The most recent issue of EMC‘s ON Magazine includes an interview with me and Tom Davenport. As the article’s subhead states, "One year after debating whether Enterprise 2.0 is truly a transformative technology or just an incremental evolution of collaborative tools, Andrew McAfee and Tom Davenport resume the conversation."
Conversation is exactly the right word. Previous debates between me and Tom have featured a fair amount of disagreement, and perhaps a bit of talking past each other. This one felt different, even though he and I continue to view the ‘toolkit’ of Enterprise 2.0 in dissimiar ways. I see the constituent technologies as someting new under the sun, and Tom sees them more as incremental improvements to the digital collaboration tools that have available to companies for a long time.
That difference in viewpoint, however, didn’t matter much. Tom and I agreed pretty violently on a few important points: the need to be circumspect about the power of these technologies to transform organizations and render obsolete traditional notions of ‘management’ and ‘hierarchy,’ the benefits of emergent over imposed approaches to communicating knowledge and expertise, and the need for ‘gardeners’ or ‘curators’ who keep the digital environments tidy and usable over time.
I’m not exactly sure why we’re agreeing so much more now than in the past, but it’s a welcome development. As I wrote in my first blog post about Tom’s views, he is one of the most insightful and experienced thinkers about technology’s impact. It’s been a little uncomfortable finding myself on the opposite side from him on an issue I find important. So I was glad to find myself nodding my head a lot as he spoke during the interview.
After the notebooks were put away and the tape recorder turned off, Tom said to me "This was a lot more fun than disagreeing." I couldn’t agree more.
The same issue of ON magazine also has some interesting stats on E2.0 viewpoints and penetration rates collected by AIIM International and summarized by Carl Frappaolo. Check them out and tell us what you think of them. And/or leave a comment telling us what you think of the state of the debate between on Enterprise 2.0.
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
I appreciated the example of the professional services firm – easy to find a colleague elsewhere in the company who is best for the problem. Interacting internal enterprise 2.0 apps and HR databases with external services like LinkedIn could be interesting, because employee adoption of LinkedIn appears to me to be quite large, and people are sharing a lot of information about themselves, in meaningful ways that people understand.
Is it time to incentivise the use of Enterprise 2.0 tools by being a bit brutal about email? For example, disable attachments, or delete all emails from the server over 15 days old? That might ‘encourage’ people to use the internal blogs and wikis instead. Or is it too draconian? Or perhaps people will just find a way round it?
Technology ALWAYS impacts a business. Look back 5 years ago when Yahoo was the search engine of choice and the myspace and facebook’s of the world were not even a thought. Fast forward to today and look at the evolution of online trends. It will be very interesting to see where we are at in 5 more years.
So now that you guys will start agreeing on things, how will I get fodder for my arguments and blog posts???
On a serious note, last year Berlecon Research found that out of 156 surveyed companies 25% answered they didn’t know what web 2.0 was; and 25% didn’t think that web 2.0 will have any positive impact on their companies. [1]
Looking at the AIIM survey results, do you see a shift happening?
1. http://de.sevenload.com/videos/xYxb8F6/enterprise-2-0-berlecon
As zippy as ever !!
I especially like the idea about there being a need for “gardeners” or “curators”.
Maybe we could define and structure such roles within an organizational framework? Could this be the creation of an entirely new class of information professionals?
The interview between you and Tom was amazing – it is an good example of how people can sometimes agree and sometimes disagree without losing their credibility.
Aloha Prof. McAfee,
Some points I think are worth considering:
1. Tom says that despite blogsÂ’ positive aspects, “they have a tragic flaw: No one has the time to read them.”
2. With Wikipedia, I always have a nagging doubt about who contributed the knowledge and what their agendas might beÂ…
3. Tom writes that “McAfee argues that these tools are bringing about a participatory revolution.”
I agree with point #1 whole heartedly. Time is a precious commodity. I find it hard to read many blogs. But, at least I try hard.
On point #2, I think this is the bigger problem with the Wiki concept. Source is always an issue in formation distribution. And since there is rumors of tampering with Wikipedia, it is hardly a trusted source.
On point #3, I think active participation has definately increased. I remember the days when most business people totally discounted the Internet. That has changed entirely, and many of those people are now actively participating.
We belive in technology and invest in it daily. We belive in the internet, and invest in it daily also. That said. We find it difficult to argue against the future of technology.
Prof. McAfee, as an Associate Professor, Harvard Business School, and a recognized expert on technology. I would like to invite you personally to drop by our webiste and give us your professional input, so we can improve our technology. There’s even a FREE Membership in it for you. I look forward to hearing from you, and maybe if you would say a nice thing or two about our service, that would be great too.
Thanks for the chance to comment.
John London,
Support Team, BYTemySITE
Congrats on finally being on the same page about something. At the beginning of this article I didn’t think you would agree when I read that you “violently” agreed.
As a business analyst as well as webmaster, I am constantly contenting with the online quality/quantity debate (to simplify your arguments) and would have to agree that there are an increasing number of tidy gardeners like Google coming up with efficient ways of weeding out the useless content (or at least ranking content well) – for instance, they put extra value into sites with credentials (i.e. .gov domains) as well as the sites those authority sites link to.
As the amount of content increases, the amount of tidying will as well, it’s just natural.
Just can agree to what Schufa said already. Great example how interviews should look like
Looking at the AIIM survey results, do you see a shift happening?
It’s nice to see an intelligent conversation, whether in agreement or disagreement about new technology. Often times you would see a valid argument get discounted by a narrow minded individual with too much power and not enough sense to look farther into the big picture.
I agree, the interview was quite interesting.
I entirely agree with you when you say “Collaboration borders on social activity”. Both of you make good, strong points, about needing be prudent about the ability of these technologies to transform organizations.
Great post, looking forward to hear more!
Yes, it would be very much true to say that ‘technology transforms organizations’ when we have experienced magnificent changes through our work sphere over the last decade. Ever since the dynamic IT processes have come to rule, the different processes of the business world have gained pace over night. Ever since the new age software designs started enhancing the productivity for the masses, IT laws have started shaping even the hierarchy of global & multinational organizations. The industry is looking for futuristic projects which would be safeguarded by dynamic people, prompt solutions & wholesome insurance.
Enterprise 2.0 has really changed the face of business. This is what technology has become and everyone should accept it.
We recently had a similary sort of debate about using collaborative tools like MS SharePoint 2007. I personally found it really hard to make higher managment understand the benefits of this tools as they dont seems to have very good understanding of high level IT issue and just looks at things from financial point of view
Nice… entertaining and useful as always. I’m glad you and Tom have buried the hatchet.
“Waiting for Web 4.0″
I’m still not sure how anyone is able to argue that Enterprise 2.0 isn’t a transformative technology.
Good to see some agreement though!
Nice write up, interesting read. I’d have to say that E2.0 is merely an incremental evolution of collaborative tools though.
In my view Enterprise 2.0 will “eventually” transform business, just as Web 2.0 will “eventually” transform the web…but not now.
Let’s look at Web 2.0: True there are the Facebooks, the YouTubes, etc. but for the most part the internet hasn’t changed that much. How many corporate websites are really Web 2.0?
In the same manner, I think you’ll find Enterprise 2.0 taking off very slowly. I mean in my small business I still have some clients who prefer to communicate via telephone rather than email. So I believe you’ll find the management of many companies (the one who are older and actually make decisions on which technologies to implement) will still want to use good “old fashioned” emails for communications.
Also there could be a liability issue with Enterprise 2.0. What about corporate espionage? What about statements made on say a ‘wiki’ that could be used as legal fodder?
It’ll be a while for Enterprise 2.0.
Its always any disagree about that. but when it happen people will forget it
I agree, the interview was quite interesting with the claim of “Collaboration borders on social activity”. All over very good strong points to be prudent about the ability of these technologies to transform organizations.
If something knew whether it’s technology or others come up, always come with two different opinions among people who use them. And the time will give the answers which one is right and wrong
CASUS TELEFON
TELEFON D?NLEME
D?NLEME C?HAZI
very well written article.
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