One exciting thing about applying Web 2.0 concepts to the enterprise is how they might promote more fluid organizational dynamics. I like to imagine the move to Enterprise 2.0 as a kind of phase shift, from a solid to a liquid or a liquid to a gas. Atoms (individuals) and molecules (organizational units, teams, any group of individuals) get to interact in more flexible ways given the new technology and new ways of doing business. Enterprise 2.0 liquefies the business community.
Here’s one example:
One opportunity lies in how software companies sell. Instead of using an expensive direct-sales force to target a central purchasing authority, some vendors are increasingly pitching to the person who will actually use the tool.
Start-up Visible Path, for example, offers an entry-level version of its social-networking software to businesspeople for free. If enough people within the company use it, Visible Path has a much easier time selling the high-end version, which has advanced security and reporting, said Antony Brydon, CEO of Visible Path.
In SOA versus Web 2.0, John Hagel calls for Web 2.0 technologists to bypass IT departments and get directly to line executives. That approach strikes me as itself quite Web 2.0-ish, a liquid approach to disseminating software and ideas.
So I ask: is it the Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 technology that’s important or is it the way of getting things done? Most likely it’s both. An academic might call it reciprocal determinism: the technology and the more fluid ways of interacting and connecting jointly influence each other.
2 Comments
To your closing question: I would, of course, always like to choose technology and culture. But, if forced, I’d always choose culture over technology. While I (obviously, hopefully, from my posts and mouth-running ;>) believe the technology of Web 2.0 is A Big Deal, the culture of mixing together user-centric + business-centric + code-centric thinking together is An Even Bigger Deal.
In my mind the next evolution in programming is the Business and User Savvy Coder who thinks not only about “low level” things like less[config|code], convention driven development, and language wars, but also about making end users into rock stars and figuring out how to sustain their selves and organizations (biz).
The Web 2.0 crowd seems to fit that model and, more importantly, they’ve figured out how to spread it to others as a loose belief system that isn’t simply based on “how to get rich quick” as happened in Web 1.0.
Cote’: I guess your blog name says it all: people over process - culture over technology. I agree, it’s really the social change more than the technology. But without the technology, it’s hard to see how it could happen.
I’m hoping for the time when people who really understand the business needs can make software themselves. That’d be cool.
It’s nice to get beyond the “get rich quick” idea but part of the reason we’ve been able to get beyond it is because there’s so much money still floating around from that time. It’s like we needed (as a population) to get the money first, then we could sit under trees and philosophize.