Enterprise 2.0: social networks behind the firewall

ENTERPRISE 2.0: social networks behind the firewall Unlocking the business value of Social Networks & Web 2.0 technologies for the Enterprise | www.nonlinear.ca ottawa 613.241.2067 toronto 416.203.2997 Shannon Ryan - President & CEO [email_address]

Objectives

Give a clear understanding to the myriad of technologies that encompass Web 2.0 technologies

Identify and discuss 4 broader internet trends in Web 2.0

Explore the real power of Enterprise 2.0 within your intranet, your enterprise, and give you a roadmap on how to start.

Hopefully spur some discussion and answer some questions.

Lets get started.

| www.nonlinear.ca ottawa 613.241.2067 toronto 416.203.2997

stepping back to the time of a simpler internet…

95 Theses

Markets are conversations.

Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

| www.nonlinear.ca ottawa 613.241.2067 toronto 416.203.2997 1999 ©

Full disclosure

I am bona-fide cynic in this area.

I been through the internet wars … hell, I remember the browser wars, and when the “fish cam” was the coolest thing on the web

Web 2.0 (or whatever we agree to call it) is new, untested and not fully documented … move carefully

I also did an undergrad in Soviet and Eastern European Studies … so I am big on understanding the theory first, before the code.

That being said…

There are some REALLY interesting, valuable and potentially revolutionary trends happening that have the potential to add significant value to your enterprise.

NLC: Executive Summary Technology Partnerships

A Sample list of Clients FinServ

NLC Services

Setting the playing field

Are part of a social network?

Book club, chamber of commerce, hockey team, etc.

Are part of an online social network?

FaceBook, Linked-In, MySpace, etc.

Have contributed to or edited a Wikipedia page?

Author a blog(s)?

Use a feed aggregator?

Have created a YouTube video?

Watch YouTube videos?

Use social bookmarking tools?

Tweet?

Let’s understand the terminology

RSS

UGC

Mashups

Wiki

Blog

Social Bookmarking

Tagging

Twitter

The elusive Web 2.0

Blog Examples

Blogs + Tagging

Exploring Web 2.0 outside the Enterprise

4 broader trends you need to know

4 broader internet trends at play

Social Networks have the potential to change the way we think, interact and view our corporation. and they will certainly change the way we think about enterprise knowledge … and software.

The applications you thought to be “consumer services only” will be inside the enterprise,

The rise of user generated content is upon us like a tidal wave – and its coming to your intranet

The age and demographic profile of your users / customers / employees has shifted

What makes social networks so special?

Social networks are not new…

“ It may have been possible in the past, for things to have happened in isolation, but from this time forth, the world must be seen as an organic whole, everything affects everything.”

Polibius

born c. 200, died c. 118 BC

Megalopolis, Greece,

What are social networks?

A social network is a social structure made of nodes that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency.

Or in plain English:

Social networks are essentially about who know who, and who knows what.

Why are social networks important to business?

If you scratch the surface of any business, you’ll find two very different organizations.

The formal organization - the one that can be represented by the boxes of an org chart.

The informal organization - the one shaped by the day-to-day interactions of employees – conversations in hallways or in airport lounges, exchanges of messages through email and voicemail, conversations over a squash game.

Networks in your Organization McKinsey Quarterly Harnessing the power of informal employee networks, 2007 Lowell L. Bryan, Eric Matson, and Leigh M. Weiss

Why should that matter to us?

Unfortunately, most corporate IT systems are geared to the needs of the formal organization and ignore the informal one.

In the “formal organization” software like SAP, PeopleSoft are “enterprise applications” that are designed through elaborate, top-down processes.

The “informal organization” is served, instead, by simpler, personal software … "comfort apps" like e-mail, PowerPoint, Excel, and the watercooler.

What’s the problem with that?

Most of the really useful information that flows through a company never gets captured or broadly shared by employees.

The company essentially loses the ability to truly harness, capture, and learn from the knowledge its employees create

social networks – they’re for kids

In stark contrast to corporate IT systems, social networks shape themselves to their users rather than forcing the users to adapt to preset specifications.

They do what corporate systems so often fail to do: they make the codification and sharing of valuable information easy.

And this MAKES GOOD BUSINESS SENSE!

Ya sure, but Bill said to …

Codified Knowledge vs Context

“ using codified knowledge in the form of electronic documents saved time during the task, but did not improve work quality or signal competence to clients, whereas in contrast, sharing personal advice improved work quality and signaled competence, but did not save time,”

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1841

The applications you thought to be “consumer services only” are quickly coming inside the enterprise.

Trend number 2 | www.nonlinear.ca ottawa 613.241.2067 toronto 416.203.2997

More ClueTrain Manifesto…

We're both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they're really just an annoyance. We know they're coming down. We're going to work from both sides to take them down.

Outside is coming inside

Bottom up, software-as-a-service, do-it-yourself, monthly subscription, collaborative, modifications of applications are part of a movement that is seeping into corporations, just as PCs did in the early 1980s.

and if IT doesn't provide the tools they will bring them in, and charge them to their credit card.

“ No company will build or sustain a competitive advantage unless it capitalizes on the combined power of individualized workers and social dynamics.”

Gartner Group also predicts that wikis will become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50% of companies by 2009.

The rise of user generated content is upon us like a tidal wave – and its coming to your intranet

User generated content

Be afraid

Trust me when I say this – UGC is coming to your enterprise, and if the public web is any indication, there is going to be a tonne of it, and quickly.

How much and how quickly…

How embarrassing, Dad’s on YouTube

Four of the top 8 most trafficked sites on the Internet are social media sites that didn’t exist a few years ago:

YouTube.com (more than 100 million videos are served EVERY day)

MySpace

FaceBook (only open to the general public one year ago)

Wikipedia (in 2006, the English Wikipedia celebrated the creation of its millionth article)

The age and demographic profile of your users / customers / employees has shifted

Damn … we are getting older

20% of the American workforce holding executive, administrative, and managerial positions are set to retire THIS YEAR

In a recent Hay Group survey of 5000 executives, 46% indicated that they expected to remain in their position for only 2 to 5 years

In sectors such as manufacturing, oil and gas, utilities, government, and defence, these departures are nearing crisis proportions.

the oil and gas industry, the average employee age has risen dramatically; current estimates suggest that roughly 60% of experienced managers will retire by 2010

And it’s costly to replace

General Mills, for example, estimated that the departure of just one experienced marketing manager could cost millions of dollars due to the loss of critical marketing and client knowledge.

More broadly costs of recruiting and filling vacancies, lost productivity, and training, to replace employees is estimated to range from 30% to 150% of an employee’s salary

So we are constantly adding new recruits to the mix,

Lets take email for example

Legitimate e-mail will drop to 8% this year, down from 12% last year, according to Redwood City (Calif.) e-mail filtering outfit Postini Inc.

Why?

Perhaps the biggest death knell for e-mail is the anthropological shift occurring among tomorrow's captains of industry, the text-messaging Netgens (16-to-24-year-olds), for whom e-mail is so "ovr," "dn," "w/e (over, done, whatever).“

What have we learned?

What it is

Why it’s important

And know, hopefully we can talk about what you can do about it.

Belief in the individual

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was not conceived by a crowd. Neither, incidentally, were Beethoven's symphonies, War and Peace or the double helix structure of DNA.

'The wisdom of the crowd' is the fallacious notion that a herd of humans hampered by groupthink can outperform the solitary genius.

Making it all relevant for the corporation

Web 2.0 behind the firewall

The Web 2.0 wave percentage of companies adopting Web 2.0 tools in 2008

Web 2.0 in my Enterprise?

“ Ciscopedia” wiki (of course the Cisco Wikipedia)

Text and video blogs

“ I-Zone” wiki for cultivating ideas as a key component to their very successful intrapreneurship which is generating new businesses within Cisco.

I-Zone has generated 400 business ideas with 10,000 people actively contributing to the ideas. “we just did three billion-dollar market opportunities without my knowing about it.” , Cisco CFO referring to Emerging Technology executive Martin de Beer’s response to I-Zone.

Employee profiles (internal version of MySpace) which provides the basics such as title, contact information, etc as well as video, notes, blog, roles, expertise, instant messaging, video messaging.

Social bookmarking: “We’re going to use social bookmarking to allow us to take the pulse of the organization”

Advantages

Significantly faster closing and integration of acquired companies such as closing the WebEx acquisition in 8 days. Cisco has been acquiring a new company every 3 weeks on average in 2008. (Yes, the Borg will require you to speak Web 2.0)

Ideas generated from their I-Zone wiki which have launched new products and entire business units.

Reducing expenses and carbon footprint by reducing business travel.

Faster business unit development. Cisco grows one new emerging technology business unit about every 3 months.

“ I’m comfortable that I can grow productivity at 10% per year for the next decade (because of social networking / collaboration). ” Chambers

Web 2.0 in my Enterprise?

Wikis “A lot of the collaborative work that goes on amongst project teams has really benefited from the use of wikis and discussion forums; the ability to have people interact much more quickly, much more immediately on the web has been very powerful for us.” , Fred Killeen

Customer facing blogs “We know that we’re competitive with any truck or car company in the world in terms of quality and durability and design, but we felt that message wasn’t really being communicated very well to people outside of GM. As we looked at how we could help change that perception, we felt that blogs were the right way to develop better interactivity with the customers and really communicate our message better.” , Bill Betts, GM Customer Communication Manager

Exploring mashups

Exploring folksonomies and tagging

Advantages

Real-time collaboration around the world & across time zones

Developing a common sense of terminology and language across the company

“ they don’t have to e-mail Powerpoint presentations or Word documents to each other in order to share ideas; instead, they can just start a wiki” (Killeen)

“ you don’t need to be a technical expert to post the content” (Killeen)”

“ there’s great potential for changing the way we do a lot of things, from how we engage our users, to how we develop systems, to how we interact with our customers, right through to how we collaborate together in order to design and develop better cars and trucks.” (Killeen)

Approach / Advice

“ do some pilots, and through those pilots understand how it changes the work and how it impacts the users and what you need to do from a change management standpoint. The thing that makes this technology great is that it’s reasonably simple yet allows you to exploit a whole host of capabilities.” (Killeeen)

More Web 2.0 in the Enterprise

Why are we talking about the intranet?

The intranet is (should be) “the social hub” of your enterprise

Intranets have not lived up to expectations:

Workers not using intranet to do work

They are not adding any value to the corporation

They are getting bigger and more expensive to run

Adoption rates going down

Ineffective for knowledge management

More information is being created every day

A little more ClueTrain

Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers mostly ignore.

The best intranets are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranet-worked corporate conversation.

While this scares companies, they also depend heavily on intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these conversations.

Living together in harmony

Intranet 1.0 is a centrally planned means of gaining access to approved documents, forms and applications. It’s a top-down communication system.

Intranet 2.0 is infrastructure that supports the spontaneous capture of corporate knowledge. It’s a bottom-up communication system.

Intranet 1.0 vs Intranet 2.0

Intranet 1.0

Approved Content (think Forms, Brand Guidelines, Tutorials)

Small group of authors and smaller group of approvers

Secure Access to Key Applications

Centralized organization and structure

User research can identify key tasks and processes – intranet designed to support these

Make Critical Content Available

Intranet 2.0

Spontaneous Content – No approvals

Many, many authors

Ad-hoc creation and decentralized structure

Seamless browsing through internal and external applications and content

Support for tasks and processes is emergent, not planned.

Capture Corporate Knowledge

Intranet 2.0 roadmap

Undertake ONA as a roadmap to understanding your social network

Build the framework for content contribution and participation

Individual “my space” pages for EVERYONE

Wiki’s for iteratively refined content

Blogs for sequentially discussed content

Begin capturing and categorizing the information

Social Bookmarking and tagging technology

Aim for more ad hoc “conversations”

Team sites

Implement and tune your search strategy

Adoption, adoption, adoption

WARNING! “deep thoughts ahead”

Organizational Network Analysis may hold the keys to success

ONA is the logical first step in understanding how work actually gets done in you corporation

Identify key knowledge vulnerabilities in a network by virtue of both what a person knows and how their role (or departure) will affect a network

Gives you a target list of who people in your organization trust and interact – use this!

Provides a tangible metric to gauge the success and health of the information flow within your company.

ONA: consulting company source: Rob Cross

Same company: 5 brokers removed source: Rob Cross

Integration of new hires | www.nonlinear.ca ottawa 613.241.2067 toronto 416.203.2997 source: Rob Cross

Build the framework for Enterprise 2.0 content creation

Personal pages

Key in expanding the network and the interactions

Wiki Examples:

A CV Wiki allows all employees to maintain their profile

A project documentation Wiki allows real-time updates to technical docs

The Payroll team creates a 'How-To' guide that documents the steps of how to submit an expense report. On this same page, they attach the actual spreadsheet template, giving employees everything they need in one place.

Fast, simple, centralized posting of news, announcements by anyone

Blog Examples:

Introduce new technology or highlight lessons learned during a project

Employee “profile” blogs – “Serena Software makes Facebook their Intranet”

Knowledge leadership

Capture and Categorize

Internal content:

Tagging of content – taxonomies, folksonomies

External content:

Social bookmarking and tagging

Collective intelligence

In-bound RSS feeds facilitate aggregation

Ad Hoc Sites

We really like SharePoint as a technology to users to create a new, self-contained sites

These grow spontaneously around:

Projects

Committees

Social Activities

May be entirely rogue – not known to intranet

Security and permissions vary

Critical Role of Search

Intranet 2.0, if successful, promises explosion of content

No formal information architecture – it will grow organically, from every angle and corner of your organization

Careful selection of enterprise search solution is critical. Look for:

Ability to “trim” results by permissions

Capability to search structure and unstructured data

Capacity to create collections

Search analytics

Tuning facilities for promoting specific content

Again we like MSFT here for a number of integrated and FAST reasons

Adoption, adoption, adoption

What happens if you throw a party and no one comes?

The “hardest” part of the equation will be the startup and adoption – not the technology

There is a reason all the of the Intranet 2.0 is only as good as content contributors

Keys to success:

Use ONA as your roadmap

Focus on absolutely simple ease of use

Identify likely early adopters and allocate time for their use of intranet

Start small and quietly – have executive promote once it has content/is rolling

A few more tips

Assess your organization’s cultural readiness.

Policies are necessary. What can and can’t be done needs to be defined and anonymous postings should not be allowed (everyone needs to own their contribution).

Focus on the people, not the technology.

Everything is about conversation and dialogue.

Everyone gets to have their say. Prepare to relinquish control and share the process.

Don’t obsess about a hard ROI … yet.

Possible Next Step

NLC 3 day readiness assessment

NLC Social Networking in the Enterprise Whitepaper coming in early June

More info:

Shannon Ryan

[email_address]

http://www.nonlinear.ca

Enterprise 2.0: social networks behind the firewall

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Notes on slide 1

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