopers research demonstrated that 91% of spreadsheets have at least a 5% error margin; KPMG found the same percentage with major errors.
c. Fannie Mae, had to amend its financial reporting due to spreadsheet errors increasing unrealized gains on securities $1.3 billion.
d. National Australia Bank was affected by US$3 billion.
e. FidelityÂ’s Magellan fund omitted the minus sign on a net capital loss of $1.3 billion from one spreadsheet and incorrectly treated it as a net capital gain on a separate spreadsheet where additional calculations are done. This meant the dividend estimate spreadsheet was off by $2.6 billion.
3. This only possible with the technologies reached at this point in collaboration, Ajax, and other tools.
4. I am sure with this I am not changing the Enterprise fundamentals. However this is changing the company on how we do business.
5. Salesforce.com is also a good example to a product that gives you the power to share.
6. I can name Siebel on-demand according to Lenley Hensarling,
Group Vice President & General Manager – JD Edwards at Oracle, is a software-as-service product that has an extensive footprint for CRM. “We also spend a lot of time debating whether it is possible to provide a full suite of enterprise software (ERP) in that model. The crucial issue which must be solved is how to provide the business consulting which goes along with an enterprise software implementation. It is still not a trivial matter to match a customers business processes to the business processes which are in the software.” Therefore ERP is coming to this business model too. Maybe first passing through SaaS first.
8. I am talking about serious and the most important applications in a company, ERP, CRM, SMC, Project management to be part of the Web 2.0. These are not blogs or wikis.
9. On a different note, we are not at the moment (maybe, hopefully never will be) when just software runs the corporation. We need a smart people to filter and to make a decisions upon every note on the desk. I am sure just a post or a comment on the shuttle would not have made a change. But a curious people with talent that read the note, maybe would have stopped the flights.
10 On the side, I wrote some weeks ago to Tom when he asked a question about if reading every post makes him a better professional or better human being. I told him that deppends on the activity. If you are a proffessor you need to read only the mature notes. If you are Wall Street broker, then you need to take your blackberry and a cell phone to make some sense at the floor. If you are journalist and you are not on top on the every post, if is difficult to be a good one.
Mario Ruiz
http://www.oursheet.com
What is new is the degree of ownership that individuals are now taking over the means to publish, distribute and subscribe to content. The web 1.0 generation of tools (like Sharepoint and Lotus Notes) focus on centralized portals that are controlled by administrators.
While user-generated content is not new, what is new is how easy it is to publish and manage. In 2005 Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote in his blog: “Simplicity changes the world. Convenience is a force multiplier.”
And the changes that this simplicity of communication could force on enterprises is very new and very threatening to the existing hierarchies. Early collaboration tools worked within and for those hierarchies. E20 platforms and models subvert them.
I think on points it was fairly even, but if Tom had been a little more up on the extent to which the whole of the E 2.0 technologies is greater than the sum of the parts, he might have had you on the ropes. More here:
http://enterknowl.blogspot.com/
IT IS RIDICULOUS to argue that E2.0 has been around for a long time. Ubiquitous broadband, affordable access, platform independent applications based on JAVA, open interoperability based on XML standards, disconnected access through mobile phones and PDAs, wide spread usage of these devices (computers, mobiles, PDAs), open source software (which do provide “serious” applications for FREE), global interconnectivity and compatiblity through adoption of standards (like HTTP, HTML, Web Services, SMS, GSM, etc), IP convergence, etc… How can anyone say that the capability to deliver an E2.0 (or W2.0) outcome has been around for a long time???!!!! E2.0 is happening NOW!!!
Not “getting it” doesn’t give anyone the license to create confusion by saying “We’ve been doing that for years.” Statements like this only exemplifies the disconnect between so-called IT professionals and their sponsors. If you don’t get it stop wasting energy resisting and start funneling your energy to understanding.
Large corporations and organisations may take 2 or 20 years to “get it” and undergo the cultural transformation needed to ride this new wave. As Andrew stated in the video – transformation requires leadership.
Maybe it is the long tail of millions of medium and small businesses that will adopt E2.0 principles. Maybe the large organisations will survive because of their scope and scale. But maybe some won’t.
The debate was interesting, the comments are also interesting… oh yeah, that’s nothing new. This video could’ve been widely distributed and accessed immediately and commented on years and years and years ago…NOT!
think on points it was fairly even, but if Tom had been a little more up on the extent to which the whole of the E 2.0 technologies is greater than the sum of the parts, he might have had you on the ropes. More here:
And the changes that this simplicity of communication could force on enterprises is very new and very threatening to the existing hierarchies. Early collaboration tools worked within and for those hierarchies. E20 platforms and models subvert them.
I think on points it was fairly even, but if Tom had been a little more up on the extent to which the whole of the E 2.0 technologies is greater than the sum of the parts, he might have had you on the ropes.
While user-generated content is not new, what is new is how easy it is to publish and manage. In 2005 Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote in his blog: “Simplicity changes the world. Convenience is a force multiplier.
am not recommending that CIOs and owners of attentional technologies figure out how to organize the time and workloads of their information workers or start setting up filters for them. ThereÂ’s a level of indirection here – the owners deploy technologies and processes that information workers can then use to help themselves.
think on points it was fairly even, but if Tom had been a little more up on the extent to which the whole of the E 2.0 technologies is greater than the sum of the parts,the owners deploy technologies and processes that information workers can then use to help themselves
While user-generated content is not new, what is new is how easy it is to publish and manage. In 2005 Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote in his blog: “Simplicity changes the world. Convenience is a force multiplier.
The cultural dimension across geographies and inside organisation wasnÂ’t discussed and this is an area I think could prove fruitful.
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I think on points it was fairly even, but if Tom had been a little more up on the extent to which the whole of the E 2.0 technologies is greater than the sum of the parts, he might have had you on the ropes. Medyum
The cultural dimension across geographies and inside organisation wasnÂ’t discussed and this is an area I think could prove fruitful. THANK YOU
What I enjoyed about the debate is that both of you are realistic about the use of 2.0, what it means in the overall scheme of things, that there is optimism for the future, but we need to question our enthusiasm.
The cultural dimension across geographies and inside organisation wasnÂ’t discussed and this is an area I think could prove fruitful.
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The cultural dimension across geographies and inside organisation wasnÂ’t discussed and this is an area I think could prove fruitful. THANK YOU
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Isn't the reality that KM has been about command and control where the notion of siirt
The cultural dimension across geographies and inside organisation wasnÂ’t discussed and this is an area I think could prove fruitful. THANK YOU
The cultural dimension across geographies and inside organisation wasnÂ’t discussed and this is an area I think could prove fruitful. THANK YOU