Why Enterprise 2.0 is utterly irresistable

According to Wikipedia (!), a couple of guys Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen defined Enterprise 2.0 as:

the use of “web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise”.

Perhaps it could be simpler, something like:

Enterprise 2.0 is the harnessing of social web platforms and behaviours to improve how the people in big organisations manage and communicate within themselves.

But I hope you get the gist (if you’re not already ahead of me on this :).

So to me, Enterprise 2.0 is utterly irresistable – it cannot be resisted. And it feels incredibly simple and right.

Not everyone sees it so simply. The trigger for writing this was a brief conversation on Twitter between Euan Semple and Alan Patrick, two solid smart thinkers and doers, that I joined in with. As you can see, Alan summarises his (and many others) reticence as:

“thats what I’m grappling with re E2.0 – given its all been known for so long, why will things change now?

Here’s the conversation (read it from the bottom up!):

You can see that my input is flippant, naive, lacking in proof. But it is bourne out of an unshakeable conviction I have, based on what I see everyday in our work with some of the biggest organisations in the UK.

They are changing towards an Enterprise 2.0 tinted-future (often whether they like it or not).

In my opinion no organisation can resist the influence of the social web as a driver of change upon its internal management, structure and communication, just as – regardless of the thickness of its skin or the stubborness of its culture – it cannot resist how the internet has evolved and disrupted its external environment and how it now needs to engage with the outside world.

Here’s why:

People’s information and media consumption, behaviours and therefore expectations are rapidly evolving
We all bring Social to work – people are both consumers/buyers and employees and don’t stop being themselves when they get to work
Global competition is ever-fiercer

1. People’s information and media consumption, behaviours and therefore expectations are rapidly evolving

For a selection of loosely related mini-trends in how we’re all adjusting, see variously:

Facebook eats away at email
Rise of text messaging over phone calls
2009: $1bn spent on virtual goods
Farmville bigger than Twitter
The growing ‘two screen experience’ in TV viewing
Changing feelings towards privacy? Publicy vs. Facebook privacy disquiet
Brighton & Hove City Council hires Social Media Officer

2. We all bring Social to work – people are both consumers/buyers and employees and don’t stop being themselves when they get to work

This distinction between inside the ‘enterprise’ and outside the organisations we work in is both useful and not useful. Yes, there are big, vital differences. But one of the constants is us, the people. (By the way, in my opinion the distinction between B2C and B2B is also helpful and (increasingly) not helpful – they are all people, just with different hats on and found in different decision-making settings – the family, the procurement team – but fundamentally people all, exposed to the same changing media landscape).

Increasingly the clients we work with at NixonMcInnes (who are pioneers in their organisations and industries) are finding their efforts welcomed internally in unexpected quarters, because the internal environment, the staff and people that make up their businesses, are catching up.

So businesses may find themselves turned inside out if they try to resist. It is happening – like it or not. Employees are choosing their hardware, publishing information outside of the firewall, formal control is melting away.

Although the definitions above, both the formal and my own plain English attempt, describe Enterprise 2.0 as about tools and stuff, the codeword ‘Enterprise 2.0′ actually means something much bigger and broader (and more exciting) to me.

The magical bit of Enterprise 2.0 is not the systems and platforms, but what they mean for the people, the organisational DNA, the culture.

3. Global competition is ever-fiercer

So combine the above two ingredients, and marinade them in an increasingly ruthlessly competitive global marketplace, and I think you’ve got change or die.

Thanks to the growing supply of competitors for many companies it’s getting harder and harder to win business – margins are being eroded by offshore lower cost alternatives, services are being commoditised by technology. The internet demands instaneous responses to market changes, news, customer service issues. This exacts Darwinian forces on the business community. How quickly an organisation can discover, understand and repond to these forces will determine its future.

To win, the modern Enterprise must act fast. To act fast, it needs to smooth and connect up the conduits and flows within itself. That’s what Enterprise 2.0 is to me.

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