Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum Blog

The Australian event industry is quickly getting better from what was until recently a very low base. There are more quality events than ever.

A few months ago I was planning to run an Enterprise Social Network Strategy event in early December. Then I found out that a very similar high-quality event was already set for the week before. As such I cancelled my event and rolled what I was intending to cover into my next Enterprise 2.0 conference. I then spoke to the organizers of the November event, AC Events, to see if we could collaborate. We have worked out a great arrangement whereby we are together bringing two highly complementary events to the market.

Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World on 24-25 November 2008 is a two-day conference covering social media for marketing, enterprise and government, organized by AC Events. I will chair the plenary sessions and enterprise stream at this event.

Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009 is an intensive one-day executive summit organized by Future Exploration Network on how to create value with Web 2.0 tools inside organisations. It features leading international speakers, Australian case studies, and highly detailed insights into implementation.

This Thursday November 5 at 11am US Pacific Time I’ll be doing the keynote for a webcast on Creating Business Value from Web 2.0, targeted to the manufacturing sector. Webcast viewing is free with registration. The description of my presentation is:

Creating Business Value from Web 2.0
Business technology is being transformed. Web 2.0-style technologies that have emerged in the consumer space such as blogs, wikis, presence, RSS, and mashups are being adapted to enterprise use, changing how IT platforms support business success. The Web 2.0 Framework gives clarity into the tools and processes of Web 2.0 and how it creates business value. Applying the Web 2.0 Framework helps organizations to tap fully the insights of their knowledge workers, build more efficient processes, and get products to market faster. Six key steps to creating business value from Web 2.0 help executives to plan the path forward.

Following my keynote Tim Teeter, Product Marketing Manager from Epicor, and Scott Smith, Director of Technology from Epicor, will present how manufacturing companies specifically can apply Web 2.0 capabilities.

I'll share some of my presentation here later.

The current issue of MIS magazine Australia has an excellent feature on Corporate Web 2.0 titled Meetings of 2.0 Minds, introduced with the words: The social communication tools of the web are making their irrevocably into today’s enterprise.

The piece begins with the example of how Bond University conducted an audit of use of Web 2.0 technologies, and “uncovered a vast, organic network of technologies already being used…”

The article goes on to quote me:

The experience of Bond University is far from unique, says chairman Ross Dawson of events and strategy company Future Exploration Network, who researches Web 2.0 technologies. Whether companies realise it or not, Dawson believes there are already instances of Web 2.0 tools being used within every large corporation in Australia, usually without any managerial oversight.

“One of the important characteristics of Web 2.0 is that it emerged in the consumer space, and made its ways in the corporate space, whereas most technologies did the opposite,” he says.

A very interesting article in the Guardian today, US military targets social nets, describes new expertise location technologies.

Expertise location has always been a central ‘killer app’ first sought by knowledge management and now part of the promised of Web 2.0. It is a fundamental driver in any large organization being able to tap its own capabilities and take advantage of being large. This was always epitomized by the quote from Lew Platt, who as CEO of HP famously said “If HP knew what HP knows, it would be three times more profitable!”.

I wrote in 2005 about how Morgan Stanley was finding that blogging was trumping in effectiveness its years of efforts into dedicated expertise location systems. The next layer is tapping social network and content creation patterns to identify experts, as has been implemented in some content management systems (CMS) over the last couple of years. This can be taken further when used within online communities and social networks, as SRI International is currently doing:

Today’s New York Times has an interesting article titled Start-Ups Test Dot-Com Business Models, which compares the business models of Twitter and Yammer (a recent start-up focusing on business micro-blogging that I wrote about in a recent review of the space).

It says that Yammer, while a tiny fraction of the size of Twitter, is already getting revenue, while Twitter is still focusing on growth and waiting to monetize.

His focus on profits helped Yammer, which is based in West Hollywood, Calif., win the TechCrunch50 prize for start-ups in September. TechCrunch, a leading technology news blog that sponsored the contest, called the company “Twitter with a business model.”

Yammer’s business model is compelling, Mr. Sacks said, because it spreads virally like a consumer service, but earns revenue like a business service. Anyone with a company e-mail address can use Yammer free. When that company officially joins — which gives the administrator more control over security and how employees use the service — it pays $1 a month for each user. In Yammer’s first six weeks, 10,000 companies with 60,000 users signed up, though only 200 companies with 4,000 users are paying so far.

Earlier in the month I wrote a post on Micro-blogging in the enterprise: an idea whose time has come? I mentioned a number of the current corporate initiatives in the space, including those of Janssen-Cilag, which in February implemented an internal version of Twitter it called Jitter.

After my post I learned (on Twitter) that Janssen-Cilag was highly commended in the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards. The executive summary of the report includes a description of Jitter. James Robertson from the Intranet Innovation Awards has also recently posted a seven-minute video interview of Janssen-Cilag’s Nathan Wallace on one of their other Intranet initiatives, Juice, for ordering IT supplies.

Last week Nathan wrote up in detail Janssen-Cilag’s experiences with micro-blogging, very generously sharing insights into the challenges as well as benefits from the initiative. This is a must read for anyone interested in the realities of implementing Web 2.0 and new communications technologies. Some selected insights from Nathan's review:

Over the last few months there has been increasing discussion of how micro-blogging tools such as Twitter could be used in organizations.

Twitter is now frequently used in external communication, with organizations as diverse as @SouthwestAir, @Comcastcares, @BigPondTeam, @SEC_Investor_Ed, and @mosmancouncil using Twitter to communicate to stakeholders and for customer service. Given the rapid rise of Twitter and how influential comments can be, this clearly needs to be on the radar for any major organization.

However there are significant constraints in using public micro-blogging services such as Twitter, Jaiku, or identi.ca for internal communication. Even with the ability to protect people’s updates to being viewed only by approved followers, few organizations would like to have this kind of information hosted externally.

As such they often look at internal tools to see how yet another consumer technology can be adapted to create value for the enterprise.

At our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum in February, Australian pharmaceutical company Janssen-Cilag described how it was implementing an internal version of Twitter.

A little earlier in the year CIO Magazine published an excellent feature article titled Enterprise 2.0 - What is it good for? In the print and online articles they included a sidebar: The Organization As Media Entity: Enterprise 2.0 is about making mass participation valuable, which reported on my views (that I’ve written and spoken about on many occasions before) that organizations should start thinking of themselves as media entities. The piece, shown in its entirety below, also includes six key points for CIOs to consider in implementing Enterprise 2.0.

The Organization As Media Entity
Enterprise 2.0 is about making mass participation valuable

Increasingly, the best way to understand how any organization works is to think of it as a media entity, says Ross Dawson CEO, Advanced Human Technologies and Chairman, Future Exploration Network. Organizations create messages and information, take inputs from external media sources, and edit and publish content in an increasing diversity of formats, with e-mail and the intranet often predominant. Their employees are typical media consumers (and creators), deluged by choice, and often ineffective at cutting through with their own communication. As such, the current state of the media industry offers many lessons for organizations seeking to be more effective and productive.

Dawson says it's important for CIOs trying to come to terms with Enterprise 2.0 to realize it is less about a collection of new technologies and much more about shifting organizations into the next phase of work.

Careerbuilder.com has just launched a survey which says that 22% of hiring managers use social networks to screen candidates. The report emphasizes the downside for applicants, saying that one third of hiring managers rejected candidates based on what they found, including drug and alcohol use, inaccurate qualifications, links to criminal behaviour and so on. That’s the stuff that gets the headlines.

Less prominent in the report is that 24% of hiring managers found content on social networks that convinced them to hire a candidate, including solid references and a professional image.

Using social networks to get additional information about candidates is a no-brainer, and think it’s an indictment of the profession that just one fifth of hiring managers use an obvious source of information about applicants. It also should be very obvious to anyone with half a brain today that their social network profiles will be looked at when they’re applying for jobs.

Of course using social networks in screening is just one possible use for social networks in the hiring process. Even the CIA has been using Facebook for recruitment for well over two years, well after leaders in the space such as Ernst & Young (see EY's Facebook careers page , which has over 18,000 fans (Facebook login required).

Future Exploration Network and IBM are running a Social Network Strategy Executive Roundtable this week for top executives of major organizations. We’ll release a report on the discussions, which will give some great insights on how these and other aspects of social networks in the enterprise are viewed by senior management. The report will be available here in a couple of weeks.

IT Business Edge has just published an interview with me on IT governance for Web 2.0 technologies, a topic I'm spending considerable time on in my consulting work with major organizations. The complete article, Set Policies to Unleash Creativity with Web 2.0 Tools, is available on their website, and the interview is reproduced below.

Hall: Just to make sure we’re on the same page, how do you define Web 2.0 technologies?
Dawson: Basically, they’re technologies that use mass participation to create value for the business. They can be wikis, blogs, social networking, social bookmarking, mashups and other tools, but [the term] also involves the underlying architecture behind those tools.

Hall: So what would IT governance for those tools look like?
Dawson: I look at governance in a broader context as having a full understanding of potential risks, potential benefits and having set-off structured policies and procedures where any risks are minimized and benefits are maximized, with a high degree of transparency and accountability for executives and other people in the organization.

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research has recently released research on the use of social media by the Inc 500, which are the 500 fastest growing privately owned companies in the US as ranked by Inc. magazine. This is one of the first longitudinal studies, showing changes in adoption of social media tools from one year ago. The topline results are shown below.

The researchers point to the significantly higher usage of social media by these companies compared to the Fortune 500. A few thoughts on this point and the research findings generally:

Fast growth vs large companies. Fast growing companies by necessity are open to new tools and approaches, and tend to have a culture of adoption and innovation, meaning they’re more likely to experiment with social media tools. There are no studies I’m aware of comparing growth rates of companies and their use of social media, and the causality would be very difficult to unpick, but I believe that consistent rapid growth will be hard to achieve without social media tools to facilitate effective collaboration in the organization.

The UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has recently launched a discussion paper titled Web 2.0 and human resources, designed to help HR professionals to understand what Web 2.0 is and to contribute to organization’s activities in the space.

The paper is built around the key elements of my Web 2.0 Framework, which they nicely attribute me for, though also brings in a number of new elements, and wraps up with three case studies, including Pfizer’s Pfizerpedia, UK government departments’ use of forums, and T-mobile’s use of social networks for recruitment.

As I see and work with many organizations grappling with how to respond to and take advantage of Web 2.0, one of the challenges is that there is no one obvious place in the organization where these initiatives should reside. IT, HR, marketing, strategy, risk management and other functions all need to be involved, and the reality is usually none of them individually have the capabilities to successfully drive the full breadth of the potential across the firm. In successful organizations, often individuals who implicitly understand the issues help to define activities, and very importantly communicate across the wide variety of stakeholders.

The compilation of the Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list has now been completed. It will be made public on 19 June, when it will be the cover story on BRW magazine, accompanied by feature stories on some of the leading applications. It will be released the same morning on the Future Exploration Network website and my blog.

The Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications Launch Event at KPMG will include a panel discussion by Australian online notables, a showcase of five leading Australian Web 2.0 applications (3eep, BookingAngel, Engagd, Plugger, RedBubble) (Note that the showcased applications are NOT the top five on the top 100 list, but have been selected to demonstrate the diversity of successful Australian Web 2.0 ventures; companies that were showcased in last year's Web 2.0 in Australia event won’t be duplicated in this year's showcase), a panel of the founders of these applications, and one-hour of semi-structured roundtables for participants to discuss current issues in Web 2.0 in Australia. IBM, Adobe, and Starfish Ventures are sponsors. We are getting close to fully booked, so register soon if you’d like to attend.

No information about who is on the list or rankings will be released until 19 June, so don’t ask! :-) However it’s probably worth clarifying the scope and criteria for the list.

The Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list I wrote about earlier is being readied, and the launch event on 19 June is now open for registrations.

A few exciting developments:
* A great cast of panellists to uncover the state of online innnovation in Australia, including John Butterworth, Duncan Riley, Foad Fadaghi, and Malcolm Thornton
* Showcases of five leading Australian Web 2.0 applications
* The Web 2.0 list will be featured on the cover of BRW magazine that morning
* Sponsors including KPMG, Adobe and Starfish Ventures - a Gold sponsor will be announced shortly
* 10% of ticket proceeds to be donated to the Layne Beachley Aim for the Stars Foundation

Click here for full details on Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications – Launch Event.

Note that every event run by Future Exploration Network has been sold out (last year's Web 2.0 in Australia was fully booked two weeks before the event), so register soon if you'd like to attend!

More details on the event, including the showcased companies, coming soon.

There is still an opportunity for applications to be considered for the list – please get in touch in comments or by email to submit if you think we might not be aware of you.

I have long been interested in how collaboration technologies are applied in financial services, having come from a career largely at Merrill Lynch and Thomson Financial, and spent much time consulting to the instittutional financial services sector.

A few years ago now I ran the Collaboration in Financial Services conferences in New York and London, and wrote a white paper on How Collaborative Technologies are Transforming Financial Services. Since then I’ve been heavily involved in the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 spaces, and I’m finding that these are extremely relevant to the financial services sector.

I will be doing the opening keynote at this year's annual Financial Services Technology forum on Enterprise & Web 2.0 for Financial Services in Sydney on 29 May. In my presentation I will look at the big picture of the history and relevance of these technologies in the sector, and drawing on my recent work helping organizations with the governance issues of Enterprise 2.0.

Financial services are certainly very diverse, however many of the sectors within it handily illustrate the themes I have been discussing for some time: there is a deep layer of highly process-driven work, supplemented by a layer of connecting expertise to make highly time-sensitive decisions. Enterprise 2.0 technologies and approaches are outstanding in supporting the latter, which is where there is the most potential for competitive differentiation - which can be very fleeting in the world of money.

I’ll provide more details later on what I cover in my keynote.

Here is an old (November 2, 2007) interview I did on SkyBusiness about social networks, examining both the industry landscape and how social networks can be valuable inside organizations. What I like best about this is that for much of the interview they had up a banner reading “Facebook And Other Social Networking Sites Can Be Beneficial For Corporations”, a message that business audiences, especially at the time, hadn’t heard much before.

Some of the things I discuss in the interview:
* The role of advertising networks in social networks
* The upcoming launch of Google’s Open Social and what it means for the sector
* The value to organizations of encouraging strong social networks
* Examples of companies using Facebook and other social networks internally
* How Enterprise 2.0 takes social media tools to apply to organizational productivity

A rather popular topic these days is the risks to organizations of using social networks. An article in today’s Australian Financial Review examines the issue in detail, with an interview of me (excerpted below) hopefully balancing out the other opinions expressed in the article. Unfortunately the way I was quoted seemed to overemphasize my cautions relative to the benefits I discussed.

I am finding it very tiresome to continuously hear security consultants and vendors with big PR budgets go on endlessly about risks, without ever mentioning business benefits. This drone gets into executives’ heads, and as a result discussion of social networks – and many other potentially valuable business tools – focuses on risk and not benefit.

My Enterprise 2.0 Governance Framework explicitly addresses risks, benefits, and actions. It is critical to acknowledge, understand, and minimize risk, but executives are equally culpable if they ignore business value as if they ignore risk.

In the interview with the journalist I basically said that transparency increases business value, however providing transparency must be done intelligently and strategically. The danger is that executives become frightened of the risks, so unintelligently don’t provide transparency, and thus negatively impact the company’s value. Effective business leaders understand that in a complex world business value requires a highly nuanced approach, rather than the black and white view of organizations that is so frequently peddled. Excerpts from the article are below:

When one of Australia’s leading evangelists for Enterprise 2.0 acknowledges “there are some real dangers in an increasingly transparent world”, it’s worth listening.

Ross Dawson, chairman of the Future Exploration Network, is a great fan of online collaboration and communication, but admits there are limits. While research has revealed “a positive impact on stock prices where there is more transparency”, he warns that companies which transparently reported their customers’ private information, for example, would quickly see the opposite effect on share prices.

Some more media coverage of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (also see previous media coverage of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum):

Online Banking Review did a review of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum titled Don’t Be Afraid of Web 2.0. It begins:

Large corporates are struggling to relinquish the control they must sacrifice in order to successfully leverage Enterprise 2.0 applications. That’s the consensus from a recent forum on Enterprise 2.0 held by the Future Exploration Network.

In addition, the Social Media Show recently did a podcast interview of Peter Evan-Greenwood of Capgemini, who spoke at the Forum. Des Walsh's conversation with Peter covers:
• Google Apps
• cultural change issues that come up with the introduction of Web 2.0 technology in the enterprise
• the emerging role of Enterprise 2.0 in the government sector
• how the technology helps companies get measurable business value from their knowledge work processes.

In organizational network analysis circles, an MIT study on how people find information is often cited. The research showed that in an organization, people were five times more likely to go to people than to databases to get answers to their questions. So knowledge workers’ productivity is strongly related to their social networks, in terms of who they know who can help them, and whether there is sufficient trust and reciprocal value in the relationship that they get a response.

It is far more efficient and effective for people to be able to identify the most likely people to help them rather than barraging everyone with the one query and hoping that someone will respond. The early knowledge management systems were largely based on broadcast systems within organizations to be get help on particularly issues. In many cases companies used broadcast emails to get help.

People’s email inboxes have long been so overloaded that broadcast emails are rarely welcome. Certainly the highest leverage approaches to connecting knowledge effectively are in enhancing organizational networks, in terms of how well people know each others’ expertise and have strong social bonds. However now that a whole layer of new communication tools has emerged, there are new possibilities. Twitter in particular is already used within communities to ask questions and get ready responses, and many Twitterers will attest they have got great answers to pressing questions. So the question arises as to whether Twitter should be used as an organizational tool.

On Friday I caught up with Euan Semple in London. It was great to meet, as we’d just conversed over email, voice, and video up until then, and of course had him present over video at our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum in February.

It recently occurred to me that when I catch up with interesting people, I should make a brief video at the end of the meeting to summarize the most intriguing ideas that had come up in the course of our conversation. This is the first time I have tried it, though I hope to do this a lot more regularly now. One of the biggest benefits is capturing for myself the most interesting insights from the conversations I have. It’s also great to share these with others.

In this case I did a very poor job of making the video. First the tape ran out in the middle of the conversation. Then I rewound the tape, and ended up going over the beginning of the earlier conversation. Hopefully I have learned my lesson from this – there are still some very interesting points made by Euan in the video. Forgive the discontinuities.

Tuesday’s edition of The Australian has an article titled Business yet to harness Web 2.0. Overall it takes a rather sceptical approach to the topic, though it does include some positive comments.

Beginning with an overview of what Web 2.0, and suggesting it is confusing, it goes on:

Business strategy analyst Ross Dawson says Web 2.0 systems are becoming part of everyday business processes, like it or not.

"Virtually every large organisation is using these tools and in many cases it's not sanctioned as part of an overall technology strategy.

"However, partly in recognition that many users are doing this anyway, large organisations are deciding this is something they need to think about, develop a strategy, and understand the value and the risks," Dawson says.

The article then quotes IDC research that 50% of companies in the Asia Pacific see Web 2.0 as a business opportunity, while 8% see it as a threat. It says that Australian corporate giants Telstra, Westpac, Lend Lease, AMP, and Suncorp are all active in Web 2.0, though apparently the last three declined to comment for the article, saying it is too early to speak about their initiatives. This is rather disappointing, since I know that for at least two of these companies their activities are absolutely advanced enough to share with comfort.

[UPDATE] I've just reread the article and I see there was a subtle but very important misquotation here. "Dawson says companies need to take action to ensure their Web 2.0 strategies stay within corporate governance rules." No that's NOT what I said.

I said that corporate governance needs to be re-examined in the light of emerging technologies and changing business environment. Existing governance mechanisms are almost never adequate for the manifold implications of the new tools and technologies. Organizations must adapt or re-establish governance structures that will tap the business value of Web 2.0 tools, while addressing concerns and risks. See my draft Enterprise 2.0 governance framework.

IBM's Web 2.0 offerings are centered on their Lotus Connections suite of social software, which includes Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear (social bookmarking), and Activities (collaborative workflow). I wrote about Lotus Connections when it was launched in January 2007. An overview of Lotus Connections is below.

The week before the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, Future Exploration Network and IBM hosted a roundtable of senior executives discussing Enterprise 2.0.

Highlights of the discussions were written up in a report which is being made openly available, to assist other executives in considering the key issues involved. Download the report here:

Executive Insights into Enterprise 2.0:
Lessons from the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Roundtable

INTRODUCTION
Enterprise 2.0 – the application of Web 2.0 approaches inside organisations - is one of the most topical issues today for senior technology executives. To eludicate the concepts and to enable experiences to be shared, Future Exploration Network and IBM invited a select group of senior executives to Sydney’s Level 41 restaurant on 13 February 2008. In a free-ranging discussion overlooking Sydney’s harbour, the executives discussed Enterprise 2.0 and its implications and potential for large organisations.

CONTENTS
Roundtable Participants
Introduction to Enterprise 2.0
Defining Enterprise 2.0
Identifying Business Value
Risks and Concerns
Social Networks in the Enterprise
The Shifting Role of IT
Organisational Culture in Enterprise 2.0
The Role of Governance

There has been some great media coverage of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum. Below is a summary of some of the articles and media that are available online. It is very encouraging that the mainstream media is not only taking up these themes, but giving it such positive coverage - the articles are well worth a read.

Sydney Morning Herald: Facebook up to it
Excellent review of the event and the rise of Enterprise 2.0

Smartcompany: Web 2.0: Our winning ways
Interview with Ross Dawson on the state of Enterprise 2.0

MIS The Scoop podcast: Australian Enterprise 2.0 lessons revealed
Podcast of excerpts from the Enterprise 2.0 case studies presented at the Executive Forum

Internal Comms Hub: Enterprise 2.0 should be harnessed as a strategic asset
Overview of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum and key lessons

Computerworld: Janssen-Cilag dances Enterprise 2.0 jig
Review of Janssen-Cilag case study presented at the Executive Forum

The Financial Standard: Wikis may be working for Westpac
Review of Westpac case study presented at the Executive Forum

Metaverse Journal: Enterprise 2.0 forum - Business IS getting it
Review of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum

NineMSN: Social networking sites help boost business: expert
Ross Dawson’s on the value of social networking for organizations

Social Media Show: Podcast interviews with David Holloway and Stephen Collins

[UPDATE]
The Australian: Business yet to harness Web 2.0
Review of Web 2.0 in Australia, quoting speakers at Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum

We have been posting the speaker presentations at the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on the event blog as they have been made available. Here is a summary of the presentations that the speakers have provided to us:

(Note: to see slide details in the slide shows, view the slides on Slideshare and put the presentation into full screen mode).

Ross Dawson, Chairman, Future Exploration Network

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Notes from the roundtable at E2EF forum on corporate culture

These are just snippets of the conversation, in no particular order

About IT departments:

• how to change a difficult corporate culture


• how to enable web 2.0 in an organistation that has very strict policies on internet usage eg facebook.


• It stems from it trying to protect their infrastructure and systems


• IT block because they can't control traffic


• How do we manage when ppl step over the boundaries. Young people may not know that publishing things on facebook could damage the company


• Light governance is the way


• Have formal guidelines


• Google team app – users taking it into their own hands.


• Need to educate the ceo's

About the E2.0 Tools and Communication and Collaboration

• What is your value to the organisation


• sharing of information = your value


• How do you value the conversations


• Is there a cultural barrier about sharing


• Sharing at the moment is social, but will it translate to the organisation


• Make a culture of sharing success via incentive etc


• Does incentivising individuals discourage sharing?


• How can we have education without dampening enthusiasm


• Have some blogging codes of conduct


• Don't be stupid


• Don't say on your blog what you would not say at the bar – attributed to Frank Arrigo (Microsoft)


• let the staff drive the need for the collaboration tools to get the buy in


• Frustrated and disempowered workforce may be ready for an e2.0 solution.


• Provide a structure for those that are not so good with technology

• use the right tools for the occasion


• one of the tools will be particularly suited to the application


• ease of use and application


• if it useful and provides a benefit it will get an uptake

• latent demand for the ability to communicate is the major factor.


• It unleashes the energy


• And the artefact is left to be able to search

About the Generational Differences

• Will the gen y integrate and be indoctrinated


• Internally the generations will merge but the customers will still be heterogeneous

• there are areas of need


• there are drivers


• there is enthusiasm


• the enthusiasm wears off


• but the technology now is much better so it will be easier to keep the momentum going

We need to retain talent

About Green Issues

• Green / corporate social responsibility – people are expecting to ask these questions now – what are the next set of questions.


• People have an attachment to flying / travelling rather than use green options.

Thanks to Jodie Miners for these notes. Jodie has also posted on her blog her thoughts from the day.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled Facebook up to it by doyen technology journalist Graeme Philipson gives a great review of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum from last week, excerpted below.

Until now, Web 2.0 applications have mostly affected individuals. Companies and government organisations have largely retained more traditional methods of communication. The primary collaborative technology for most organisations in the modern world has become email, which is very much a Web 1.0, or first generation, internet application.

That is now changing. Web 2.0 applications are increasingly finding their way into the enterprise. This phenomenon has, inevitably, been dubbed Enterprise 2.0. That term was invented last year by Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee, who has emerged as something of an international authority on the subject. Last week I heard a remarkable presentation by Professor McAfee on the state of play with Enterprise 2.0 worldwide. His talk was beamed in via Skype from Orlando, Florida, where he was attending an enterprise search conference. He spoke to 200 of us assembled in a conference room in Sydney's Luna Park to discuss Enterprise 2.0 in Australia.

…

The event I attended where we heard Professor McAfee's words of wisdom was the grandly named "Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum", run by Sydney company Future Enterprise Network (FEN). FEN (futureexploration.net) is run by Ross Dawson, who has become one of Australia's leading internet gurus in recent years. He also runs regular events on the future of media.

James Gardner, head of innovation at Lloyds TSB, writes consistently on his blog Bankervision, disclosing some of the key issues involved in innovating in a major bank. In a recent post New ways of collaborating at the bank, James writes about how Lloyds TSB is piloting social media such as blogs. Some excerpts from his below show how blogging can change how corporations work.

We have one blog, for example, that documents the trials and tribulations of a member of the team that is implementing the social media pilot for us. Along the way there have been a couple of roadbumps, of course, and this particular blog offers the opinions of the team on the ground as things have gone wrong. It is a very positive and welcome read. Quite often, one doesn't have a deep understanding of the real issues that caused the problem in the first place. Sometimes, you want the details without all the unpeeling that goes on before you can get them. This is a blog that does that.

...

We've just received approval to post David Backley's slides from his presentation at Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, as below (Note: to see slide details, view the slides on Slideshare and put the presentation into full screen mode).

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In the wake of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, Smartcompany magazine has published an interview with me titled Web 2.0: Our winning ways. It begins:

Entrepreneur Ross Dawson is a leading international expert on the way businesses are using web 2.0 in Australia – and he has good news.

After lagging behind our international counterparts in the enterprise 2.0 stakes, Australia is starting to catch up in its use of blogs, wikis, social networks, social search and virtual worlds.

Ross tells Amanda Gome what’s hot, how businesses are benefiting – and what’s destined for the 2.0 dustbin.

At last I am very encouraged. The response from people at the conference shows there is a lot happening. Up until now organisations have been shy about putting up their hands and talking about what they are doing. Up until now there has also been disparate things being done by different users in different departments. But now things are being squarely addressed by executives at the top of the company so people are prepared to talk about it.

Companies are striving to create more value from the participation of their employees, customers and suppliers by using web 2.0.

...

From a couple of months before the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum held last week, I had been hoping to create some kind of governance framework or implementation framework for Enterprise 2.0 that would be useful at the event.

Last year I created our Web 2.0 Framework, which has now been downloaded around 40,000 times and I gather been used by quite a few organizations in their planning and strategy. This time I wanted to create something that would be useful to help organizations understand and address both the risks and business value of Enterprise 2.0 approaches.

What I have seen in most large organizations is that senior executives’ amorphous understanding of the risks in Enterprise 2.0 has overwhelmed their equally fuzzy grasp of their potential to create business value. A governance perspective articulates and responds to the risks to the business, and also ensures that value is not left on the table – a very important aspect of executive accountability.

In the end I didn’t have time to do the task justice, but quickly pulled together a rough framework to use in my kick-off presentation for the Forum, as below.

In the wake of the Enteprise 2.0 Executive Forum, Peter-Evans Greenwood, CTO of Capgemini Australia, has written in considerably more detail on his thoughts on culture and generational change, which he and others spoke about on the final panel on the path forward.

I have a theory. It seems that most people learn something in their early to mid 20s, and then spend the rest of their career happily doing the same thing over and over again. …. Once they’ve established what it is they do they just want to keep doing it, hoping that the world will remain as it was in their early adulthood.

…

If change is the driver in our organizations, but our organizations are resistant to change, then the biggest challenge we face in not technical but the strategy we use to manage change. It’s quite easy to define a technically and economically possible solution that would provide a boost to our business, or even deliver a step change in capability. But if we cannot get our organization to deliver and then adopt the solution, all our work will be for naught.

…

So what does this mean for the IT department? No matter how important our success is to the success of the company as a whole, IT is a cost center; value is created at the business coal face, not in the IT department. It’s not our job to deploy the new Enterprise 2.0 solution that will revolutionize the business and then force the business to change. We need to focus on the users, rather than thinking in terms of technologies and IT assets, understand the challenges they are facing and provide them with tools and techniques that they can use to innovate themselves. IT as facilitator rather than asset manager. Or as I heard in the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum the other day, give them they structure they want and focus on managing the flow rather than trying to force them to do something a particular way.

…

Here are a few links to more detailed information on the Janssen-Cilag Wiki Intranet case study:

• Our Intranet, the Wiki: Case Study of a Wiki changing an Enterprise.
• Building Enterprise 2.0 on Culture 1.0.
• Clarify. Simplify. Implement.

The presentation slides are also available here.

Here is additional media coverage of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on Internal Comms Hub:

Enterprise 2.0 should be harnessed as a strategic asset
" Several key themes emerged from the day’s presentations, including “participation” being the most important aspect of Enterprise 2.0 – not the technology.

There was much discussion on the differences between generations X and Y, and how new demographics will react to organizations that try to restrict and control intranet behaviors that have rapidly outpaced the capabilities of corporate intranets."

Here are some photos from the event, hosted on Flickr and tagged e2ef (see some of the other intriguing photos with the same tag!).

If you took some photos, please share them on this blog!

Andrew is one of the coming stars at HBS. His contribution at Enterprise 2.0 Forum on Tuesday was excellent. Usual Harvard smoothness and excitement.

As I write this he is giving the Forum at my alma mater
Xerox PARC

A video of the talk will be archived on the site.
Craig

Here is a fantastic resources for those who couldn’t attend the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (or those who did and want to share the ideas with their colleagues).

Mark Jones of MIS magazine’s The Scoop podcast series recorded three of the case studies presented at the event, and has created a 30 minute podcast of excerpts from the case studies presented by Victor Rodrigues of Cochlear, David Backley of Westpac, and Nathan Wallace of Janssen-Cilag. (See the event speaker bios for details.)

Click here to go to The Scoop podcast on "Australian Enterprise 2.0 lessons revealed".

All three case studies are extremely interesting, with some very honest sharing of each organization’s current activities, lessons learned, and vision moving forward. These kinds of case studies should prove an inspiration to other companies that are implementing Enterprise 2.0 or considering doing so.

“What do you do when someone in your team just won’t collaborate via the blog, or share their knowledge on the team wiki? What do you do with team members like that?”


This was one of the questions in the roundtable sessions at the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum. I was on the table covering “Culture and adoption issues”.

The idealistic answer, of course, is to ask, “Do you really want that person on your team?”

But, in reality, is it really that simple?

Here is Euan Semple's presentation that was handed out to attendees, on the Scribd document sharing site:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2092226/Euan-Semple-Handout

Thanks to all the participants at yesterdays roundtable on enterprise 2.0 for financial institutions. I’m sure we could have spent many more hours discussing the challenges and opportunities for the financial sector – we’re looking to run a dedicated forum on enterprise and web 2.0 for financial institutions in May if there’s enough interest.

Here’s my summary, and of course I hope we can continue this discussion via the comments below.

The general feeling from the table was that financial institutions are still struggling with relinquishing control, making it difficult to truly embrace both enterprise and Web 2.0. There are still plenty of large banks banning Facebook, much to the embarrassment and frustration of their employees. Some institutions are actively discouraging Facebook users from revealing who they work for on their Facebook site, and some bankers believe Facebook and work identities shouldn’t mix. Smaller institutions seem to be more open to the idea – Newcastle Permanent Building Society has a Facebook group and doesn’t attempt to control what goes on there.

I asked the group why the industry has been slow to adopt enterprise 2.0 apps. While there’s a lot of interest in wikis, bankers feel building a business case is difficult for something that delivers “intangible results”, “tech” terms like wiki and even enterprise 2.0 put some people off, and larger institutions are still trying to successfully merge business and IT so that such opportunities are driven by the business and not IT teams.

Nevertheless there was an acknowledgement that both staff and customers expect the corporation to offer apps that in many cases they are using elsewhere, and so it’s likely there will be more experimentation by the sector, if only for recruitment and retention purposes.

As always start-ups have the upper hand in this race to innovate – we briefly discussed financial social networking sites (eg Wesabe, Mint) at the roundtable yesterday, as well as peer to peer lending (Eg Fosik, iGrin) – both of which have the potential to threaten the relationships banks have with their customers. I’ve got more on Wesabe over at the Better Banking Blog and would recommend bankers watch these start-ups closely to better understand why the industry needs to rethink its desire to control information.

The Exec Forum was a great day, full of fascinating (and fascinated) people and, as usual, a huge amount jam-packed into a short time.

There's been enough comment on what happened on the day, but there are clearly a lot of conversations that are going to continue. Some of them are:

• * Can organisations take advantage of existing social network applications? (eg Facebook)
• * Should we allow open access to these at work (are they legitimate tools, social or otherwise)?
• * Is Gen C really that different? Can their energy be harnessed the way we want?
• * (and if so, does technology really have a role to play in this?)
• * Is Enterprise 2.0 for everyone? And what makes it meaningful for you?
• * Will mobile really take off as a enterprise device (other than communications) and will this be in "2.0"

I don't know the answers to these, but asking the questions is always useful. I see "new media" companies which are really "old media through a different interface" (thinks: TV == 'radio with picture'). Now we hear people talk about the mobile internet and I think radio with pictures.

In Australia, we are a PC-centric country - unlike most of Asia which is more mobile-centric. This means that our embracing of technology, rich experience, interaction - is almost always going to be through a PC (and even my iPhone was a pain to blog on yesterday).

To me, Web 2.0 was allowing the user to engage in a conversation with other users. Enterpise 2.0 needs to be about the users engaging in a conversation with their suppliers, brand, employers or dealers.

And next week, we'll start on Web 3.0 (which I think is about engaging in a conversation with the content)....

But first, the conversations between you and me about all this. When's the next one?

We’ve already had a fair bit of media coverage for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum. Some of the media coverage includes:

Janssen-Cilag dances Enterprise 2.0 jig (Computerworld)
“Pharmaceutical giant Janssen-Cilag has overhauled its enterprise applications to introduce collaboration with a wiki that integrates IT asset management and even micro-blogging.”

Wikis may be working for Westpac (The Sheet) [Note that registration is required.]
[UPDATE: The full story is available on The Financial Standard]
“The arrival of Gail Kelly at the helm of Westpac may accelerate the bank’s adoption of “Web 2.0” tools such as blogs, wikis and social networks, allowing staff to share information freely and collaborate online.”

Exploring the future of Enterprise 2.0 (Melcrum)
“Run from 8.30am-2pm the event took place at breakneck pace, and covered a massive amount on the topic of social media and Web 2.0 in the workplace. There was much talk of knowledge and knowledge workers, easing employee frustrations, helping individuals to do their jobs more easily, differentiating to attract and retain the best talent and increasing employee engagement (yes, all of this in just 5.5 hours).”

There was also last week’s coverage of Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum:

Social networking sites help boost business: expert (NineMSN)
"Facebook, Instant Messenger and other online networking tools aren't mere workplace distractions — they improve the way we do business.Future Exploration Network chairman Ross Dawson says that a firm's success increasingly hinges on its ability to share knowledge and expertise both with its employees and external clients."

I understand there is a fair bit of media coverage yet to come – I’ll post here when I hear about it

There was mention yesterday of two public sector examples of enterprise 2.0 ... or more correctly government 2.0. Two of the cases were fixmystreet.com and safeas.govt.nz.

Fixmystreet.com, an initiative of the Young Foundation in the UK, illustrates the power of allowing customers to directly issue work orders to local councils in the United Kingdom, combining photos and maps to efficiently communicate what needs to be done and where. Individual citizens are now able to interact in a more direct way with councils, and councils are held transparently accountable for the speed of their response.

The New Zealand government’s safeas.govt.nz public consultation on road safety policy enabled a transparent public discussion using interactive online forums – something the Kiwis have referred to as ‘policy naked’. There is also a forum discussion in progress for revision of the Justice act. You may also be interested in the NZ Government's online guides and forums for participation.
Link to guidelines are at http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/participation which is the home page for participation activities, with the Guidelines themselves at http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/participation/guide-to-online-participation.html

Thanks to Tessa, Patrick, John, Sharmila and Sheryl for the discussion ... please comment if you would like to add to or disagree with my summary!

General gist was alongs these lines:

Experiences with SN in the workplace varied very much depending on size of organisation. Large organisations pretty much all seemed to ban it (i.e Facebook, LinkedIn or Bebo at work) while small organisations seemed not to need/value it (people can chat face to face).

Wikis and blogs were viewed as almost ubiquitous but social networking less so ... 

In theory, however, all agreed that it has value, should not be banned, and should be pretty much open - i.e. a mix of personal and work networking (the same as the way email is used currently).

Maybe organisations should encourage personal social networking to just get people familiar with using the new platforms? Maybe ... but this could be a red rag to a bull ...  

There are different views about the extent to which 'personal' information ought be visible at work.  In practice people will probably still want to maintain separate personal and professional profiles ... Jekyl & Hyde or Hyde & Jekyl?

Large and geographically dispersed organisations ought benefit the most.

Public Facebook vs. private Facebook vs. internal corporate platform (say Lotus Connections for example)? The view seemed to be that many people are members of a number of networks and would want their network to be independent of their employer (so you didn't lose your network if you changed jobs).  This has interesting implications for the concept of social network portability/interoperability and for the likely take-up of corporate-owned social network platforms.  Maybe the solution will be the ability to export networks in the same way that contacts can be exported from Outlook?

Biggest use at the moment is probably the common behaviour of looking up people's profile to suss them out prior to a meeting ... but the interesting point here is that most people will use Google anyway rather then a search on a social networking platform as there are a number of platforms to choose from ... easier just to 'Google them'.

Public sector organisations really need this but are unlikely to do it any time soon!!

Below is the presentation made by Jonathan Stern from Lotus at the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum. It's well worth a look. (Note: to see slide details, view the slides on Slideshare and put the presentation into full screen mode)

In addition to the view on IBM's internal initiatives and client offerings, the statistics on slide 2 are extremely interesting, indicating that CEOs see that after employees, the next most important sources of new ideas and innovation are business partners, clients, and consultants, ahead of formal R&D.

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