Embracing Enterprise 2.0

Donald Tapscott moderated a panel of Ross Mayfield, Kim Polese and Joe Schueller on how successful companies have adopted enterprise 2.0 platforms to drive innovation and collaboration.

Where do you start?

Ross: You need to find out what you are already doing. You can look to transform culture with the tools because of the transparency.

Joe is cautious about experimentation, looking at the upsides and downsides. There is a cultural problem; there are way more consumers of information than producers of information.

Kim: Spike was started on a wiki, but the company is still dominated by email communications. You should start with an individual project rather than push out to the enterprise as a whole.

Joe went after email first. That was a failure. People were not willing to let go of their email.

Don made a story of a big automotive company that wanted the CEO and top executives to start a wiki. That was a terrible idea. It is much better to start from the bottom and move up.

What are the Challenges?

Don points out: freeriders, integration, and culture.

Ross: the legal team and marketing team can through the initial roadblocks. You need some early success stories. Find a champion to give some cover as the project is first started.

Joe: 2.0 is all viral. There is no deployment. There is nothing worse than an empty wiki. You need to fill in some information first.

Kim: Managers are worry about wiki proliferation and collaborating with control.

Joe: You need to orient the technology around the process. Make sure you are picking the right tool for the right job.

Audience: IT Dept's are concerned about E2.0 tools. If IT is not behind it, then who is going to pay for it. How do you get HR to buy in?

Don: Leadership needs to make sure it happens.

Ross: IT needs to make the tools available and then get out of the way. People will quickly find the value in the tool and by being a contributor.

Kim: IT needs to be involved to make sure the systems talk to each other. IT should be a leader and not just an enforcer.

Joe: The software is more lightweight and easier to maintain. They started the roll out of the tools in IT, so IT became leaders and evangelists for the tools.