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Enterprise 2.0
mantex writes "The title of this book combines two coded terms — 'Web 2.0' and 'The Enterprise' — for which read 'social networking software' and 'Big Business.' And the purpose is to show how the techniques and concepts behind Web 2.0 applications (blogs, wikis, tagging, RSS, and social bookmarking) can be used to encourage collaboration efforts in what was previously thought of as secretive, competitive businesses." Read on for the rest of Roy's review.
Enterprise 2.0
author
Niall Cook
pages
pp.164
publisher
Londo: Gower
rating
7
reviewer
Roy Johnson
ISBN
0566088002
summary
How social software will change the future of work
It's an argument which is fast becoming quite familiar. To succeed in modern business, managers and directors must learn to listen and talk to their customers and staff. They need to be more agile in their thinking, less monolithic in their practices, and they need to catch up to new Internet-based activities which can sweep away unwary traditionalists overnight [look what happened to Encyclopedia Britannica] and create multi-billion pound enterprises almost as quickly [Amazon, Google]. Niall Cook realises that there will be problems and resistance to such suggestions from within orthodox business communities. But he also points to their existing weaknesses.
Companies spend millions of dollars installing information and knowledge management systems, yet still struggle with the most basic challenges of persuading their employees to use them.
Will it be difficult to persuade large organizations to adopt these very democratic tools? He offers case studies from companies such as the BBC, IBM, Microsoft, and BUPA and others to show that it might. He even makes a case for the use of instant messaging and social presence software (MSN and Twitter).
He also has an example of the US Defence Intelligence Agency using mashups to provide simultaneous streams of information through a single interface (because that's what its users want), and a multinational software company using Facebook as an alternative to its own Intranet (because its employees use it more).
He gives a very convincing example of the creation of a wiki running alongside the company Intranet in a German bank. The IT staff started using the wiki to generate documentation, and within six months use of the Intranet was down 50%, email was down 75%, and meeting times had been cut in half.
In fact he misses the opportunity to point out that one of the biggest incentives for companies to embrace Web 2.0 software is that much of it is completely free. Almost all major programs are now available in Open Source versions — including such fundamentals as operating systems (Linux) content management systems (Joomla) and virtual learning environments (Moodle).
In the UK, government institutions have invested and wasted billions of pounds after being bamboozled by software vendors. In the education sector alone, VLEs such as Blackboard and WebCT have proved costly mistakes for many colleges and universities. They are now locked in to proprietary systems, whilst OSS programs such as Moodle run rings round them — and are free.
Is the embracing of social software solutions likely to take place any time soon? Well, Cook has some interesting answers. His argument is that these developments are already taking place. Smart companies will catch on, and obstructors will fall behind with no competitive edge.
Bear in mind that within just five years, members of the MySpace generation are going to be entering the workforce, bringing their collaborative tools with them. If you don't have the software that allows them to search, link, author, tag, mashup, and subscribe to business information in the ways they want to, they are going to do one of three things: use third party software that does; leave to join a competitor that does; not want to work for you in the first place.
Even the software solutions in this radical, indeed revolutionary development, must be fast, light, and quick to implement. Oracle's IdeaFactory took just a few days to build. Janssen-Cilag's wiki-based Intranet was purchased, customized, and launched within two weeks. This is all part of what Peter Merholz in his recent Subject to Change calls agile technology.
Cook provides strategies for those who wish to implement these ideas within their own company — and it has to be said that he assumes a certain degree of subversiveness might be necessary.
The book ends with a review of the literature on social software and a comprehensive bibliography — so anyone who wants to pursue these matters at a theoretical level has all the tools to do so. But I suspect that anybody who is taken with these new ideas — if they have any blood in their veins — will immediately want to go away and put them into practice.
This is a truly inspirational book which should be required reading for managers, IT leaders, systems analysts, developers, and business strategists in any enterprise, small, medium, and especially large. I can think of two organizations I am working with right now (one a university, the other a large city college) who ought to be implementing these ideas but who are doing just the contrary — stifling innovation. One, following its culture of 'no change' has just been swallowed up by its rival. The other is running onto the financial rocks precisely because it refuses to learn from its users and its own staff — whilst claiming to do just the opposite.
Roy Johnson files regular book reviews at MANTEX
You can purchase Enterprise 2.0 from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
He also has an example of the US Defence Intelligence Agency using mashups to provide simultaneous streams of information through a single interface (because that's what its users want), and a multinational software company using Facebook as an alternative to its own Intranet (because its employees use it more).
He gives a very convincing example of the creation of a wiki running alongside the company Intranet in a German bank. The IT staff started using the wiki to generate documentation, and within six months use of the Intranet was down 50%, email was down 75%, and meeting times had been cut in half.
In fact he misses the opportunity to point out that one of the biggest incentives for companies to embrace Web 2.0 software is that much of it is completely free. Almost all major programs are now available in Open Source versions — including such fundamentals as operating systems (Linux) content management systems (Joomla) and virtual learning environments (Moodle).
In the UK, government institutions have invested and wasted billions of pounds after being bamboozled by software vendors. In the education sector alone, VLEs such as Blackboard and WebCT have proved costly mistakes for many colleges and universities. They are now locked in to proprietary systems, whilst OSS programs such as Moodle run rings round them — and are free.
Is the embracing of social software solutions likely to take place any time soon? Well, Cook has some interesting answers. His argument is that these developments are already taking place. Smart companies will catch on, and obstructors will fall behind with no competitive edge.
Bear in mind that within just five years, members of the MySpace generation are going to be entering the workforce, bringing their collaborative tools with them. If you don't have the software that allows them to search, link, author, tag, mashup, and subscribe to business information in the ways they want to, they are going to do one of three things: use third party software that does; leave to join a competitor that does; not want to work for you in the first place.
Even the software solutions in this radical, indeed revolutionary development, must be fast, light, and quick to implement. Oracle's IdeaFactory took just a few days to build. Janssen-Cilag's wiki-based Intranet was purchased, customized, and launched within two weeks. This is all part of what Peter Merholz in his recent Subject to Change calls agile technology.
Cook provides strategies for those who wish to implement these ideas within their own company — and it has to be said that he assumes a certain degree of subversiveness might be necessary.
The book ends with a review of the literature on social software and a comprehensive bibliography — so anyone who wants to pursue these matters at a theoretical level has all the tools to do so. But I suspect that anybody who is taken with these new ideas — if they have any blood in their veins — will immediately want to go away and put them into practice.
This is a truly inspirational book which should be required reading for managers, IT leaders, systems analysts, developers, and business strategists in any enterprise, small, medium, and especially large. I can think of two organizations I am working with right now (one a university, the other a large city college) who ought to be implementing these ideas but who are doing just the contrary — stifling innovation. One, following its culture of 'no change' has just been swallowed up by its rival. The other is running onto the financial rocks precisely because it refuses to learn from its users and its own staff — whilst claiming to do just the opposite.
Roy Johnson files regular book reviews at MANTEX
You can purchase Enterprise 2.0 from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
if he'd get his hair fixed, & she'd stop talking in fargoese, they could become the next corepirate nazi puppets/idols of some.
"Hi, My name is Jeffrey, I invented a tube."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Blagovich got nailed because he wanted to stop doing business with Bank of America. The day after he made an announcement to the press about that he gets nailed with corruption. They admit they have been watching him for years. Do you really think that was the first case of corruption they had on him? We're talking about the Chicago political machine, mind you.
I'm not saying this guy isn't scum.
Its the same thing with Elliot Spitzer. He spoke out against Bush, wall street and bad lending pracitces in a NYT op-ed piece and he gets busted shortly afterwards.
Every elected official who holds high office or has a chance at holding high office, as well as some of the CEOs and other top management of the larger corporations, has a "control file". A control file is a list of skeletons in your closet, either previous or ongoing, that can be used against you if you should do anything that goes against the interests of the people who got you into office in the first place.
Don't confuse this with the routine Bill Clinton-style "sex scandal" that never actually removes anyone from power; those are media distractions (if you recall, he was fighting a rather asymmetrical and cruise missle-intensive "war" at the time). The real deal usually takes the form that you have outlined above.
It's a shame that the average person really has no clue just how utterly corrupt our political and economic systems truly are ("corrupt" does not even begin to describe it). Imagine something like Tammany Hall on a national scale, then imagine that this also applies to the economic system. Not just the corporations and the CEOs that have large concentrated amounts of wealth, but the very Federal Reserve monetary system itself and the similar central banking systems that most industrialized nations also have. Most people have the sense that something is amiss but they have no idea just how accurate that sense really is.