Maybe Enterprise 2.0 Is About the Technology

I have been reading about the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Santa Clara. I was sorry to miss it but did attend the June version In Boston. There seems to be a reoccurring theme that “it is not about the technology” (see for example: Ted Sapuntziz’s excellent post, My lesson from Enterprise 2.0: People are the weakest link). However, I am beginning to think a large part of it is about the technology. This is coming from a person who got 6 out of 100 on the geek test. I was also part of a panel at the one of first Enterprise 2.0 conferences in 2007, titled “It’s 90% Percent People 10% Technology” that made the same point as Ted did recently.

Let me explain. Yesterday I wrote about: Integrating the Interactions with the Transactions. I was building on some idea I first posted in: Putting Social Media to Work. I closed with the thought that for enterprise 2.0 to truly be an enterprise operation, it needs to take in the old with the new. It should not replace what is currently in place to support transactions but complement it so that transactions and the interactions around them are connected.

Richard Hughes from Clearvale mentioned some recent research to me from the Altimeter Group that points to the need for this integration. Altimeter found that in the first two years companies tend to spend most of their implement dollars on people to properly manage the effort. By the third year they shift to spending IT dollars to custom technology development, quite likely part of this is directed at integration services.

Now I certainly agree that there is a people part, a process part, and a leadership part, However, I do not think it is useful to say it is ‘not the technology.” Granted Enterprise 2.0 is certainly not about the features and functions of the collaborative platforms. Thinking soley in those terms is doomed to failure. But to say it is not about the technology takes our focus off the critical technical integration tasks that are necessary for enterprise 2.0 to truly succeed.

 

 

Comments

[Claude Super]

You're right, but to say it's all about the technology takes our focus off the critical management changes that are necessary for enterprise 2.0 to truly succeed!
Technology (web 2.0 tools, collaboration platforms, mobiles, etc.), is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to succeed in a such business.
;-)

[bill Ives]

Charles - Thanks for the clarification. I certainly did not mean that is all about the technology. I just did not want us to say "it is not the technology" which seems to be a mantra these days. You are right is thtat it is a mx of people process and technology.

[John T Maloney (@jheuristic)]

Hi - Good post. People still don't get triangulation. This will help - a lot:

http://networksingularity.com/2011/11/28/invitation-to-plugin.aspx

The Plugged-In Manager

-j

[bill Ives]

Thanks John for your input and the link. Looks like a useful event.

[_richardhughes]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the mention!

My feeling is that the technology makes social business possible, but it's the people who make it succeed.

I have seen many experts dismiss the technology as unimportant, which I believe is wrong, because it the technology is often the catalyst or the enabler to start a business working more socially. But equally, organizations that are not prepared to embrace the organizational change that social business brings will fail to get full value out of that technology.

The integration piece is an interesting point, which perhaps highlights a slightly different issue. I've found the original graphic from Jeremiah Owyang which mentions this (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/5433689944/in/set-72157623558763750/). Note the way that in an organization with advanced social business maturity, the custom technology development spending leaps up from being more than 5x more than that of an organization with intermediate maturity.

My theory for this (which I don't have confirmation from Altimeter about, but I do have many pieces of anecdotal evidence with which to justify it) is that in the early stages, organizations adopt social tools in a somewhat chaotic fashion. It is only as the projects mature, they go back and tie it all together. That's why [ warning - shameless product plug approaching ] we at BroadVision make a big thing about Clearvale's "social ecosystems" that allow these various internal and external social initiatives to be managed a coherent whole entity.

[bill Ives]

Richard - thanks for your comprehensive comment. I like you first sentence. It is spot on. While the people issues are key we cannot say it is not about the technology because technology sets the stage for people to act. Bill

[Sapountzis]

Bill, thank you for the reference and your nice words regarding my post. My main thesis is very similar to what Richard mentioned above. Of course technology can play a huge role (that's the fourth point in my post), but (i) technology is also developed by people! and (ii) unless you have a problem you are solving for, you will be lost.

I really like Richard's theory, and as a matter of fact, for many of the experiments I have been involved in, we used a lot of manual labor to understand what we truly needed before looking for a software solution.

Ted

[Glenn]

Technology is important. People are important too. Here's the really bad news. Without purpose, neither people nor technology will prevail. In the end, you need all three. http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/purpose/people/product goes into more detail on that.

[bill Ives]

Ted

Thanks for your response. I certainly do agree with your point about technology needs to be simple. This is often a fatal mistake that vendors make as they pile on the features I agree even more with your point about technology needing to be people centric and the need for people (users) to be involved in its design. I have been involved in many technology implementations on the change management or people side. I have seen that the success of the introducing a new solution that involves technology is directly proportionate to the amount of involvement by the eventual users, The point of my title was to both start a conversation and I am pleased that this has happen but also to say that let's not overlook that there are some tech issues, especially integration ones.

[twitter.com/rotkapchen]

Bill: When we say it's not about the technology, we're saying that it's not about technology for technology's sake, but technology for the sake of the individual (http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2009/08/27/mcafee-its-not-not-about-the-technology/).

The biggest problem is still a HUGE elephant in the living room: most technology projects are staffed with nothing but technologists. And where they even agree to hire people-focused staff they will often disqualify them based on the use of certain technologies.

There are very few technologies today whose designs are lead by (or even include participatory contributions from) non-technical resources. This is the main travesty.

[bill Ives]

Paula - Thanks for your comment and I certainly agree with everything you wrote. Business people need to lead projects, not technologists. I was only wanting to avoid going to the other extreme and not looking at the technology issues like the need to integration of old and new school tools.

[network infrastructure solutions]

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