21st Century Organization

"Should Your Business Be Friends with Facebook?"

To find out please visit TheAppGap blog where slides and the audio of our rich June 25 webinar discussion are posted.

Sincere thanks to:

• TheAppGap and Intuit Quickbase for hosting the discussion of findings from our Facebook Groups in Business Investigation for which the initial invitation to participate was posted on this blog October 2007
• Our audience and their thought provoking questions
• Members of our investigation team who contributed including calling in from South Africa and Europe at late hours.

Now please join us at TheAppGap to continue the discussion and address answers to the excellent questions audience members contributed.

In opening the webinar discussion about:

"Should your business be friends with Facebook?"

my blogging colleague Victoria Axelrod overviewed recent research and cases of companies from FedEx to Serena Software and Salesforce integrating Facebook into their strategies and daily operations.

In addition to addressing the webinar audience questions posted at TheAppGap I'm interested to discuss:

"What's ahead"?

For example, our webinar slides include Alexa graphs showing Facebook growth versus Twitter.

"What does this suggest about the future of consumer social networks and platforms to come?"

Finally, our Facebook Groups In Business Investigation (FGIBI) starting premise was that while Facebook may or may not evolve as a significant business platform, history tells us consumer technologies drive enterpise adoption so we should understand it. Hence:

"What are the important lessons from consumer use of Facebook for enterprise technology development?

What does the future hold?"

and

"How do organizations adapt to the reality of tools transience?"

There's so much to discuss at TheAppGap.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Stowe Boyd Stories For His Inside Knowledge Magazine Profile

Stowe Boyd will be the featured industry thought leader in the September Inside Knowledge Magazine. As I've followed Stowe's thinking and memes as they've unfolded since meeting him at the incomparable Multiples of One Conference 2003, I have the privilege, (thanks IKM editor Jerry Ash) of producing the profile.

As Stowe has promoted awareness and adoption of "social tools" since introducing the term in his last 1999 newsletter, it seemed inappropriate to do otherwise than put the tools to work in preparing his Inside Knowledge profile. Hence, this blog post and reaching out to the crowd for stories about Stowe, his thinking and influence on you and your work. Specifically:

How have you experienced Stowe Boyd's influence since he started blogging and writing about social tools in 1999?

What's important for Inside Knowledge Magazine readers to know about Stowe?

Please post your insights as comments here or in streams using whatever tool is most convenient but tagged #IKStowe so I can find them.

This is an experiment so your suggestions about refining the method are welcome.  I'm wondering for example if creating a FriendFeed room might be an efficient way to aggregate #IKStowe nuggets?

Please also note the participation terms:

i. By tagging an item "#IKStowe" you give permission to be cited and or quoted in Inside Knowledge Magazine

ii. Practically please be aware Stowe's Inside Knowledge profile limit is 1400 words. Hence I expect the flow of rich insights will exceed the available space and links to sources used to inform Stowe's profile will have to suffice.

Regardless I hope you will participate so Stowe's Inside Knowledge profile is as rich as can be.  My colleague Victoria Axelrod served as videographer when I interviewed Stowe live at Enterprise 2.0 Boston. What does it say about barriers to implementation in organizations that Stowe and his early adopting peers whom I hope will contribute here, have been writing about "social tools" for approaching a decade?

Thanks Stowe for making time to connect in Boston and your willingness to join in open writing your Inside Knowledge profile, and in advance to everyone who contributes. Please may your stories flow.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

netWORK Beings

“Younger people have grown up with computers and networks in a way that older people haven't,” says Nicholas Brealey whose Future Files: The 5 Trends That Will Shape the Next 50 Years by Richard Watson comes out in November. “The younger generation built Web 2.0,” he says.

Future Files is cited amongst a review in Publishers Weekly of  numerous new management books where a few remarkable themes stand out: 

- the title of the review The Individual Man: Business Management for a new generation can only spark - are you kidding me?? but there are still some gems,

- instantaneous anticipation of respect (some 6 million new businesses were started last  year,

- young leaders are customizing their companies to fit their lifestyles and values (certainly the case with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos)

- leader as a whole person rather than a set of skills or techniques

- young people see themselves as more than a cog in a machine

- sense of individuality, high needs and expectations

- action for managers to “go green"

Other than the Future Files there did not seem to be many books carving out new management or organizational models for a networked world as I would have expected given the enormous social media shifts impacting business.  Put it under the rubric of Enterprise 2.0 which also happens to be a conference where colleague Jenny Ambrozek and I will be leading a discussion on Open netWORKING Organizations - Co-generating Business Value.

But in a stunning triumph of an article by Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stoopid? in the July/ August issue of The Atlantic Monthly I think I see the answers. The relentless march of technology to improve organizational effectiveness and efficency is not new. Any student of business knows of Frederick Taylor and his principles of Scientific Management As Carr describes:

Taylor's system is still very much with us: It remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor's ethic is beginning to govern the realm of the mind as well. The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its  legions of programmers are intent on finding the "one best method" -the perfect algorithm- to carry out every mental movement of what we have come to describe as "knowledge work."

We are still being Taylorized.

It was the opening of Carr's article characterizing his own awareness though of how his  thinking, patience for reading and writing has changed AW (after web) compared to BW (before web) which struck a chord.  Here is the netWORK being, the generation who's reading, surfing, interacting, expectations and instantaneous anticipation of respect is shaped by the technology.

He points to research which confirms some of these observations that Internet usage affects cognition. Quotes Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain that we become "mere decoders of information."

There is much to this article and it may rank right up there with Bill Joy's famous Why the Future Doesn't Need Us but I think there is a wake up call for those of us consulting to organizations on the intersection of technology and human performance.  We need to remember that workplaces need to be a balance of social and technological systems. Taylor has actually been given a bad wrap for years in that he was actually trying to make work more satisfying for the worker by optimizing efficiency. 

In our Enterprise 2.0 session we refer to the socio-tech balance as relevant today as Tavistock 50 years ago "If a technical system is created at the expense of a social system, the results obtained will be sub-optimal."  Looking forward to the next iteration of netWORK beings.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

 

 

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

A week of "Net Work". DHL partners with UPS & Matt Moore visits Manhattan

"Net Work" is the title of Patti Anklam's "Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World". I've been actually reading Patti's book this week, not just using as a reference, to review for Inside Knowledge Magazine. (I admit to being a biased reviewer having been a privileged member of Patti's Gennova Emergent Learning Network from which the book sprung.)

A value of Patti's book is the number of real world networks examined.  Examples from “Gennova” that seeded the book, to the Boston healthcare community and the Young President’s Organization, Fast Company Magazine’s “Company of Friends”,  Women’s World Banking, Procter and Gamble’s “Connect and Develop” and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Knowledge Lab are all used to demonstrate network dynamics and the variety of purposes networks can serve.

With how organizations operate as networks on my mind I couldn't help but notice the page 13 Financial Times Thursday (May 29) headlined "DHL pays up to deliver with rival". DHL and UPS are intersecting their networks. DHL is paying UPS "$1bn annually to fly customers packages between North American cities" and "shut down 30 per cent of DHL's US infrastructure... as part of of a restructuring plan that will cost $2bn.." The FT reports for UPS the arrangement "will help ensure its fleet of aircraft remain full even if more customers opt for cheaper shipping options than overnight delivery."

Ending the week writing about "Net Work" I realize it started that way too, in a rich conversation with Sydney visitor Matt Moore. Thanks Matt for fitting me into your travels and the chance to explore our shared interests, especially around organizational network analysis and measuring value created through connectedness.  Good wishes for the rest of your journey.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

<24 hours at Community 2.0: Revisiting Online Communities in Business 2004

Thursday May 15 in Las Vegas colleagues Victoria Axelrod, Bill Becker and I conducted our Social Capital: Glue for Sustainability Workshop as a post Community 2.0 Conference event.  Our sincere thanks to our participants who had the stamina to stay on after 3 days of meetings and contribute to conversations richer than we could have imagined.

As our workshop followed a "Community 2.0" Conference for reading matter on the flight out I dusted off a copy of Joe Cothrel and my 2004 Online Communities in Business Study.  Reading the conference program, and in the people I met during my less than 24 hours in Vegas, I saw our Report come to life.

Patti Anklam

It began at the Vegas airport connecting with keynote speaker Patti Anklam.  Participating in Patti's 2003 Emergent Learning Network opened my eyes to both the potential and value that comes from viewing organizations as networks, and intentionally putting human networks to work.  Patti was one of the 135 online industry professionals who contributed to our 2004 study.

Jim Cashel

Checking in at the Community 2.0 Conference as Wednesday's sessions were ending appropriately Jim Cashel, both a top 10 influencer and respondent to our 2004 study was the first person I met. (See Top Influencers Table page 21.)

Jim's Online Community Report and Sonoma Conference have become industry staples. His interview with the BBC's Robin Hamman in which Robin explains how the BBC must adapt in a world of low cost consumer participative media tools, remains for me the best ever explanation to media companies of how they must act. The interview is no longer online but from memory I recall Robin describing how the BBC must move from being "the conversation" to "lighting thousands of conversations".

Joe Cothrel

Joe's Community 2.0 presentation addressed "Successful Communities Start Here" and who better to do that.  Co-convening our 2004 study with Joe Cothrel followed years of bumping into each other at industry events beginning with the 1999 Vircomm in San Francisco. 

Collaborating on our study and presenting our findings at the Virtual Communities Conference, The Hague remains a professional highlight. (As this 2004 Virtual Communities Conference was Harry Collier and Infonortics last, our slides are no longer available online so I've reposted to Slideshare here.) Thank you, Joe.

Nancy White

Unfortunately I missed Nancy's Community 2.0 presentation that buzz tells me was a conference highlight.  Not surprizing of course.  Nancy (along with Howard Rheingold) emerged as the most cited influencers in our 2004 study. Thanks to Nancy's tools niftiness and willingness to share, her C2.0 Conference visualizations are available on Flickr. 

Amy Jo Kim

Also a favorite influencer in our 2004 study, the slides from Amy Jo Kim's Community 2.0 presentation "Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Social Software" indicate why.

Lee LeFever

I also missed Lee's presentation but he too contributed to our 2004 study, and emerged as a most-cited influencer that continues through his CommonCraft.

Open Source- Factory Joe- Chris Messina

In 2004 two OCIB survey respondents cited "open source" as an influence. 4 years later at the Community 2.0 speaker dinner I found myself sitting at a table with open source aficionado Chris Messina.

CNET indicates Flock, of which Chris was a founder, started early 2005, after our 2004 study. Consider the range of tools, not to forget "Open Social", that have emerged in these short 4 years.  Clearly sifting the technology candidates today to update the timeline (page 5) from our 2004 study would be an interesting challenge.

The Wisdom of 135 2004 Study Respondents

Revisiting our 2004 study 4 years on was especially thought provoking as the wisdom of our extraordinary respondents appears profound. The 5 themes that emerged from analysing the open text responses (Chapter 2:Strategies) were:

1. Think Local and Real
2. Get Networking
3. Empower the People
4. Raise the Bar on Data
5. Advocate and Educate

"Get Networking" and "Raise the Bar on Data" have directed my focus over the last 4 years. Both are central to the Social Capital:Glue for Sustainability Workshop that took me to Las Vegas. (Slides are posted here.)

For me the bottom line, attention getting findings in our 2004 study (that I suspect are closely tied) were:

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

Many people still don’t understand what online community is (72%)"

I couldn't help wondering if Community 2.0 Conference attendees were surveyed about their ability to measure the value created through their initiatives, whether the situation had changed.

Rereading our 2004 report, page 11, I was intrigued to find we had concluded:

"Conceiving of online groups as networks that is, larger, more distributed, with a looser set of shared goals or understandings―may better prepare us for developing and managing online groups in the years to come."

From my experience studying organizations as networks over the past 5 years, and as we watch enterprise platforms incorporate social networking capabilities, that call is even more relevant today than it was 4 years ago. I wonder what you see?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

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

The AppGap: Collaboration, Flows & the Right Brain

                            

Thanks to Intuit Quickbase, the visionary sponsor, and Hylton Jolliffe who assembled the blogging team,  I'm a privileged contributor to TheAppGap blog that assembles news, views and reviews about the future of work.

The joy of being a TheAppGap blog contributor is being closer to the latest observations from fellow bloggers Patti Anklam, Matthew Hodgson, Jon Husband, Bill Ives, Shiv Singh and Jim Ware and participating in the broader conversation about Work 2.0.

Not suprizingly, collaboration and emerging tools for working more efficiently in an information overloaded world have become a focus. Jon Husband's "Managing the Flow" post explores a topic that concerns me: the changing work challenges and skills demanded as a cadre of collaborative tools and now enterprise networking platforms (like IBM's Lotus Atlas and Trampline Systems SONAR), increasingly stream information and now organizational network connections. How do people and organizations adapt to work and manage in this world?

My latest TheAppGap post relates to changing skills with a question around whether more "right brain" talents become critical as Dan Pink argues in "A Whole New Mind".  Will the M.F.A. become more in demand at the expense of M.B.A.s, a topic the New York Times explored April 6?

As everyday work demands grow the challenge always is taking time to look forward. Still I hope you will regularly find moments to join us at TheAppGap to consider the future of work and the gaps to be filled to maximize opportunities.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

CIOs as Change Predictors

"CIOs who predicted the return of key innovation are the ones who can link up assets in their ecosystem, create efficiencies and are able to provide more value to customers."

In an interview with futurist James Canton, "prediction" was the favored stance for CIOs yet he claims only 35 to 45 percent of organizations have transformed their current business processes.  Trying to adapt the present while morphing into the future requires a forward thinking culture.

Prediction has always been the elusive brass ring.  No longer.  As change and complexity increase those who have mastery over predictive or emergent collaborative models will be in the forefront. 

It has become apparent that predictive tools and approaches provide multiple perspectives on data patterns that single approaches often miss. However articles on IT are still focusing on the 'hidden potential of IT" and CIOs.

Enterprise 2.0 has thrown us into a technology driven change warp. Any organization not understanding the dynamics of systemic or "echosystemic" thinking is living in the past. All of the organizational roles are equally as important to making a 21st century business successful but some have the benefit of marketplace drivers like technology to boost their roles to the forefront.

Still not convinced - one of the must read magazines for the IT inclined, The Industry Standard announced its rebirth as a suite of "prediction markets" -

IS features news and analysis that covers emerging technologies and companies, venture funding, acquisitions, site launches, and other developments in the internet space. Additionally, The Standard aggregates community knowledge in a quantified fashion, thereby ranking both the knowledge of the individual community members themselves, as well as the value of the information the community provides as a whole. This system is built as a prediction market, intersected with a reputation-based social network.

They clearly get it - participation is the new mindset and a prediction market is the means to tap participation.  In our recently published  article  for Inside  Knowledge on prediction markets  we interviewed some of the best software providers and summarized what we have found to be the key factors for success. If you would like a copy of the article let us know as the full piece is subscription only from Inside Knowledge.

Technology not withstanding, organizations need to value predictive information, aggregated from their whole network, to validate strategies and goals.

CIO, C suite executive or as we have found anyone in the organization can drive innovation if they understand the value of prediction to the bottom line.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Creating VALUE from the INVISIBLE

Last week brought intriguing conversations at both the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Hannover and the University of Warwick's Knowledge Innovation Network Spring Workshop about organizations intersecting with new technology adoption.   

Watching the wing on the home flight I pondered how aircraft designers are challenged, as new technologies emerge, to invent new designs that maximize the INVISIBLE flow of air to fly faster, further, more efficiently. Similarly, the pressure on organizations is constantly adapting to support the INVISIBLE flow of ideas and INTERACTIONS that will create new business value as external forces, and increasing computer speeds and new technologies, move faster than humans can easily embrace.

Beyond Facebook I'm intrigued by the emerging enterprise "NET WORK"'ing* platforms like Trampoline Systems and IBM's Atlas and the potential to reveal what were previously invisible idea flows and connect the people who are the sources.    But what will the adoption curves look like and how will organizations adapt?

Already Gartner notes "Five Major Challenges Regarding Social Software" while Thomas Otter and ZDNet's Larry Dingman forecast the landscape and prospects.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

*NET WORK'ing- As per Patti Anklam's "Net Work".