As organizations begin to embrace social tools to collaborate, connect workers together, capture knowledge, and drive innovation they soon encounter a phenomenon that they weren’t necessarily expecting. As critical mass is achieved and general participation rises, there is a subsequent, and often dramatic, increase in the volume of information that is visible on the local intranet.
Now I should be clear that the intranet is often a depressingly static place even today in many organizations. But those applying Enterprise 2.0 (social, emergent, freeform approaches to business activities) can soon find that the opposite is often the case. The information captured and the knowledge shared in a social business environment is usually globally visible and lasts long after the collaboration ends.
And this new information visibility is invariably a good thing. These ever expanding and socially created “knowledge trails” form a deeply linked web of information that continue to provide repeated value over time as they build up on an organization’s intranet.
