The socially networked enterprise
Steve Hodgkinson
01/06/2007

The key innovation of enterprise 2.0 is the creation of interactive, evolutionary, online platforms for collaborative work, dialogue and knowledge sharing across the enterprise. While web 2.0 is a runaway phenomenon, corporate reaction to wikis, blogs and social networking tends to be '... what the?' CIOs remain skeptical about enterprise 2.0 value and concerned about costs and security risks.

CIOs should be creating pilot applications to gain experience with the new platform and how to balance the conflicting demands of open flows of information with corporate security and compliance requirements.

Enterprise 2.0 applications include collaborative document authoring, creation of knowledge repositories ('corporate wikipedias'), collaboration platforms for project management and working documents, knowledge broadcasting, search and harnessing collective input and opinions across the enterprise ('crowdsourcing').

Online search and social tagging technologies have transformed our ability to find and exploit information - both within the enterprise and across the internet. Web 2.0 applications also stimulate social networking around this knowledge - acting as a catalyst for both exploiting existing knowledge and creating new knowledge. It is the combination of the unprecedented ease of finding information and the more direct interaction with the people who create and discuss it that is at the root of enterprise 2.0's value.

'1.0' concepts revolved around knowledge management while '2.0' concepts revolve around knowledge exploitation. In '1.0', we would take the time to research and analyse knowledge largely as a solitary, serial, analytical process. '2.0' offers much richer ways to participate in the flow of ideas and creativity - engaging with interactive repositories of knowledge and real time conversations with people who are both consuming and creating ideas.

Where '1.0' was about the content, its container and its owner ' 2.0' is about the discourse, the conversation, the 'buzz'. Where '1.0' was about the channel for knowledge creation and publication - web sites and email - '2.0' is about a platform for social interaction and dialogue around knowledge.

More effective exploitation of knowledge is the key to the innovations that drive growth and productivity. This is a social phenomenon because knowledge work is a social event - people bouncing ideas off one another and leveraging the ideas of others. The trouble is that the pressures of modern organisations often stomp out constructive social interaction around ideas. Competition, organisational silos and inadequate tools restrict knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Enterprise 2.0 applications offer a potentially novel way forward for using the power of social networking to create and harness collaborative working and knowledge sharing across the enterprise.

There is emerging evidence that the next generations of knowledge workers are more comfortable with treating the web as a collaboration platform and will expect to have access to enterprise 2.0 applications.

CIOs should be creating pilot applications to gain experience with the new platform and how to balance the conflicting demands of open flows of information with corporate security and compliance requirements.

- Steve Hodgkinson is Ovum's Public Sector Research Director.

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