21st Century Organization

Attending Enterprise 2.0 Open Boston: Hope to see you there

The array of intriguing sessions at Enterprise 2.0 Boston June 9-12 has Victoria Axelrod and I packing our bags. We plan to start with "An Evening in the Cloud" and participate in the Enterprise 2.0 Open Session hosted by Ross Mayfield and Socialtext, Tuesday at 12.30pm. (Thanks Steve Ardire for the pointer.) Our proposed session topic is Open net∞WORKing Organizations - Co-generating Business Value and we look forward to the opportunity to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Looking for Enterprise Platforms Promoting "Social Networking"

Inspired by writing an Inside Knowledge article about our Facebook Groups Investigation with co-conveners Bill Anderson and Victoria Axelrod, at Enteprise 2.0 Boston I will be investigating companies adding social networking tools to their platforms.  Already I see Trampoline and IBM/Lotus Atlas will be present with serious ambitions to people network organizations.  Simon Oxley noted SocialText has a new release to reveal participant connections. After watching ConnectBeam's demo at FASTForward 2007 I'm interested to see how their product has evolved. 

Suggestions about other vendors adding user networking to check out are appreciated. It'll be interesting to watch how the flurry of interest in "social networking" tools for the enterprise unfolds especially in an enviroment where IT publications are focused on "The Problems with Social Networks".

Enterprise 2.0 Boston V Hanover

Intriguing to me about Enterprise 2.0 Boston is the international audience it's attracting if my small sample is indicative. I'm hoping amidst the crowd to reconnect with Mark Masterson and Robert Hommburg whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Enterprise 2.0 Hanover. I have to wonder how the Boston conference will compare given the high standard convener Björn Negelmann and host Simon Wardley set at CEBIT.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Community 2.0 Brain - netWORK Mindset

Attending a four day conference and making sense of it for someone else is tricky at best.  Everyone attends with biases, assumptions, and expectations. Other than sharing time and space together it is a unique individual experience.

We ran our workshop on Social Capital: Glue for Sustainability at the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas.  "Social capital" and "community" have a lot in common as they both are about building relationships and value is created from the knowledge embedded from emergent conversations.  Linked conversations through networks is our focus and a netWORKED mindset is our workshop subtitle.

But there were only two sessions at the conference over 4 days that focused in part or in whole on seeing organizations as networks - Patti Anklam's keynote and our workshop. Mapping the network of keynote presenters is my take on revealing the collective value of the conference.

Consider clicking here an experiment in a netWORKED mindset- a means to capture my experiences and our workshop. Using a dynamic network mind mapping and knowledge visualization tool by the brain technology, I have  written my conference notes and made links to  keynote speakers and our workshop.  There are web links to Flickr, Slideshare and presenter sites as well. This may take a few minutes to open, but worth a try.

netWORKED mindset tab will take you to our networked organizations wiki which is private.  If you want to see it, let us know so we can send an invitation.

Once in the CORE tab, click "of interest", then click "video" to hear how we bring networks of stakeholders together.

The Brain has an enterprise version for organization wide knowledge capture and interactivity (multiple individuals can author and edit), so the technology scales.  The personal version I used can be downloaded for 30 day free trial allowing multiple maps to be created. Uploading to your website for read only viewing is fairly straight forward with an FTP program.

The netWORKED brain is lots more fun and has plenty of options for use to create a "shared"  experience.  Let me know what you think.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Thinking about Open Network Business Models: Your Insights Invited

Victoria Axelrod (my 21stCenturyOrganization blogging colleague) and I are on deadline for Effective Executive, an India based business magazine published by ICFAI University Press. Working title of our piece is:

Open Net-Working Organizations - Co-generating Knowledge and Innovation

Our article explores themes we've blogged about here over the past 2 years, research for two recent Inside Knowledge Magazine articles ("Broadcasting Innovation: Organising to Connect Intelligence" and "Prediction Markets: Co-creating the Organisation", my Enterprise 2.0 Summit Hanover presentation, and our forthcoming Social Capital: Glue for Sustainability Workshop, May 5 in Las Vegas, following the Community 2.0 Conference. (As Victoria previously wrote please use code SPKRM2005 for a friends 20% discount if you can join us.)

We like to practice what we advocate so as our article is about open, networked, working we're sharing our article outline here and inviting fresh perspectives and contributions of interesting sources.  Our article focus reflects we are contributing to a special Effecutive Executive Knowledge Management edition.

Overview

"In a March 2007 "Long Live KM" online discussion through the AOK Group, Robert Buckman (described by Infoworld as "KM's father figure") wrote:

"Jerry, thank you for the kind words, but I never did try and manage knowledge. What I really tried to manage and nurture was a culture that would encourage and expand the flow of knowledge. It was because economic value could only be obtained in our environment when knowledge moved across the organization in response to a need."
~ Bob Buckman, March 6, 2007 AOK Yahoo Group Post

Two decades since Buckman's pioneering work to encourage and expand knowledge flow and innovation, taking a network view of organizations and using the tools of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) facilitates creating open, collaborative organizational cultures. More importantly, an intentional open net-working approach aids understanding how "social capital value" is created in organizations through dynamic interactions and relationships between all of an organization's participants and stakeholders. Examples from our research and experience of organizations using new open network models to promote knowledge sharing, innovation and value creation are included.

While we will revisit open working models investigated in our Inside Knowledge articles:

• Qualcomm's Venture Fest using prediction markets
• The Bordeaux Energy Colloquium, a Think Tank Network,
• Executive to Executive Marketing Networks as implemented at Avaya
• Procter and Gamble's "Connect and Develop" and innovation marketplaces like Innocentive

we're also exploring approaches including:

• Boston Consulting Group's use of mapping tools to understand networks around patents and identify high potential talent. (Did they really just use Touchgraph as Manuel Lima suggests commenting on the Business Week article?)
• IBM's use of open network initiatives including sharing research with partners and clients. (Thanks to John Maloney for this paper find.)
• The innnovative and business critical collaborative knowledge sharing initiatives presented at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, Hanover.

In writing about open network approaches we're alert to investigating when such models appear not to work effectively. Hence we're striving to understand what caused Boeing's decentralized 787 supply chain to become a critical factor in the company's high profile and costly aircraft delivery delays.

Yesterday discovering Robin Teigland's presentation on Slideshare, (displayed as a "Related Slideshow" to my Hanover presentation), I was reminded of the potential value that can be created through openness in knowledge sharing. This is especially so when you intentionally start by "looking around" as John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid encouraged in "The Social Life of Information", 2000.

Hence this blog post sharing our article themes and ideas. Any and all reactions to our focus and examples, insights into Boeing's supply chain issues, and or fresh insights and interesting open net-working business models are welcomed and appreciated.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Enterprise 2.0 Summit Hannover Report & References

Thanks to Bjoern Negellman, Kongress Media, (organizer) and Simon Wardley (event facilitator), I was a privileged presenter, in the inaugural European Enterprise 2.0 Summit convened as part of CEBIT, March 4 in Hannover.   (Given COMDEX no longer operates in the United States, experiencing the CEBIT scale and vendor commitment was eye opening.)

Blog reports from Emanuele Quintarelli, François Nonnenmacher, Martin Koser and Robbert Homburg tell the event story that began with Simon Wardley reminding us how technology forces drive change, followed by Dion Hinchcliffe's keynote and Euan Semple's BBC lessons. Scenes from the event are captured on Flickr.

For me the event nuggets came in descriptions of serious business wiki applications by:

• Kenneth Lavrsen, Motorola A/S, wiki-ing quality standards documentation
• Wieland Stützel, Fraport AG (Frankfurt Airport), cross organizational knowledge sharing
• Diego Gianetti, BTicino S.p.a. (an Italian producer of communication, distribution and energy control systems) describing "Sul Campo" a sales force community of practice
• Cedric Blum, Société Française de Radiotéléphone Service Client (a French mobile carrier) explaining how using a wiki helps customer service solve customer problems and get more from IT

For those who stayed late into the day here are the books mentioned in my session introduction:

• Yochai Benkler, Wealth of Networks
• Rob Cross & Andrew Parker, Hidden Power of Social Networks
• Ron Burt, Structural Holes
• Lowell Bryan & Claudia Joyce, Mobilizing Minds
• Dan Tapscott, Wikinomics

Also referenced were:

• Patti Anklam, Net Work author
• Valdis Krebs, pioneering ONA practitioner
• InnoCentive and Harvard researcher Karim Lakhani et al's investigation of factors in problem resolution
• Procter & Gamble's Connect & Develop program

My presentation builds on a co-authored article "Learning through Participation and Connecting Intelligence". and two Inside Knowledge Magazine articles, Broadcasting innovation: organising to connect intelligence and Prediction Markets: Co-creating an organization's future (to be published).

    

     The Valdis Krebs admonition cited:

"You do understand Metcalfe's law does not work for social networks, right?“

came in response to reading our "Connecting Intelligence" article and Valdis's concern we had not made this point clear enough.  Metcalfe has openly asked us all to better understand the power of his law applied to social networks here . Colleagues and I have just completed an investigation of Facebook Groups in Business that points to the complexity of social network growth as Metcalfe discusses.

Thank you to everyone involved with Kongress Media's Enterprise 2.0 Summit for the rich conversations that I look forward to continuing, especially with Simon Wardley regarding his newly minted term:

"STRUCTURACTION"

Slides from my presentation are posted to Slideshare here.

   ~ Jenny Ambrozek

2008 And Both. Davos. Collaboration Innovation. Competing on Analytics

The face-to-face media buzz event that was Davos 2008 is ended, but the exchanges live on in the resources available at http://www.davosconversation.org/. These provide an opportunity to pay closer attention to this year's theme, "Collaboration Innovation".

The Financial Times February 5 Review section headlined:

"INCOVENIENT TRUTHS: HOW MARKET TURMOIL AND A ROGUE TRADER ROCKED DAVOS."

captured a theme heard in much media coverage of this year's event: that real world concerns overtook the intended focus on "Collaboration Innovation".

Given the seriousness of financial market news events co-inciding with Davos, the distraction is understandable. However, I'd propose that allowing today's events to draw organizations' attention away from "collaboration innovation" happens everyday in enterprises large and small.  And among the many reasons is a significant inability to measure how value is created through "collaboration innovation".

Clearly the five CEO's participating in the Davos Collaboration Innovation session experience the benefits, and also understand the challenges. However, in the hour video of their session I heard no specific mention of how success is measured.  There was talk of successful partnerships and new product creation but beyond that?

My interest in measuring how value is created through collaboration dates from the Online Communities in Business 2004 study Joe Cothrel and I co-authored.  Our respondents told us:

"Participation in online communities, networks, and teams is growing (82%)"

but

"Most organizations can’t measure return on investment (72%)"

I thought about this finding recently reading Bill Johnston's community ROI post. It describes a range of indicators from an April 2007 ForumOne report most notably that:

"Only 22% of respondents had clear ROI Models"

The Online Communities in Business 2004 findings about lack of ROI measures was a driver for me in co-convening the Facebook Groups in Business peer-to-peer research experiment. Colleagues and 10 volunteer Facebook Group owners are tracking activity to explore if, and how, business value is created. Our initiative is work in progress but it's quickly become clear if you are seeking networking measurement nirvana, Facebook doesn't deliver.

Noticeably absent listening to Andrew McAfee and Tom Davenport duelling January 11 (at the FAST Forward Blog) about the impact of Enterprise 2.0 tools in organizations were numbers to support either case. Given Tom Davenport's latest book is "Competing on Analytics" might we not expect more?

Please understand. I am not at all suggesting business value is not created through interaction, as McKinsey argues, and collaboration. Quite the opposite. Rather, if you accept common wisdom that businesses operate on what they can measure, doesn't it seem reasonable that lack of measurement tools handicaps "collaboration innovation"?

No doubt the emergence of more quantifiable collaboration platforms ranging from idea marketplaces like InnoCentive and prediction markets (as reported in the recent Google research paper), is making the power of "collaboration innovation" more visible. From attending the recent NY Mashup Summit there appears promise in emerging mashup platforms to dynamically improve data collection, and analysis. Still, given the power to collaborate and innovate that global connectedness allows, isn't it time to pay closer attention to developing and using measures for the value created?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Yale Symposium on Reputation Economies 20071208

      Yale Law School Reputation Economies Symposium organizers are congratulated on a stellar event that assembled leading thought leaders on an array of legal aspects from privacy to trademark and copyright laws, and more. The speaker and panels links give a taste of the day.  The position papers (available through the panels link) make interesting reading.

       While each session provided interesting nuggets the following stood out for me:

1. Professor Beth Noveck, Director, Institute for Information Law and Policy NYLS addressing the issue of who owns an online reputation? 

        Context was the case of eBay removing a member's profile and reputation rankings built over 8 years. The member was selling an Avatar that Sony claimed violated their copyright/trademark violation.

         Professor Noveck's position paper argues reputations are not individually owned:

"This requires, first, that we recognize that in on-line settings reputation is not the creation– and hence not the exclusive property – of the individual who is being rated nor of the publisher who supplies the tools for reputation-creation. Rather, it is the community in a social network that creates reputation.* My eBay score is the collective product of the members who contributed to that reputation.

The group should have a voice in how that reputation is treated and the legal treatment of reputation should recognize the community, not the individual and not the technological intermediary, as the rightful “owner” of reputation."

2  Alessandro Acquisti, Assistant Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon, School of Public Policy and Management

       This presentation addressed "Searching for Privacy and Looking for Fame: Thoughts on (Bad) Reputations, Online Social Networks, and Behavioral Economics". It added interesting dimensions to the Facebook Groups in Business Study peers and I are conducting.

3. John Clippinger, Senior Fellow Berkman Center for Internet & Society at The Harvard Law School       

    Clippinger directs the Higgins Project, "a program on open security and digital identity that gives people control over their personal information". He is the author of A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity, Perseus, Public Affairs, 2007.

His position paper argues:

"What is important about the example of reputation systems in biology for human based reputations – off line and online – is that they are constantly evolving and that the locus of control is with the individual, at the edge of the network.  Although there are aggregation or “mashups” of individual entities resulting in social networks that take on their own identities and reputations, the viability of these aggregated networks is dependent upon the persistence and stability of the individual entities." ~  John Clippinger

A couple of take-aways

i.  The array of issues and early days in evolution of reputation economies.

     It is clearly early days in understanding how reputation economies work and the legal aspects.  On this though I have to respectfully question Facebook advisor and retired Federal Trade Commission member Mozelle Thompson's observation about Facebook confronting legal issues at the edge.

      I suspect my PRODIGY alumni colleagues who were lawyers deeply involved in translating existing laws into day-to-day practice two decades ago, and influencing early legislation regarding online services, may argue significant foundations have been laid.

ii.  I will never count technology company behemoths IBM and Microsoft out.

Both were present revealing their constant attention to the 'edge" and research commitments

      IBM was represented on the last panel of the day by Bob Sutor, Vice President Open Source and Standards, Chairman of the IBM internal Corporate Standards Advisory Committee and the Open Source Steering Committee.
His speaker description indicates he is:

".. the executive responsible for driving and executing the cross-company business and technical strategy for open standards and open source as they relate to software, hardware, services, vertical industries, and emerging markets. In particular, helps move IBM from its traditional technical and intellectual property approach to one where business exploitation of standards and open source for greater customer value is paramount*, especially in vertical industries and emerging markets."

    Microsoft was the event sponsor and represented by Microsoft computer science PhD. and Senior Researcher Darko Kirovski  whose speaker bio reveals his interests and accomplishments as:

" Web services including reputation networks, reliable computing, system security, multimedia processing, and embedded system design*. He has received the 1999 Microsoft Graduate Research Fellowship, the 2000 ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference Graduate Scholarship, the 2001 ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Electronic Design Automation, and best paper awards at the ACM Multimedia 2002 and the IEEE MMSP 2006. He has authored more than 100 journal and conference papers and filed more than 40 patents."

While Saturday's rich conversations focused on the legal dimensions of reputation economies, for me it is the interaction between technology driving change, human behavior, and the legal system striving to adapt that is really interesting.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

  * My highlighting   

21st Century Organization Facebook Group: Please Join Us

Bill Ives has an interesting Facebook post that echoes my experience. I'm absolutely intrigued by the seamless ease of communicating and connecting via Facebook, but along with Bill Ives and Susan Anderson, based on our wall exchanges, I'm looking for the profile options that make Facebook more business minded.

Reflecting this blog's focus, it seemed time to create a Facebook 21st Century Organization Group to:

Explore solutions and proven practices for improving strategic thinking and day-to-day operating effectiveness of organizations in a complex world.

We trust you will join us and share. We're delighted that Jeffrey Keefer, Robin Yap and Howard Greenstein have already checked in.

As Victoria Axelrod and I as the 21st Century Organization Group are sponsoring the Student Sessions at the Organizational Development Network October Conference we especially look forward to connecting with conference attendees in advance through the new 21st Century Organization Facebook Group.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Fresh Perspectives: New Network Theory Conference

Via Valdis Krebs blog (whom I believe was present) a pointer to the blog reports from the New Network Theory Conference sessions at the University of Amsterdam.

Recommended browsing for topics ranging from cultural variables in networks through multiple interesting angles of "New Network Theory" including addressing network dynamics, study of knitting communities, and "foam theory" promoted by Mirko Tobias Schaefer's. It calls for new methods to map social relations on the internet.

"He states that there are different layers of interaction, no strict borders between communities, pseudo-communities and massive user interaction. They are permeable. Schaefer sees the web as a sociotechnological ecosystem which best approach is to consider it like foam (Sloterdijk, 2004); beer or shampoo, whatever you like most. Because of its multi chamber systems whose cells are seperated by thin cells which are highly permeable, this would be the best metaphor for the Internet network."

Given our experiment in process using a wiki to co-create an article on "Learning through Participation and Connected Intelligence" the report of Katy Borner's presentation on Global Brain Pressures: Towards Scholarly Marketplaces is a find. It discusses co-authorship networks, calls for a marketplace model to maximize the global brain, and to help transform the way science is done with:

“an open source, community-driven framework/application for the integration and utilization of datasets, algorithms, tools, and computing resources.”

Read on to learn from network studies regarding bird flu, health information, life cycles and  "Linking and the network imaginary”.  And if that's not enough there's the social life of (technologically-enhanced) pets and their owners:

"Noshir begins with a story of the social life of (technologically-enhanced) pets. Your smart-tagged dog can meet other dogs and exchange information. When your dog returns home, that information can be downloaded, you can learn about your dogs’ friends, the owners of those dogs, set up dog dates and so on. What is new today, for us even more than for pets, is the extent to which we use technology to find new social networks rather than cementing existing ones. And this creates the need for a multi-theoretical, multi-level approach to understanding social behavior."

From a distance the New Network Theory conference appears a veritable brain workout.

~  Jenny Ambrozek

Enterprise 2.0 RAVE: Please Join Us

Enterprise 2.0 RAVE speaker Bill Ives has posted in detail about the event scheduled for New York May 21-22. I've heard keynote speaker Andrew McAfee speak twice now, first with Ross Mayfield keynoting last year's Interop in NY and more recently at the FAST Forward Search Conference in San Diego. An Andrew McAfee/Euan Semple exchange at the FAST conference caused a flurry of blog conversations on the issues around Enterprise 2.0 adoption especially among FAST Forward bloggers but also here.

In addition to Andrew McAfee, Euan Semple and Bill Ives, the RAVE offers an opportunity to meet Kathleen Gilroy, Jim McGee, Joe McKendrick, and Susan Scrupski.

I'm honoured to be participating too in an event that provides a unique opportunity to address the challenges and potential "Enterprise 2.0" tools present organizations. Given the nature of the event spaces are limited. 

Use this link to receive discounted entry.

Susan Scupski points to a couple of must read recent articles from Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in the Spring 2007 MIT Sloan Review and a McKinsey survey on Web 2.0 adoption that make essential RAVE background reading.

Hoping to see you May 21-21 in New York.

~ Jenny Ambrozek                                 

PODCAMP NYC: Energized Media, Rising Stars & New Roles

Even for a remotely cynical TechVet like Bill Lessard Saturday's NYC PODCAMP left no doubt podcasting is REAL and a growing media force. Attending a NYC Podcasting Meetup had shown me podcasting had arrived, but Saturday's gathering with 1,000 plus entrepreneurial individual podcasters and emerging businesses to support them, was an eye opener.  The conference challenge was choosing among an abundance of interesting sessions. With apologies to ther presenters I had to skip, here are my highlights:

• Jason Van Orden- Consultant, author, interesting session on blogging and podcasting basics.

Reminded me to dig for Dave Winer's 2005 admonition:

"Not having an RSS feed for a business site is like not having business cards."

• John Havens- About.com podcasting guide hosted a terrific conversation with Streaming Media Executive VP Dan Rayburn, an industry veteran and blogger. (StreamingMedia is an Information Today Inc. company.)

• Nancy A, Shenker, President of OnSwitch revealed real world marketing experience in her refreshing presentation on communication "timeless truths" including:

"Experiences, Relationships, Mind expansion and Memories"

and reminders about:

"trust, quality, manners, true interest, loyalty"

• Heath Row, now Research Manager with DoubleClick, encouraged thinking about interactive online advertising. Tagging ads. Interesting.

• Reena Jana, a Business Week writer who also produces their "Innovation" podcasts, provided an invaluable business of podcasting presentation despite the technology limiting playing her podcasts!

My quick sponsor count numbered about 50 with some companies like Podango no doubt paying more for their branded room.  Credit for most creative and fun promotion goes to Adam Varga for his podcasting cards reading. Thanks Adam for the heads up about my challenges! OddPodz provided an environmentally conscious goodie, a recycled calico tea bag?  Did I understand that correctly? After intriguing conversations with founders Jocelin Ring and Karen Post, I'm adding OddPodz, "a community for the creative class", (soon to be headquartered on the "Creative Coast"), to my companies to watch list.   

Take Aways

1. Emerging business and job opportunities in podcasting.

Growing fields include podcast marketing and publishing networks. Podcasting 'stationmaster" is a new job title and actors are finding work as podcasting hosts. Interesting the number of entrepreneurial Canadians represented from interactive marketing agency Caprica to enthusiastic zine producer Vergel Evans.

2. Wake Up Call to Established Media Brands

Business Week's experience reveals the value for traditional media in using podcsating to promote their content and brand, and create new sponsor opportunities. My sense is if you are an established media brand not strategically using podcasting your brand potential is in decline. Anyone care to tell me I am wrong?

Congratulations to the NYC PODCAMP organizing team and to all the individuals and sponsor companies who pitched in to make it a rich, and can you believe, "free" event.  Testimony, as the open source movement has demonstrated, to the power of networks and individual contribution and sharing. Thanks to colleagues Kiki Mulliner and Jeffrey Keefer for sharing the day and encouraging me to attend.

~ Jenny Ambrozek