On the other hand, smaller companies are delighted by our products. Flexibility, ease of use, and low cost are key issues. Also the lack of “company politics” and over-cautious IT departments, mean that small companies don’t have the issues that Suw describes.

Brod Justice

qnoodle limited

“And that’s really it: social software is about people. Which means businesses need to spend more time thinking about how people use these tools, how to communicate about them, how to help people understand them. I don’t see nearly enough of that going on, and when it does, it’s done by isolated pockets of enthusiasts who are hobbled by a lack of recognition, political power, and budget.”

I worked in a company where the staff were treated like naughty children that were there to be controlled and sit quietly and do as they’re told. Although social media would’ve been a really useful tool for the company, its use was actively blocked by management because it wouldn’t do for the naughty children to actually *enjoy* doing their jobs…

I suspect this is the case in many companies - you’re simply not *supposed* to enjoy your work!

Compare that to companies like Innocent Smoothies, where blogging is actively encouraged - and they have a huge fanbase, something like 50,000 newsletter subscribers, the last I’d heard - their blog gets loads of visits and loads of comments, and their customers love feeling so involved.

Any company that’s not embracing social media is missing out on a shedload of opportunities to interact with customers, in my opinion.

@Frank: yes, you’re right, picking up a ‘phone and having a one-to-one conversation with customers is important too. But when it comes to telling all your stakeholders your news, and demonstrating thought leadership, you need to do it on a bigger scale and social media is perfect for that - the reach is wide, and the opportunities are there for stakeholders to get involved.

Thanks for a really interesting article, Suw

http://broadstuff.com/archives/1067-The-Adoption-of-Enterprise-2.0-wildfire-or-slow-burn.html

Very expensive, misleading, and a significant opportunity cost.My advice:

Avoid $ocial Media Con$ultant$ !

The 15 year adoption rule for technologies has been mapped to introduction of: relational databases, 4GL, client-server architectures, case tools, mobile computing and many more. There are academic studies that might be of interest (it’s not an arbitrary “rule” like sod’s law or the peter principle).

You can’t compare the influence of a fresh entry-level geek on the IT shopfloor with that of the CIO/IT Director (who, supposedly, implements what s/he studied 15 years ago).

I am involved in implementing enterprise technology in global organisations and have been doing this for 14 years. When I started most organisations had collaborative tools, often bespoke e.g built with Lotus Notes and were building what were known as knowledge management systems. Wikis, Forums and other collaborative tools have moved into that space. For one they are virtually free. For another some contain structured controls (access and editing authorisations) which match or better those of the collaborative tools of 10 years ago (and which seem to be essential to successful E2.0). And lastly they are not exclusive tools. Most of my clients have CRM with some kind of ‘Knowledge Management’ function but supplement that with social software tools on the side.

Businesses will rush to adopt anything that demonstrable significant ROI. If that’s not there, they won’t bother. Dull answer, I know, but true.

Look back in history, look into the 80’s. PCs where long established while the main frame warden still sit on their 3270 Terminals…

Today’s IT leaders won’t recognize Enterprise 2.0 - and things like that happen approximately every 20 years, and it is happening now - again.

Enterprise 2.0 is here - but not in IT and will never be in the current IT Manager generation - the next is in the start blocks. And nobody will remembers how it happened. Or do you remember when PC Service centers where established before it became our today’s IT department? Do you remember when industrialization began and how?

Axel Schultze
Xeequa

Clearly there is an incomplete analysis here because no one has all the data. Indeed, I’d go as far as to say that the data that would be needed to analyse the spread of social media in enterprise is never going to become available because businesses in general don’t like to talk about it. The ones who do are the ones who are successful, so you have a chronic success bias problem.

I’m not sure that it’s instructive to compare social software to other types of software because it’s elective where, say, word processors or accounts packages aren’t. So there are different factors at play.

I also don’t have any real faith in teenagers and university students to bring social tools into the workplace. Contrary to popular belief, not all students are steeped in social tools - Kevin and I have both lectured at universities where the attitude of the students to technology was luke warm at best. Those that are hooked on Facebook and its kin are not necessarily then transposing that experience into the workplace, with many instead seeing such tools as toys and ways to organise their personal life which they believe have no place at work.

Clearly not all teens and uni students see tech in this way, the same way that not all adults are technophobes. But I am skeptical of the idea that social tools are going to sweep the businessplace just as soon as the Facebook generation grows up. It’s not even a good idea to wait that long. Businesses need to change, and they need to change now.

There are clear benefits to using social software that can be easily understood by management, but it’s a matter of understanding the specifics of that business and being able to frame the benefits in such a way as they are directly relevant to the person you’re talking to. Social software cannot and should not promise the broad sweeping benefits touted by underperforming ’solutions’ such as knowledge management. That’s too much like promising a hammer can build the Taj Mahal - a hammer can be used to build the Taj Mahal, but it’s not the only thing you need.

Certainly email is now causing problems, but technology will not solve that problem, because it’s nothing to do with tech and everything to do with psychology and culture.

And that’s really it: social software is about people. Which means businesses need to spend more time thinking about how people use these tools, how to communicate about them, how to help people understand them. I don’t see nearly enough of that going on, and when it does, it’s done by isolated pockets of enthusiasts who are hobbled by a lack of recognition, political power, and budget.

For that reason, it’s seen as not Enterprise 2.0, but more of a plaything. The value is rarely understood within a corporate environment because the environment is highly controlled by management processes.

Social software is, in essence, a breakaway from the idea of process and is a scary thing for a company to take hold of. It’s more ethereal and less “value” based.

The types of contacts I have expect to be able to look at applications and say “how can this make me/my company money?”. If it’s just glorified CRM (which a lot of social software is) it makes no sense.

The change will come in about 2-5 years when some clever entrepreneur types make a replacement for enterprise email systems (something based on gmail probably) as they are that include the social aspect within them. When it’s adopted as a “standard” part of the corporate desktop, it will become part of the corporate world.

Most technologies take about 15 years to penetrate business after being released from the academic world. It is said this is about as long as it takes for the ‘early-adopting’ students to rise to a level of management in the company where they can have a significant influence in adoption. This might tie up with your point about managers ’showing indifference’.

Perhaps social media is doing pretty well, relatively speaking? My personal observation would suggest so.