Enterprise 2.0: The Next Narrative

By on March 15, 2010

Enterprise 2.0 was launched in the spring of 2006 as a result of Andrew McAfee’s case study interviews in 2005 on Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), an investment bank in London.  The story unfolded after he and his team studied the work of J.P. Rangaswami, who was then Global CIO of the bank.  It’s sometimes surprising to me when I realize how much has changed since those early days.   For starters, the technology foundation of the DrKW case study was wikis (Socialtext), blogs (b2evolution), and messaging software (MindAlign).  Of these three, only Socialtext is what I would consider top-of-mind in the E20 sector (and the company’s software has extended well beyond an enterprise wiki.)  J.P. Rangaswami even left DrKW and has successively mastered several positions at BT where he is now Chief Scientist.

In short, Enterprise 2.0 is maturing.  It’s high time for a new series of case studies.  This week, McAfee (today, speaking at SXSW) and I are announcing  The 2.0 Adoption Council and MIT’s Center for Digital Business will be co-producing a series of case studies that explore the modern dynamics driving the 2.0 phenomenon in a sampling of large enterprises.  We’ve identified the following themes that are present in most initiatives:

  • Innovation:  Leveraging collaboration and social activity to spur discovery, idea generation, and breakthroughs for the organization or customers
  • Time-to-Market: Accelerating the time to bring products/services to market by collapsing artificial silos/boundaries and time zones
  • Cultural Reinvention: Using the philosophies of 2.0 to reshape the organizational DNA, embracing transparency, collaboration, trust, and authenticity
  • Visibility: To provide a real-time view into operations and business process by connecting people and ideas.
  • Cost Reduction: Substituting more agile, lightweight tools for connecting and sharing that are easier to manage and significantly reduce operational cost.
  • Knowledge-sharing: Harvesting institutional knowledge of the enterprise for the purposes of retaining it, exposing it and providing easy access to it.
  • Expertise location: Indexing and surfacing hidden and known talent in the Enterprise.
  • Productivity improvement: Providing socio-collaborative tools to the workforce for measurable gains in productivity.
  • Talent Retention: Providing tools that add to workplace satisfaction and positive employee work experience, especially germane to retaining GenX and GenY talent.

Each case study, written in a detailed contextual narrative, will highlight at least one of these themes.  Our goal is to produce approximately a dozen solid case studies from different industry sectors.  We will be delving into the business rationale for each case, its particular adoption strategy and status, as well as the expected business results.   We hope to be able to discuss the progress on these case studies at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in mid-June.   As soon as I have secured our sponsor commitments, work will begin immediately.

If you have suggestions for the case study series, I’d love to hear them.

(Cross-posted @ ITSinsider)

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Susan has been a writer, analyst, and entrepreneur covering the IT Services and social collaboration markets for over 25 years. Named as one of Fast Company’s “Most Influential Women in Technology” in 2010, her insights have been featured in industry research, as well as mainstream media such as The New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. Her interests are in disruptive applications of technology and the consumerization of IT. Susan participates on various industry conference boards, blogs for the Enterprise Irregulars, and spends most of her time supporting and inspiring enterprise early adopters in their efforts to introduce disruptive technologies and new processes to their worldwide organizations. She is currently working on a new startup: Change Agents Worldwide.  You can find Susan on LinkedIn, Twitter, G+, and About.Me/SusanScrupski. LinkedIn Twitter

3 responses to “Enterprise 2.0: The Next Narrative”

  1. Maybe this is an obvious thought, but… | Buzz-Tank
    Maybe this is an obvious thought, but… | Buzz-Tank March 15, 2010 at 3:47 pm |

    [...] really struck me this evening as I was surfing around a bit was a very interesting piece about Enterprise 2.0, which I picked up via J P Rangaswami, whose blog I find endlessly fascinating, creative and [...]

  2. Glenn
    Glenn March 15, 2010 at 4:02 pm |

    These are good themes to start your research with but may I make a suggestion? There is too much focus on tools and not enough focus on technique. There is more to an ECM deployment than making a product purchase decision. The deployment details are important. Issues such as branding and community management may not be high on the CTO’s list but need to be addressed in order to avoid abandonment. See http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/purpose/people/product for some more suggestions on what to focus on in your case study. I hope this helps and look forward to ready the case study this summer.

  3. The social customer – confused of calcutta
    The social customer – confused of calcutta November 24, 2012 at 3:08 pm |

    [...] I started with the use of social tools in enterprises, at Dresdner Kleinwort, Andy McAfee was looking for people engaged in what he later termed “Enterprise 2.0″; [...]