Knowledge People Performance

by David Wagner
 

Position Paper: Enterprise 2.0 and Knowledge Management

Over the past couple of months I worked with a team of people from the German Knowledge Management Association, also called GfWM, Although I don't usually post German language content on my blog, I decided to do so on this occasion as I know that many of my readers are based in Germany. The team consisted of practitioners, consultants and a researcher with each of us bringing slightly different perspectives to the table. This is not a research paper and our intention was not to write one either. Instead, we wanted this piece to be a call on knowledge management professionals to consider the implications of social media on their daily work and the organizations they work in. We believe that the application of Web 2.0 tools within organizations has huge potential to leverage knowledge resources. At the same time, we wanted to stress that becoming an Enterprise 2.0 is not merely a question of making use of social media, but adapting the organizational culture accordingly. In order to make our ideas more 'tangible', we tried to come up with our own definition of the term Enterprise 2.0 (based on Andrew McAfee's work) and identified further characteristics. Additionally, we compared prototypical organizational cultures of an Enterprise 1.0 and an Enterprise 2.0 (based on Edgar Schein's work).

 

Filed under  //   Andrew McAfee   e20   edgar schein   enterprise20   gfwm   km   knowledge management  
Posted October 1, 2011
 

Web 2.0 finds its payday by @McKQuarterly

I've commented on the McKinsey Web 2.0 surveys in an earlier blog post. McKinsey just published the outcome of this year's research, comparing internally networked, externally networked and fully networked organizations. The result: Fully networked organizations perform better in terms of market share and profit margins. Study participants named faster access to knowledge, increased marketing effectiveness and reduced communication costs as some of the main advantages of technology adoption. The authors, Bughin and Chui, also report that more employees within the same organization are now making use of more Web 2.0 technologies compared to previous years. Positive feedback loops seem to facilitate organizational learning. McKinsey predicts that investments in these technologies are bound increase. This is in line with Gartner's expectations.

There was one finding that I thought was particularly noteworthy: Self-reported market leadership correlated negatively with externally networked organizations. Market leaders tend to focus on internal collaboration, but shield themselves from external ties. The authors of the study suggest that this is to do with maintaining their leadership position. Market challengers, on the contrary, are more focused on external uses of Web 2.0 technologies to win clients over. Would you agree?

Filed under  //   Gartner   McKinsey   e20   enterprise20   web20  
Posted January 17, 2011
 

How to Hit the Enterprise 2.0 Bullseye by @amcafee

I mentioned Andrew McAfee and his book 'Enterprise 2.0' in an earlier blog post and would like to come back to him now. In Chapter 4 of his book, Andy introduces the notion of the Enterprise 2.0 Bullseye (see below graph). The logic of the bullseye builds on Granovetter's (1973) and Burt's (1992) work on the strength of weak ties and structural holes. Andy argues that the bullseye helps to focus Enterprise 2.0 efforts by distinguishing the different types of ties between people, or employees, and how these ties may be maintained or altered by the use of social software (which he calls ESSPs). Cooperation between close colleagues, or strong ties, may be facilitated by wikis, whereas social network sites are more suitable to maintain a large network of acquaintances, or loose ties. Blogs, in turn, are seen to be enablers for converting potential into actual contacts. Last but not least, there are forms of cooperation, for example in the case of prediction markets, when no tie between actors is present and yet the individuals involved can productively interact. There are a number of other studies that investigate the impact of ICT on social capital, yet Andy manages to match ties and technologies. This is an interesting step forward.
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via andrewmcafee.org

Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural holes: the social structure of competition. Harvard University Press.

Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American journal of sociology, 78(6), 1360.

McAfee, A. (2009). Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges. Harvard Business School Press. 

Filed under  //   Andrew McAfee   burt   e20   enterprise bullseye   enterprise20   granovetter   graph   knowledge worker   social capital   strength of weak ties   structural holes  
Posted September 13, 2010