Review: Enterprise 2.0

A little while ago, I was able to get my hands on a signed copy of Andrew Mcafee's Enterprise 2.0.

The book starts off talking about the key idea behind the 2.0 tag, introducing the power of "emergence" in social networking. It then goes on to introduce 2.0 technologies, illustrating their impact on businesses through four case studies. A couple of quick frameworks to think about social networking technologies are introduced next, along with the key benefits of the Enterprise 2.0 space.

Part two of the book takes a more pragmatic look, cautioning that most of the benefits will be available over a long haul. The book also covers some key failure scenarios, ending with a road map for businesses in the 2.0 world. The last chapter deals with the question of organizational behavior and its relationship to tools and technologies offered by Web 2.0

The book was an illuminating, sometimes thought-provoking and relatively light read, even though it felt like some of the pit falls were pooh poohed quite easily. Also, while the framework of tie-strength bull's eye was a useful way of articulating the need for 2.0 technologies, it didn't feel as involved with the actual plan for taking a business down the path to Enterprise 2.0. A couple things I felt strongly about:

Legal discovery risk - One of the precepts of the book is that moving from a channel of communication (e.g. email) to a platform (e.g. wiki) doesn't necessarily increase discovery risk related to litigation. The support? Andrew did not see any in the large number of businesses that have thus far implemented 2.0 technologies. Put this way, I am sure the argument seems shallow. Emails has been around for the good part of three decades, and only now have they really started to become the target of discovery requests and increasingly part of legal proceedings. Flippant emails form great news headlines, and even if the legal risk was zero, reputation damage would not be inconsequential. There is no reason to think a platform would fare any better.

Uncertainty - 2.0 emergence takes time. Social media presumes a flat user base, that is largely unconcerned with direction, that seemingly generates something awesome from thin air. There is too much uncertainty in that vision, uncertainty businesses do not like. Uncertainty of deliverable, time, order, ownership may work well when the stakes are lower. But when having a job is critical to taking care of the kids at home, it is too much to hope jobs stick around long enough for something awesome that may emerge out of uncoordinated actions. Again, I am sure that sounds extreme, but it does illustrate the oxymoron Enterprise 2.0.

At the end, the approach that the author lays out for a company to implement 2.0 technologies is tellingly similar to that of a pre-2.0 IT implementation. Identify problem and vision > don't expect dramatic wins > communicate > redesign processes > and measure. I believe, 2.0 technologies are answers to specific questions, as opposed to revolutionary tools just waiting to deliver multi-pronged increases in productivity. It seems more to be a case of 2.0 enabled Enterprise, than Enterprise 2.0.

Enterprise 2.0

Andrew McAfee, author of a new book called Enterprise 2.0, spoke at an internal conference today. Very energetic persona, with an interesting pitch. And on a side note, that allowed some of us to grab a signed copy of the book for further study.

The upshot of the pitch was that the same forces that caused the shift of the web from 1.0 to 2.0 are awaiting a shot at transforming corporate information management culture. Historically, the way to think about information management in a company has been built around the structured, hierarchical approaches. Moving to tools and processes of the 2.0 web, includes a culture shift of leaving the controlled process paradigm and instead accept a more free form style, that almost required faith that it will work. Some companies that have already moved to this culture have started reaping benefits. And companies that adopt these technologies and cultural tenets stand to gain a many-fold increase in productivity.

Reading the book is, therefore, next on the agenda.

Patent end to innovation?

Apple inc has evoked mixed feelings in me. They are the company I respect the most for understanding the every-user. They present the smoothest integration between man and his gadgets. But they are also a company that I will never buy a product from. I wholeheartedly and passionately dislike their closed ecosystem approach.

However they never struck me as lacking innovation - until now. Recently they decided to sue phone maker HTC over alleged 20 patent violations. I am sure Apple believes there is true merit in some of those claims, but when it comes to the interface "technologies", I believe they are wrong.

Apple has delivered everything that the rumor-mill has promised. The iPhone, iPod touch, Apple TV and the tablet, not to mentions scores of products on their mac line-up. Now I believe Apple has finally out-run the rumor-mill. They have successfully gotten Jobs out of Macworld. The last thing churned by wasn't necessarily as earth-shaking as hoped. And now the company is busy defending instead of creating the next big thing.

Apple knows or should know, that they have enough of a brand name that they will get the customer dollar votes they deserve - without having to enforce patents to limit consumer choice. Customers that choose to buy a HTC handset will do so because they either do not want to buy Apple, or they cannot get Apple, or because Apple is priced out for them. No one that Apple's victory in a patent suit is going to help them win back.

The reason for the patent war clearly isn't the customer - it is the investor that wants to milk the cash-cow dry. A cash-cow that isn't much into innovation anymore.

The Office of the future

I have been just checking out some of the AJAX stuff. Needless to say, the techie junkie that I am, I am pretty much blown away.

What is more impressive is not just that ability of the browser to act really like an application container than a markup display module. The movement of the web towards righer media looks more possible from the AJAX point of view rather than the world where everyone watches all their movies online. This is the rich media of the future. Simple applications, centrally maintained and accessible from everywhere.

Of course this means that you need to have connectivity everywhere. This may not be as tough as it seems. A mixture of wired and wireless access is already providing connectivity in most places - bar natural disasters. But, bandwidth is a problem that will not disappear - not overnight, not in a while. Simply put, it is not economically viable to provide high-bandwidth connectivity to everyone. Yes, a big chunk will have access to it, but not everyone.

The software world is going through its pangs of simplification. There is still a while before the dust settles and the winner is predicted. But what struck me was the relation to the hardware world. Take for example the office desktop. Even with the laptop, the desktop today is not truly mobile.

The next step is the integration of business communication with the laptop. All the elements are here already. Laptops are shrinking - they are small enough that any more shrinking can only affect productivity. VoIP is available. And most business users are already connected through adequately thick pipes. What is to prevent an integrated phone in the laptop - a tiny bluetooth enabled headset and an VoIP phone number that goes with the laptop.

That is the next generation of the business laptop. Intergrated communications - data and voice over the same channel through the same end device. You heard it speculated here first.

damn-where-is-that-phone-when-you-need-it
-- ravi

The Brand Name

For those of us who have been bought up on a diet of management jargon or clothing catalogues, the word 'brand' invokes images of name labels, glitzy ramps and press conferences. We believe that branding is a third party activity, which we then use to show off to our friends.

Many of us miss the universal meaning of the word brand. A brand is the sum total of images and feelings that a word or image invokes in us. The reason a brand becomes powerful is that it associates a lot more information on this one word or image, than the image could possibly hold on its own. And many a times, such association is not necessarily logical - and this lack of reason is the source for the assymetrical power of the brand.

Take, for example, the branding that each and every one of us do everyday as we profile the people around us. "He is a libran - never decides". "She stay out late, god only knows what for". "He is fun and intelligent, must be gay". Profiling is one of the fundamental effects of branding that we constantly overlook in our daily lives. Such profiling was probably built over time, with constant reinforcement, giving these words, images and ideas such a hold over our though process, that we not only let them rule our actions, but we frequently fail to see through to the profiles we carry.

Take another example - probably the biggest brand on earth - God. No one has seen him. No one has interviewed him. But everyone knows everything that is to be known about it. No, dont get me wrong. I am not against theology - just that this entire study seems to be an massive exercise in brand building.

This post is not about theology, or a delve into the idea that make up god. Rather it is about some other brands that we carry along with us. The people that we meet.

I have been carrying around a brand, that recently came to the fore again. This man, was a professor of mine at a point in time. During the period, my interactions with him brought out ideas that I live by to this day. And a by-product of this was that I have this brand image of this person, his idea and his thought process. So when I found out that he had published a book, there wasnt even the slightest hesitation in my mind as I clicked through the steps online to get it delivered home. I knew it would be a while before I would return home to read it, but there was no hesitation is ordering the book on the spot. The power of the brand image.

The book reached home and my mom read it. And she loved it like she loved no other book till now. We spent an inordinate amout of time talking about it and reflecting on the book. I realised, that I was indeed talking about the book and the ideas therein without ever having seen the book. The power of the brand - the ideas that the brand carries along.

Make you take a pause and reflect - when you form such powerful impressions about others, wonder what your brand is talking about you. Of course, everyone wants to be known for their plusses - but the brand is a whole lot different. It is not just your features, it is the entire feeling that your recollection evokes in the person. What is it? A warm fuzzy feeling? A cold dread? Silent admiration? Masked disgust? What does your brand speak about you?

warm regards and heloo if you came here via the IIMC website

-- nrk
You might also want to take a dekko here.

Time passes

Yeah, it does. Coz the last time I wrote that last thing, called woot, I was a student. Sitting away, tucked in some obscure corner of the world, in a place called Calcutta, having absolutely nothing to do, and no one to think about but myself.
Now, I am sitting far away.

Really far away. Farther than the biggest stretch of my imagination.
I am in Bangkok right now. In the JW Marriott hotel. In one of their biggest conference rooms. Listening to yet another talk about something that I had spent a lot of time learning about. This is strange. Once upon a time, I spent money and time to learn all this. Now I am being paid to sit through this class, and I don't even need it. Life does come a complete circle.

Oh, I have a laptop now. But yeah, it is not mine. Not loaned, but kind of owned corporately. And this is from the corporate network. So don't really know if people will be happy with this. But then, I frankly believe that this is a better utilization of my time as opposed to trying to listen to the class today. There is nothing to listen to.

As I was telling you, I have this laptop now. And the moment I got it, I wanted to move from my desktop to this. Which essentially meant that I wanted to install all the programs I had in my old desktop onto this machine and move over all my data files to this machine.

Then I got the shock of my life. They told me that all I could use was the core-load software. Nice term that - core load. But that really put the shackles on me. I could understand it in a way. They did not want any pirated software on the computer. Made sense. Obviously corporates dont really want to have pirated stuff on their assets, coz it might turn out to be painful for them in the future. Completely understandable.

Then I wanted to install at least my open source software on it. My openoffice.org for example, so that I could at least edit my stuff in that format. The answer to my astonishment was "no". I was not allowed to load any of this software at all. All I could use was the MS products, for which I had licenses via the corporate route and nothing else.

No shareware, probably makes sense. Coz there might be license issues.

Unnecessary small testing of programs also makes sense. Coz there might be an security and malware issues.

But what does not make sense is why no OOo? Is OOo not different from a free mario clone on the web?

Dont corporates distinguish between them?

What if I had a problem with the machine and I could just use a free software off the web and set it right? Can I not do it?

How does corporate handle different kinds of software. Is it always this fearful and afraid of non MS products? Or probably something which they had not paid for?

When will open products get corporate acceptability?

Gawd only help me find those answers. Or mebbe slashdot can...

sweet lord

~!nrk

Incredewl = Incredibly kewl

Check out this link at slate.com. And Incredibly it talks about the topic I was talking about in my last post. About how the RIAA is responsible for its own state of affairs.

Just some perspectives first. The MPAAs and the RIAAs of this world are leaders in crying wolf, at each and every change that ever happens. Right from the disbelief filled furore over motion pictures ("Who in his right mind will want to watch a motion picture?") to the RIAA screaming blue murder at audio cassettes and the problem of "home taping" in 1980. The tight monopolistic short-sightedness of these associations is their undoing. Do read the article, it does give a good perspective.

Lets believe we are in front of the Oracle (the geek variety with the predictive powers and not the RDBMS variety). Lets pretend to peep into the future of music and the RIAA. Lets also assume that humans are inherently reasonable intelligent.

The cost of making music is falling. This means that more and more artists would be able to make their kind of music. This will not only proliferate the number of musicians, but will also multiply and mix the various genres and styles. Music will just be music and everyone will have access to an unprecedented variety of it. How would someone control it. Lets see...

Placing controls in the music itself. Ya, but if you are intelligent, so am I. What you can make I can break. Check this article which almost seems to say the same thing. Considering an industry with a great many firms, a great many independants, who will be able to enforce such a format? It is not about the power of the control placed. Too restrictive ones will cost you customers, too loose and it is not a constraint any longer. It is like Icarus flying between the ocean and the sun, and this Icarus is bound to fail. Forget everything, what will you do to music that will prevent a dictaphone from recording the sound that emanates from the speaker?

Okay so you will place controls in the playback system. Huh? Get real. And the same problems will plague the hardware too. You either lose customers or you will lose the entire point of the exercise.

Maybe you will try to control the swapping of music. Did you know the RIAA and the MPAA got permission to hack into networks which allow P2P sharing of services. Look what happenned. ISPs refused to allow the MPAA and the RIAA to attack their customers. Simple. Why would the rest of the world change its priorities just so that the RIAA can make some money? They will not. As long as RIAA is not the God of File Swapping, swapping will go on. For the masses want it. And Capitalism is in the want of the masses.

Why does it seem so bleak and unfair to the RIAA. Because the RIAA has not moved on. The RIAA is stuck in the past and refuses to budge and inch. The government will entertain it as long as it is strong. Once the artists realize that the RIAA is an intermediary, a pain in the ass, a source of inefficiencies and a drain on resources, the RIAA will cease to exist. Atleast the RIAA that exists today.

What will happen then. Lets take another peek onto the Crystal Ball. By the time artists would have eliminated the intermediary, one additional change would have occured. Money as we know it would also have completed its transition to the online world. Distribution and Payment would be online.

Why will people pay. Because people are not thieves by birth. Because if you music is good, you will have fans who care about you. And to live you will not need too many fans (remember the RIAA mammoth is no longer there). And as an artist you will have a global audience and a small fan following. Your music will be exchanged freely. The charts will be the number of times your song is exchanged. The more a song is exchanged the more the excitement it will generate, and more people will want to possess. And a new form of ownership will start. "Original Copies" will become a symbol - of fan-following, of loyalty, of integrity. Swapping networks grade users on their loyalty points, and this will automatically become an incentive. The consumer will spend but will get a lot more, and he will spend even more. Public performances will become a craze, another show of loyalty. And if you are a good artist, you will get money. Independent of which side of the bed your music house or the RIAA woke up today. Independent of which genre is being played by MTV. Independent of whether you have great resources to make songs or not.

What else might happen? Try this. Abstract art will meet with music. CGI and music will become a craze. Videos with music will drive the popularity. Music will come with additional components, like beat information for automatic playback at discos, visualization information, which will automatically be loaded by you winamp and a lot more. This complete entertainment units will replace the mp3 of today.

Of course there will be a time when everyone will see this happening and tom, dick, harry and their friend sally will also want to make music. The swappers will kill them. There will be a great rout, of icons and the newcomers and only the best will survive. And only the best will survive.

You think this will not work? Do you like music? When was the last time you went to a concert? Why did you pay for the ticket, and not just stay outside, salivating, at the gate, listening to music?

Think about it. This is no big deal. This is just a correction being made to the error committed by 2nd wave capitalism - the commoditization of music.

Practicing miniature photography now. My friend got a digi-cam. And that is setting right a great imbalance committed by this world - of not including a camera when I was sent down from the heavens.

gotta go get shot

~!nrk