Great story; especially the brilliant recognition of managements contributions to its successful conclusion. Communication is one of three “pillars” of Enterprise 2.0 solutions. Social networking, while suspiciously a lot like goofing around on the internet instead of doing the job I’m paid to do, can deliver value as a component of E2.0. It also obeys the number one rule of all E2.0 solutions: Do no harm.

That rule was followed when they implemented newsgroups as an “overlay” to the existing infrastructure: smelly popcorn break rooms, classically incapable management teams and enterprise 1.0 (or earlier) business systems. All of these infrastructures contribute to the environment where more and more employees are convinced they could do it better.

Enterprise 2.0, and what I see are its three segments – Communication, Operation, Customer, all contribute to mitigating the damaging effects of the existing infrastructure and in fact demonstrate commercial value. Unfortunately the Enterprise 2.0 discussion has been rather narrow in its focus (social) and rather dubious in its business value (social again). But a true E2.0 solution coordinates the chatter (communication) that can unify performance, it delivers the goods (operation) faster, better and cheaper to a market (customer) that appreciates its value v. alternative uses of funds.

The fact that E2.0 solutions can be deployed on top of the existing infrastructure for a fraction of the cost and time that E1.0 and previous solutions required without the risk, disruption and stifled innovation and flexibility is if not revolutionary…at least evolutionary. Now if the market could just stop focusing on twitter or facebook as the embodiment of E2.0 and focus on the true needs of business (hence enterprise).

Great blog.

Steve