Enterprise social software, also known as Enterprise 2.0, is a term describing social software used in “enterprise” (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, this generation of software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.(sourced from Wikipedia)
Despite being beneficial to organisations, the early adopters to these platforms are not very high.Professor Andrew McAfee at Harvard Business School has compiled an exhaustive list of the frequent causes of organisational dilemmas towards adoption of emerging social software platforms.Primarily relevant to the set of organisational setups who are still very skeptical about the possible chances of misuse of these platforms by employees.
Vandana,
Following your suggestion, I read mcAfee’s blog post on “some questions you might get asked.” I am not surprised by the questions and would love to see the answers McAfee gets from readers. Or, any answers McAffee has himself.
It seems that at the root of all the questions is the fear of giving up the control that was inherent in hierarchical organizations and ones that push products rather than value to customers. It is not a trival issue to change this mindset.
You mention that the number of early adopters of enterprise 2.0 is low. Add to this that a substantial number of these early adopters are struggling. In my estimation the root problem lies in adopting technology before they adopt the right thinking or mindset.
John
John I. Todor, Ph.D.
Author of Get with it! The Hands-on Guide to Using Web 2.0 in Your Business.
Agree with you wholly.
Metcalfe’s law states that a network’s value grows quickly as participants join in.While the individual value of the network will be the key driver in making people join, the community value (which is the summation of the individual values) should be the main driver behind the organisations’ adoption of these technologies. Somewhere organisations are assessing and starting to understand the need for harnessing the collaborative intelligence of it’s human capital.What they also need to do is to understand the need to ENABLE this human capital to collectively work towards deriving increasing returns through a higher COMMUNITY VALUE.The bigger the collaborative effort, the more valuable it becomes. It pays to be ubiquitous.