Emergent Social Software Platforms: Some FAQs

Posted by Vandana Ahuja on July 28, 2008

2 comments | 3176 reads

Enterprise social software, also known as Enterprise 2.0, is a term describing social software used in "enterprise" (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, this generation of software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.(sourced from Wikipedia)

Despite being beneficial to organisations, the early adopters to these platforms are not very high.Professor Andrew McAfee at Harvard Business School has compiled an exhaustive list of the frequent causes of organisational dilemmas towards adoption of emerging social software platforms.Primarily relevant to the set of organisational setups who are still very skeptical about the possible chances of misuse of these platforms by employees.

A must read-
Some questions you might get asked

Professor Mc Afee's research on enterprise 2.0 is a reference place for organisations attempting to weave these social software innovations into the corporate setup.

Vandana Ahuja

Vandana Ahuja is a visiting faculty at India's Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, an educational initiative of the USD 75 M Jaypee Group of Companies. She was earlier a member of the IT arm of the group which she joined after brief associations with software giant NIIT and Elbee Express.

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John Todor

July 28, 2008

Is it Safe to Go in the Water?

Vandana,

Following your suggestion, I read mcAfee's blog post on "some questions you might get asked." I am not surprised by the questions and would love to see the answers McAfee gets from readers. Or, any answers McAffee has himself.

It seems that at the root of all the questions is the fear of giving up the control that was inherent in hierarchical organizations and ones that push products rather than value to customers. It is not a trival issue to change this mindset.

You mention that the number of early adopters of enterprise 2.0 is low. Add to this that a substantial number of these early adopters are struggling. In my estimation the root problem lies in adopting technology before they adopt the right thinking or mindset.

John

John I. Todor, Ph.D.
Author of Get with it! The Hands-on Guide to Using Web 2.0 in Your Business.

Vandana Ahuja

July 28, 2008

Metcalfe's law

Agree with you wholly.

Metcalfe's law states that a network's value grows quickly as participants join in.While the individual value of the network will be the key driver in making people join, the community value (which is the summation of the individual values) should be the main driver behind the organisations' adoption of these technologies. Somewhere organisations are assessing and starting to understand the need for harnessing the collaborative intelligence of it's human capital.What they also need to do is to understand the need to ENABLE this human capital to collectively work towards deriving increasing returns through a higher COMMUNITY VALUE.The bigger the collaborative effort, the more valuable it becomes. It pays to be ubiquitous.

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