Enterprise 2.0

Since we're talking about Enterprise 2.0 all of the time, it might be interesting to share some thoughts about what that term means today and how it has developed over time.

To be put very generally, Enterprise 2.0 means the use of all the social and collaboration tools that have evolved to be called Web 2.0 within a company or enterprise.

Though the term Enterprise 2.0 still seems to be quite recent, the trend to use these tools has begun already many years ago. I remember that in the summer of 2005 I joined a software development project where almost the complete documentation was kept in a Wiki to which everybody had access to add or update the specifications as needed. I think this was the first time that I personally got into contact with what is nowadays known as Enterprise 2.0.

Back in 2006 Andrew McAfee published his article Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration and thus coined the term.

The software tools that are usually considered to belong to Enterprise 2.0 are, among others, blogs, Wikis, collaboration tools, idea and knowledge management tools. These are the kind of applications that work best (or only) when users are actively participating, which means that the introduction of these tools needs to be accompanied by changes in the everyday way of working. Things should become much more bottom-up than top-down. Employees need to be encouraged to openly share their ideas, knowledge, expertise, experiences, and even criticism. The Enterprise 2.0 tools can help employees to communicate across organizational and geographical boundaries. Specialists working at similar challenges in different departments or locations should have a place in the company intranet to get together and learn from one another - that's the vision behind the buzzword. The Internet shows that this can work beautifully and that large and valuable knowledge repositories can emerge if many people are actively contributing.

One of the most central points of Enterprise 2.0 is not a technical or a software issue however, but a challenging social task - the building of communities. Social and collaboration tools, when introduced in a company, will always need some sort of support and even push from management - the more senior the better. It will take time and hard and dedicated work to encourage the employees to really use the tools once they have been provided to them. This is probably the most underestimated challenge on the way to become a type 2.0 enterprise. This is about people, processes, and organizational structures much more than about the software tools.

Another quite different area of Enterprise 2.0 is the use of social and collaboration tools to communicate across company boundaries - with suppliers, clients, and even the general public. This area has seen dramatic developments over the years, and it's the most visible one. Nowadays it is already commonplace to see company blogs, discussion boards, and wikis, especially for companies that are delivering directly to end users. Those tools are a means to reach out to the customers, build brand loyalty, collect ratings and feedback, and connect the customers to the specialists and customer support. Discussion boards, monitored regularly, can provide early-warning signs for trouble ahead. Though they provide invaluable services, they are also time- and work-intensive to set up and maintain, which must always be kept in mind when planning to move into the Enterprise 2.0 world.

Finally, I'd just like to recommend a small series of three very informative podcasts from KPMG that are a good short introduction to the Enterprise 2.0 topic, though they are already a few years old. Most things that are said, apart from a few company names, are still fully valid today. If you're interested, you can find them here.