TMCnet has this recent BusinessWire title (May 16, 2006):
Well, that certainly got my attention – sounds like something I’ve commented upon a couple times. The article describes the three areas that need to be well managed for Web 2.0 technologies to have any significant impact – the technology issues (that’s the easy one), the affected business processes, and the people issues (that's the hard one). These few paragraphs from the article capture the essence of the fundamental problem that I and many others working in this arena have experienced (the underlining is mine for emphasis):
The challenge is that Web 2.0 is not just a set of technologies, but also has attributes that have a social dimension -- new business models, user-contributed content and user-generated metadata, more open and transparent business process, simplicity in design and features and decentralized and participatory products and processes.
"While it is straightforward to add specific technologies, such as Ajax or RSS to products, platforms and applications, it is more difficult to add a social dimension," said David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow.
"Adding these new aspects requires rethinking the design of the system and possibly its target audience. It is therefore more challenging than a cosmetic makeover to the application via Ajax, because it can imply significant changes to the development process, business model and perhaps even the mission of the system under construction," Mr. Smith said. "However, missing out on the non-technology aspects of Web 2.0 means that many organizations will also miss out on some of the positive business benefits."
I have quick anecdote that illustrates this perfectly… A friend of mine has a client (non-wiki related service) that is experimenting with a wiki scenario for project management. Now if you read this blog with any regularity, you know how focused I am on improving productivity, reducing email, and ending up with better quality results through more productive collaboration using the wiki. This enterprise organization is taking the approach of using the wiki as a ‘repository for emails related to a given project’. When asked whether the eventual intent is to wean project members off email and use the wiki directly for communication and collaboration, the answer was, “ Well, we’ll see. They are pretty used to using Lotus Notes for that.”
Contrast that perception with the DrKW case study in my previous post.
Yes, the social aspect is the biggest hurdle and ingrained culture and habits will be the death of Web 2.0 – at least in the enterprise arena.
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