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Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges
"Web 2.0" is the portion of the Internet that's interactively produced by many people; it includes Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and prediction markets. In just a few years, Web 2.0 communities have demonstrated astonishing levels of innovation, knowledge accumulation, collaboration, and collective intelligence.
Now, leading organizations are bringing the Web's novel tools and philosophies inside, creating Enterprise 2.0. In this book, Andrew McAfee shows how they're doing this, and why it's benefiting them. Enterprise 2.0 makes clear that the new technologies are good for much more than just socializing-when properly applied, they help businesses solve pressing problems, capture dispersed and fast-changing knowledge, highlight and leverage expertise, generate and refine ideas, and harness the wisdom of crowds.
Most organizations, however, don't find it easy or natural to use these new tools initially. And executives see many possible pitfalls associated with them. Enterprise 2.0 explores these concerns, and shows how business leaders can overcome them.
McAfee brings together case studies and examples with key concepts from economics, sociology, computer science, consumer psychology, and management studies and presents them all in a clear, accessible, and entertaining style. Enterprise 2.0 is a must-have resource for all C-suite executives seeking to make technology decisions that are simultaneously powerful, popular, and pragmatic.
Now, leading organizations are bringing the Web's novel tools and philosophies inside, creating Enterprise 2.0. In this book, Andrew McAfee shows how they're doing this, and why it's benefiting them. Enterprise 2.0 makes clear that the new technologies are good for much more than just socializing-when properly applied, they help businesses solve pressing problems, capture dispersed and fast-changing knowledge, highlight and leverage expertise, generate and refine ideas, and harness the wisdom of crowds.
Most organizations, however, don't find it easy or natural to use these new tools initially. And executives see many possible pitfalls associated with them. Enterprise 2.0 explores these concerns, and shows how business leaders can overcome them.
McAfee brings together case studies and examples with key concepts from economics, sociology, computer science, consumer psychology, and management studies and presents them all in a clear, accessible, and entertaining style. Enterprise 2.0 is a must-have resource for all C-suite executives seeking to make technology decisions that are simultaneously powerful, popular, and pragmatic.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published November 16, 2009
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January 28, 2010
Also Posted at www.connected-knowledge.com
In 2003 publisher Tim O’Reilly began using the term “Web 2.0” to describe the emergence of the “participatory web.” Blogs, Wikis, reviews and recommendations were turning passive consumers into active contributors. O’Reilly sponsored a conference around the concept and a buzzword was born. For the past couple of years, MIT’s Andrew McAfee has been championing the use of these tools behind the firewall as a means to foster innovation and efficiency within organizations. McAfee has summarized his research into the participatory enterprise in his new book Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges.
Enterprise 2.0 isn’t yet a full-fledge buzzword, but it’s getting there. Enterprise social computing platforms are all the rage (there’s even an Enterprise 2.0 Conference) and vendors like SocialText, Jive and even Microsoft have rushed new platforms to market that promise to usher in a new age of openness and collaboration for even the stodgiest of corporations. A lot of organizations are drinking the Kool-Aid and rolling out these tools without much thought as to what they hope to accomplish, much less how Web 2.0 will help. This was the fatal flaw of the knowledge management frenzy of the 90s. Too much emphasis was placed on tools and technology and too little on the people they were supposed to benefit. This point is not lost on McAfee. It is in fact the central premise of his outstanding book.
Enterprise 2.0 is not primarily a technological phenomenon. … The appearance of these novel tools is a necessary but not sufficient condition for allowing new modes of interaction, collaboration, and innovation. … the mechanisms of emergence are organizational and managerial, rather than purely technical. In other words, leaders can’t simply assume that healthy communities will self-organize and act in a coherent and productive manner after Web 2.0 tools are deployed.
Throughout the book, McAfee uses case studies of organizations such as Google, Serena Software, VistaPrint and the US Intelligence Community, to demonstrate the central concepts of Enterprise 2.0, their benefits and pitfalls and how best to approach their adoption. He defines Enterprise 2.0 as “the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals.” These Emergent Social Software Platforms (ESSP) encompass all of the tools making up Web 2.0, but the concept goes beyond a roster of applications and services.
Social software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer mediated communication and to form online communities. Platforms…are digital environments in which contributions and interactions are globally visible and persistent over time. Emergent means that the software is freeform and contains mechanisms like links and tags to let the patterns and structure inherent in people’s interactions become visible over time.
Since any new paradigm is only as good as the number of catchy acronyms it fosters, McAfee organizes the six most common technical features of these tools under the sobriquet SLATES (Search, Links, Authoring, Tagging, Extensions, Signals). The first four of these features are by now familiar to most people on the web, but the terms Extensions and Signals may not resonate immediately, even though we likely use them daily. Extensions are the semi-automated classifications and recommendations that drive the “you may also like” features of Amazon.com, Netflix and StumbleUpon.com. (ie. “If you liked this, then by extension you would like this.”) Signals are simply notifications of new content such as RSS feeds and SharePoint alerts. While this list of characteristics provides a useful framework for the discussion of Enterprise 2.0 the real value of McAfee’s work is his analysis of how they can be used to achieve an organization’s goals.
Central to McAfee’s conception of ESSPs and the connected enterprise is the concept of tie strength as first articulated in Mark Granovetter’s 1973 study “The Strength of Weak Ties” (SWT). I discussed SWT briefly in an earlier post, but in a nutshell tie strength refers to the different levels of relationships we maintain in both our personal and professional lives. These range from close friends (strong ties) to casual acquaintances (weak ties). McAfee also accounts for those people who would be valuable associates if only we knew about them. Taken together these various types of interpersonal relationships form the “Enterprise 2.0 Bull’s-Eye”.
Most enterprises attempting to promote collaboration focus on teams, usually through providing new tools or sponsoring rope-climbing retreats. The idea has always been to build tight-knit groups; to reinforce strong ties. McAfee argues that while these relationships are critical and should be supported, say through the adoption of collaborative authoring environments, weak ties should not be neglected. The problem is that everyone in a tight-knit group already knows everyone else. It is far less likely that all my close friends or teammates (strong ties) have relationships with my casual acquaintances (weak ties) the people on the outer-edge of my social network. Even though my association with these folk of the fringe is tenuous, those relationships provides a link between my core group and others that might not otherwise be available. “Strong ties are unlikely to be bridges between networks,” McAffee says. “Weak ties are good bridges” He goes on to cite Granovetter.
The weak tie between [a person:] and his acquaintance, therefore, becomes not merely a trivial acquaintance tie but rather a crucial bridge between the two densely knit clumps of close friends…these clumps would not, in fact be connected to one another at all were it not for the existence of weak ties. … social systems lacking in weak ties will be fragmented and incoherent. New ideas will spread slowly, scientific endeavors will be handicapped, and subgroups separated by … geography or other characteristics will have difficulty reaching a modus vivendi.
McAfee also draws on the work of anthropologist Robin Dunbar to bolster his claims about the corporate value of social computing. According to Dunbar the theoretical maximum social group size for humans is between 100 and 230 people, probably settling at around 150.
The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us. Putting it another way, it’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.
By reducing the time and effort it takes to keep track of other people’s activities, both personal and professional, social computing platforms have the potential to dramatically increase the number of people with whom you can have a social relationship, in essence increasing your memory capacity for potentially valuable contacts. Organizations which are too focused on strong ties fail to see the value of these “low-density” networks. As a result, the platforms that nurture and sustain them, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, are viewed with suspicion and are generally considered an unprofitable time-suck for their staff. McAfee’s case studies give some excellent counter examples, such as Serena Software’s decision to move their entire corporate Intranet to Facebook and bring in the staff’s teenage children to train employees on “Facebook Fridays.”
Organizations often attempt to tap into the third ring of McAfee’s bull’s-eye by creating elaborate, centralized expertise directories. My experience with such directories has always been that they are extremely difficult to initially populate and even harder to maintain. As a result, their utility drops off quickly after launch, unless people can be induced to take ownership of their own profiles and keep them up to date on their own initiative. That is not to say they are not a worthwhile endeavor, but McAfee highlights some interesting alternatives (or at least supplements) that may already be in place, such as document repositories, but that are underutilized. McAfee demonstrates the successful conversion of potential ties into productive collaborations in both the Google and US Intelligent Community case studies and elaborates on those efforts throughout the book.
The introduction of many of these tools may seem to be old-hat to many readers, but it is a necessary level-setting for the broad readership to which the book seems targeted. McAfee’s tool overviews are effective and engaging. They provide all the orientation necessary for newcomers while still treating veterans to fresh insights. This is important as the real value of the book is found in Part II: Succeeding With Enterprise 2.0. In these final three chapters, McAfee addresses the standard objections to adopting Web 2.0 tools (Won’t staff just use it to gossip? What if somebody says something bad about our company? Doesn’t this expose us legally?) A long list of objections is presented and while the risks can’t necessarily eliminated, they can generally be adequately mitigated. On balance, the benefits more than counterbalance the cost. McAffee sums up his advice by saying, “For most organizations, in fact, I believe that these benefits outweigh all the risks.”
Chapter seven lays out a roadmap for succeeding with Enterprise 2.0. McAfee is quick to point out that successfully adopting these technologies and techniques “can’t be reduced to a single step-by-step recipe.” Rather he offers recommended steps and a few warnings. First and foremost is managing your own expectations of how quickly or fully people will embrace a new way of working even if it does make their lives easier. A new tool or process needs to provide at least a ten-fold improvement over the status-quo in order to be accepted. McAfee cites the research of Harvard Marketing professor John Gourville to support this assertion.
Many products fail because of a universal, but largely ignored, psychological bias: People irrationally overvalue benefits they currently possess relative to those they don’t. … [This:] leads to a clash in perspectives: Executives, who irrationally overvalue their innovations, must predict the buying behavior of consumers, who irrationally overvalue existing alternatives. The results are often disastrous: Consumers reject new products that would make them better off, while executives are at a loss to anticipate failure. This double-edged sword is the curse of innovation.
McAfee advises a go-slow approach with a “long haul view.” Determining what you are trying to accomplish in advance of deploying tools is critical, as is reconciling yourself to the fact that the benefits will likely take quite some time to fully realize. Even when those benefits do materialize they may difficult to quantify. McAfee advises against attempting to calculate a Return On Investment for Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. It is much more important to measure progress. As he says “these [initiatives:] require sustained management attention, not just a periodic contest among business cases in which the highest ROI figure wins.” As I prepare my budget and capital funding requests for the coming year, I will be be passing this book along to both my superiors and subordinates with this passage underlined.
In 2003 publisher Tim O’Reilly began using the term “Web 2.0” to describe the emergence of the “participatory web.” Blogs, Wikis, reviews and recommendations were turning passive consumers into active contributors. O’Reilly sponsored a conference around the concept and a buzzword was born. For the past couple of years, MIT’s Andrew McAfee has been championing the use of these tools behind the firewall as a means to foster innovation and efficiency within organizations. McAfee has summarized his research into the participatory enterprise in his new book Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges.
Enterprise 2.0 isn’t yet a full-fledge buzzword, but it’s getting there. Enterprise social computing platforms are all the rage (there’s even an Enterprise 2.0 Conference) and vendors like SocialText, Jive and even Microsoft have rushed new platforms to market that promise to usher in a new age of openness and collaboration for even the stodgiest of corporations. A lot of organizations are drinking the Kool-Aid and rolling out these tools without much thought as to what they hope to accomplish, much less how Web 2.0 will help. This was the fatal flaw of the knowledge management frenzy of the 90s. Too much emphasis was placed on tools and technology and too little on the people they were supposed to benefit. This point is not lost on McAfee. It is in fact the central premise of his outstanding book.
Enterprise 2.0 is not primarily a technological phenomenon. … The appearance of these novel tools is a necessary but not sufficient condition for allowing new modes of interaction, collaboration, and innovation. … the mechanisms of emergence are organizational and managerial, rather than purely technical. In other words, leaders can’t simply assume that healthy communities will self-organize and act in a coherent and productive manner after Web 2.0 tools are deployed.
Throughout the book, McAfee uses case studies of organizations such as Google, Serena Software, VistaPrint and the US Intelligence Community, to demonstrate the central concepts of Enterprise 2.0, their benefits and pitfalls and how best to approach their adoption. He defines Enterprise 2.0 as “the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals.” These Emergent Social Software Platforms (ESSP) encompass all of the tools making up Web 2.0, but the concept goes beyond a roster of applications and services.
Social software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer mediated communication and to form online communities. Platforms…are digital environments in which contributions and interactions are globally visible and persistent over time. Emergent means that the software is freeform and contains mechanisms like links and tags to let the patterns and structure inherent in people’s interactions become visible over time.
Since any new paradigm is only as good as the number of catchy acronyms it fosters, McAfee organizes the six most common technical features of these tools under the sobriquet SLATES (Search, Links, Authoring, Tagging, Extensions, Signals). The first four of these features are by now familiar to most people on the web, but the terms Extensions and Signals may not resonate immediately, even though we likely use them daily. Extensions are the semi-automated classifications and recommendations that drive the “you may also like” features of Amazon.com, Netflix and StumbleUpon.com. (ie. “If you liked this, then by extension you would like this.”) Signals are simply notifications of new content such as RSS feeds and SharePoint alerts. While this list of characteristics provides a useful framework for the discussion of Enterprise 2.0 the real value of McAfee’s work is his analysis of how they can be used to achieve an organization’s goals.
Central to McAfee’s conception of ESSPs and the connected enterprise is the concept of tie strength as first articulated in Mark Granovetter’s 1973 study “The Strength of Weak Ties” (SWT). I discussed SWT briefly in an earlier post, but in a nutshell tie strength refers to the different levels of relationships we maintain in both our personal and professional lives. These range from close friends (strong ties) to casual acquaintances (weak ties). McAfee also accounts for those people who would be valuable associates if only we knew about them. Taken together these various types of interpersonal relationships form the “Enterprise 2.0 Bull’s-Eye”.
Most enterprises attempting to promote collaboration focus on teams, usually through providing new tools or sponsoring rope-climbing retreats. The idea has always been to build tight-knit groups; to reinforce strong ties. McAfee argues that while these relationships are critical and should be supported, say through the adoption of collaborative authoring environments, weak ties should not be neglected. The problem is that everyone in a tight-knit group already knows everyone else. It is far less likely that all my close friends or teammates (strong ties) have relationships with my casual acquaintances (weak ties) the people on the outer-edge of my social network. Even though my association with these folk of the fringe is tenuous, those relationships provides a link between my core group and others that might not otherwise be available. “Strong ties are unlikely to be bridges between networks,” McAffee says. “Weak ties are good bridges” He goes on to cite Granovetter.
The weak tie between [a person:] and his acquaintance, therefore, becomes not merely a trivial acquaintance tie but rather a crucial bridge between the two densely knit clumps of close friends…these clumps would not, in fact be connected to one another at all were it not for the existence of weak ties. … social systems lacking in weak ties will be fragmented and incoherent. New ideas will spread slowly, scientific endeavors will be handicapped, and subgroups separated by … geography or other characteristics will have difficulty reaching a modus vivendi.
McAfee also draws on the work of anthropologist Robin Dunbar to bolster his claims about the corporate value of social computing. According to Dunbar the theoretical maximum social group size for humans is between 100 and 230 people, probably settling at around 150.
The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us. Putting it another way, it’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.
By reducing the time and effort it takes to keep track of other people’s activities, both personal and professional, social computing platforms have the potential to dramatically increase the number of people with whom you can have a social relationship, in essence increasing your memory capacity for potentially valuable contacts. Organizations which are too focused on strong ties fail to see the value of these “low-density” networks. As a result, the platforms that nurture and sustain them, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, are viewed with suspicion and are generally considered an unprofitable time-suck for their staff. McAfee’s case studies give some excellent counter examples, such as Serena Software’s decision to move their entire corporate Intranet to Facebook and bring in the staff’s teenage children to train employees on “Facebook Fridays.”
Organizations often attempt to tap into the third ring of McAfee’s bull’s-eye by creating elaborate, centralized expertise directories. My experience with such directories has always been that they are extremely difficult to initially populate and even harder to maintain. As a result, their utility drops off quickly after launch, unless people can be induced to take ownership of their own profiles and keep them up to date on their own initiative. That is not to say they are not a worthwhile endeavor, but McAfee highlights some interesting alternatives (or at least supplements) that may already be in place, such as document repositories, but that are underutilized. McAfee demonstrates the successful conversion of potential ties into productive collaborations in both the Google and US Intelligent Community case studies and elaborates on those efforts throughout the book.
The introduction of many of these tools may seem to be old-hat to many readers, but it is a necessary level-setting for the broad readership to which the book seems targeted. McAfee’s tool overviews are effective and engaging. They provide all the orientation necessary for newcomers while still treating veterans to fresh insights. This is important as the real value of the book is found in Part II: Succeeding With Enterprise 2.0. In these final three chapters, McAfee addresses the standard objections to adopting Web 2.0 tools (Won’t staff just use it to gossip? What if somebody says something bad about our company? Doesn’t this expose us legally?) A long list of objections is presented and while the risks can’t necessarily eliminated, they can generally be adequately mitigated. On balance, the benefits more than counterbalance the cost. McAffee sums up his advice by saying, “For most organizations, in fact, I believe that these benefits outweigh all the risks.”
Chapter seven lays out a roadmap for succeeding with Enterprise 2.0. McAfee is quick to point out that successfully adopting these technologies and techniques “can’t be reduced to a single step-by-step recipe.” Rather he offers recommended steps and a few warnings. First and foremost is managing your own expectations of how quickly or fully people will embrace a new way of working even if it does make their lives easier. A new tool or process needs to provide at least a ten-fold improvement over the status-quo in order to be accepted. McAfee cites the research of Harvard Marketing professor John Gourville to support this assertion.
Many products fail because of a universal, but largely ignored, psychological bias: People irrationally overvalue benefits they currently possess relative to those they don’t. … [This:] leads to a clash in perspectives: Executives, who irrationally overvalue their innovations, must predict the buying behavior of consumers, who irrationally overvalue existing alternatives. The results are often disastrous: Consumers reject new products that would make them better off, while executives are at a loss to anticipate failure. This double-edged sword is the curse of innovation.
McAfee advises a go-slow approach with a “long haul view.” Determining what you are trying to accomplish in advance of deploying tools is critical, as is reconciling yourself to the fact that the benefits will likely take quite some time to fully realize. Even when those benefits do materialize they may difficult to quantify. McAfee advises against attempting to calculate a Return On Investment for Enterprise 2.0 initiatives. It is much more important to measure progress. As he says “these [initiatives:] require sustained management attention, not just a periodic contest among business cases in which the highest ROI figure wins.” As I prepare my budget and capital funding requests for the coming year, I will be be passing this book along to both my superiors and subordinates with this passage underlined.
November 15, 2009
Andrew McAfee's Enterprise 2.0 is a career changer. You'll walk away with new views of communication and collaboration through well articulated concepts, thoughts and suggestions whether you work in a corporation, nonprofit, school or any other organizational environment. This is the rare non-fiction book that you are disappointed to see end. The constant flow of useful information leads to a notebook full of actions to take and ideas for additional research.
McAfee presents hard evidence of Enterprise 2.0 success but does not ignore the valid concerns about security, fighting the status quo bias and addressing skeptics. This book is not primarily about technology. Even managers and executives who shy away from technology discussions will find this book an engaging read because it addresses business problems, not technology problems.
I am going to be selfish with this book. No one is getting my copy. However I am buying three more copies to pass along to my management chain. Whether you are an individual contributor, mid-level manager or senior executive you will benefit from McAfee's research and writing.
McAfee presents hard evidence of Enterprise 2.0 success but does not ignore the valid concerns about security, fighting the status quo bias and addressing skeptics. This book is not primarily about technology. Even managers and executives who shy away from technology discussions will find this book an engaging read because it addresses business problems, not technology problems.
I am going to be selfish with this book. No one is getting my copy. However I am buying three more copies to pass along to my management chain. Whether you are an individual contributor, mid-level manager or senior executive you will benefit from McAfee's research and writing.
March 2, 2018
Links to my Slideshare book review are at https://martin.atlassian.net/wiki/spa... and it is fair to say this was the book I needed to read when I read it. It was so empowering and helped me express so many thoughts about the benefits of emergent tools for collaboration. Highly recommend this book!
November 14, 2019
A good read for people aspiring to transform their organization's culture using social technologies.
March 26, 2020
A state bureaucrat good at crafting words. As for enterprise, his best bet was to live off governmental handouts as a paper pusher. Which proves to still be very lucrative.
May 29, 2024
Would have been good in it's time, but don't stand the test of time 🥺
December 17, 2014
If you have heard of Enterprise 2.0, they you have heard of McAfee. He coined the term in his 2006 paper in the MIT Sloan Management Review: Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration.
You will enjoy the book. It pulls together all of the bits and pieces that he has said about Enterprise 2.0. Because even if you are familiar with McAfee and Enterprise 2.0, you have not had it all put together nicely in one place. I learned some great new things and was able to see some old things in a new perspective. This is the first book that puts it all into one place.
If you are not familiar with Enterprise 2.0, then you should definitely read this book.
We are at at the tipping point for a new way to communicate. Email was revolutionary when it came out. We could communicate using the internet. It was cheap and easy.
Now we are able to communicate using webpages. This a very different way to communicate than the pure back-and-forth of email and the letters that preceded email. The shift is from channel communications to platform communications, moving from inherently private communication to inherently public communication.
One of the challenges is that the innovation and lessons are coming from the public space into the enterprise. In the past, the innovation in communication technology came from inside the enterprise out to the public space. It used to be hard to establish an email account. You needed big servers and IT support from a company or university. Now you can establish a new email account in seconds from Google using gmail.
With these 2.0 tools we are seeing a reverse in the flow of technology. The internet has gotten much more efficient at finding information than the tools inside our enterprise. Is it easier to find information on the internet using Google or to find information in your corporate intranet?
Those of you who are familiar with McAfee or his blog will find some familiar passages.
* There is a discussion of his SLATES perspective on the elements of Enterprise 2.0: Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions, and Signals.
* The story of Wikipedia
* The power of weak ties and the expansion of the Dunbar's number
* The evolution from the channel communication to platform communication
* The success of Intellipedia among the intelligence community
McAfee also delves into compliance aspects of enterprise 2.0. In a discussion with the CIO of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, JP Rangaswami, they discuss how the platform communications of enterprise 2.0 makes compliance easier. Our current mainstream communication tools of email and IM are inherently private. Being private, they are harder to monitor. It's also harder to spot misinformation, negligent information and bad acts. The more open platform communication of enterprise 2.0 allow more people to be on the lookout for bad patterns, misinformation and compliance issues.
The book takes you through the next big steps of adoption and outlines factors for success, overcoming the knee-jerk reaction to be private, counter fears of abuse, and overcoming the 9X effect for adoption.
The book is worth the purchase price and the time to read it, regardless of whether you are an enterprise 2.0 veteran or a newbie.
In the interest of disclosure, Andy not only gave me a copy of his book, but also autographed it. I'm easily swayed to write about something when it is given to me. He also supplied me with copious amounts of alcohol at parties after the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. (Another surefire way to get my attention.)
You will enjoy the book. It pulls together all of the bits and pieces that he has said about Enterprise 2.0. Because even if you are familiar with McAfee and Enterprise 2.0, you have not had it all put together nicely in one place. I learned some great new things and was able to see some old things in a new perspective. This is the first book that puts it all into one place.
If you are not familiar with Enterprise 2.0, then you should definitely read this book.
We are at at the tipping point for a new way to communicate. Email was revolutionary when it came out. We could communicate using the internet. It was cheap and easy.
Now we are able to communicate using webpages. This a very different way to communicate than the pure back-and-forth of email and the letters that preceded email. The shift is from channel communications to platform communications, moving from inherently private communication to inherently public communication.
One of the challenges is that the innovation and lessons are coming from the public space into the enterprise. In the past, the innovation in communication technology came from inside the enterprise out to the public space. It used to be hard to establish an email account. You needed big servers and IT support from a company or university. Now you can establish a new email account in seconds from Google using gmail.
With these 2.0 tools we are seeing a reverse in the flow of technology. The internet has gotten much more efficient at finding information than the tools inside our enterprise. Is it easier to find information on the internet using Google or to find information in your corporate intranet?
Those of you who are familiar with McAfee or his blog will find some familiar passages.
* There is a discussion of his SLATES perspective on the elements of Enterprise 2.0: Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions, and Signals.
* The story of Wikipedia
* The power of weak ties and the expansion of the Dunbar's number
* The evolution from the channel communication to platform communication
* The success of Intellipedia among the intelligence community
McAfee also delves into compliance aspects of enterprise 2.0. In a discussion with the CIO of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, JP Rangaswami, they discuss how the platform communications of enterprise 2.0 makes compliance easier. Our current mainstream communication tools of email and IM are inherently private. Being private, they are harder to monitor. It's also harder to spot misinformation, negligent information and bad acts. The more open platform communication of enterprise 2.0 allow more people to be on the lookout for bad patterns, misinformation and compliance issues.
The book takes you through the next big steps of adoption and outlines factors for success, overcoming the knee-jerk reaction to be private, counter fears of abuse, and overcoming the 9X effect for adoption.
The book is worth the purchase price and the time to read it, regardless of whether you are an enterprise 2.0 veteran or a newbie.
In the interest of disclosure, Andy not only gave me a copy of his book, but also autographed it. I'm easily swayed to write about something when it is given to me. He also supplied me with copious amounts of alcohol at parties after the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. (Another surefire way to get my attention.)
March 8, 2013
Andrew McAfee lays out a fine case for collaborative tools. My favorite example is Google's setting up an internal prediction market on which employees could wager/trade shares about the potential success of Google products and other events, thus encouraging honest projections and accountability. The historically "siloed" US intelligence community has made progress towards information sharing too, spurred to change by failures such as 9/11.
Most objections to "Enterprise 2.0" are probably imagined, but I may be biased since I currently work at a tech company that hosts its own cloud storage, wikis, and an issue/task/timesheet system. It's clear that an internal blog or discussion board might improve organizations that lack self-criticism, because each member of a team has a unique point of view. McAfee's an expert on the nuances, costs, and risks of implementing all of these tools, and I recommend the book without hesitation.
Most objections to "Enterprise 2.0" are probably imagined, but I may be biased since I currently work at a tech company that hosts its own cloud storage, wikis, and an issue/task/timesheet system. It's clear that an internal blog or discussion board might improve organizations that lack self-criticism, because each member of a team has a unique point of view. McAfee's an expert on the nuances, costs, and risks of implementing all of these tools, and I recommend the book without hesitation.
May 17, 2010
Thoughtful guide to Enterprise 2.0 tools
Andrew McAfee, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, coined the term “Enterprise 2.0” to refer to the organizational use of wikis, blogs and social networks that are modeled after Web 2.0 sites, such as Facebook and Wikipedia. His thoughtful, insightful report details the remarkable innovations and benefits that Enterprise 2.0 enables. He explains how companies can exploit advanced Web technologies to become marketplace winners. Conversely, he warns that those who don’t adapt to new technologies will fall behind. getAbstract recommends his well-informed book to executives, strategic planners and information technology leaders. It offers practical, advanced tools for remaining competitive.
To learn more about this book, check out the following link: http://www.getabstract.com/summary/12...
Andrew McAfee, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, coined the term “Enterprise 2.0” to refer to the organizational use of wikis, blogs and social networks that are modeled after Web 2.0 sites, such as Facebook and Wikipedia. His thoughtful, insightful report details the remarkable innovations and benefits that Enterprise 2.0 enables. He explains how companies can exploit advanced Web technologies to become marketplace winners. Conversely, he warns that those who don’t adapt to new technologies will fall behind. getAbstract recommends his well-informed book to executives, strategic planners and information technology leaders. It offers practical, advanced tools for remaining competitive.
To learn more about this book, check out the following link: http://www.getabstract.com/summary/12...
February 1, 2010
I found this book very informative. The author uses the term Enterprise 2.0 to describe how the new internet technologies of Web 2.0 can be implemented at organizations' internet and intranets. These technologies include blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and others. He starts off discussing three case studies and throughout the book refers to these and how they used these tools to communicate and collaborate. He talks about success stories and some pitfalls.
I recommend this book to managers who wish to learn more about how they can use these collaborative tools within their own organization.
I recommend this book to managers who wish to learn more about how they can use these collaborative tools within their own organization.
July 27, 2010
This book by Andrew McAfee is a real eye-opener and career-changer. It probably sounds quite boring and I initially picked it up for work, but it turned out to be fascinating even for a techphobe like myself. This book might sound like it only applies to the tech industry, but everything you will learn about Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 applies to all fields and industries, and will open your eyes to the fundamental shift that is happening right now in the way we work, heading away from a hierarchical work structure toward a much more open, collaborative, and equal one, and the tools that are making this possible. A fascinating read.
June 11, 2017
I believe the book could have used a lot more in-depth examples of Enterprise 2.0 usage. The four short case studies were introduced in more depth than the solutions they used for their problems.
I would have liked to understand more about the different uses of E 2.0 technologies and in which circumstances each should be used. The book seemed to be a bit misleading in presenting only the consideration of tie strength in determining which technology to use. While it does seem to be a good way to organize things, the lack of exploration into other possible pivots on the varied technologies is a shame.
I would have liked to understand more about the different uses of E 2.0 technologies and in which circumstances each should be used. The book seemed to be a bit misleading in presenting only the consideration of tie strength in determining which technology to use. While it does seem to be a good way to organize things, the lack of exploration into other possible pivots on the varied technologies is a shame.
January 15, 2015
2 stars, for me - 'it was ok'.
I heard Andrew speak at the Gartner Australia conference and the book essentially covers the same ground, so if you have heard him speak, you don't really need the book.
I also didn't think that he really covered that much new ground. If you have read "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman, which is much longer and more thorough - although 10 years old, then you have the essence of this book.
The one area that, to me, he covered well and interestingly was Google Cars.
Cheers.
I heard Andrew speak at the Gartner Australia conference and the book essentially covers the same ground, so if you have heard him speak, you don't really need the book.
I also didn't think that he really covered that much new ground. If you have read "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman, which is much longer and more thorough - although 10 years old, then you have the essence of this book.
The one area that, to me, he covered well and interestingly was Google Cars.
Cheers.
July 8, 2010
If you're new to all this web2.0 stuff, this book will provide some good case studies to illustrate how this new technology can transform your business. However, if you are an early adopter and are already immersed in implementing wikis, blogs and forums, this book is going to tell you much that you already know. It will validate that you are doing the right thing and that to get everybody on board is a long haul.
Read
February 7, 2016Good book about how collaborative tools can benefit organizations. Book is not about describing social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. per se, but explaining how to make actual use of them. Book has good real life examples how Web 2.0 tools have been used to solve problems. McAfee also describes typical roadblocks and how to tackle them. Book is not technical, but intended to managerial level.
January 8, 2012
Using as a source for a thesis investigating how Web 2.0 technologies are complementing or supplanting traditional Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives for internal organizational knowledge generation and sharing within the social media industry.
August 24, 2012
Wrote some comments on this book on my IT blog. Stop by. http://brewerma.wordpress.com/2009/11...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 6, 2010
Excellent read. Highly recommend it to those interested in exploring how communications patterns and human behavior will evolve moving forward in business.
Want to read
January 16, 2010Based on the review listed on my blog (www.mygreypub.com/Blog), I have added this to my "to-read" list.
October 2, 2010
This was a great survey or social technologies and how they affect traditional IT work.
January 29, 2013
Completed reading, looking for the next version Enterprise 3.0, which can able tell about the iPhones, Android, Blackberry and Windows devices and its apps.
May 31, 2021
Good book to learn how social technologies have positively impacted companies that have deployed them in letter and spirit.
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