Here in today's Globe and Mail is an overview of the main Enterprise 2.0 takeup and implementation issues by a freelance technology writer.

She raises the main issues correctly, I think, but does not address the larger promise (which in my opinion is the rhetoric regularly employed by corporations who argue that they are starved for innovation, flexibility and responsiveness ... all of which also require the major cultural and structural changes that most corporations seem to want to avoid).

The wait for any significant redefinitions may be a long one. As long as power and money are key features of organizational structure, significant flattening and real culture shifts are not really major items on the agenda.

It will take some clear examples of organizations using such tools and culture outperforming others by an order of magnitude before shift happens. 

Jon Husband 

Be sure to check out Jon Husband's Wirearchy blog.

Redefining business
Companies may not be ready for cultural shift required by Web 2.0

POONAM KHANNA

[Snip ...]

Corporate-wide wikis could be used to exchange information about everything from the latest sales figures and market trends to client leads to the state of the company kitchen. As the number of wiki entries increase, folksonomies ¯ taxonomies created from the ground up based on how users tag and link to information ¯ could be used to navigate through pages.

But such an approach to communication requires a different type of corporate culture ¯ one that is flat rather than hierarchical, flexible instead of rigid and open ended as opposed to closed. Companies that live by the Web 2.0 creed are willing to hear what Joe from accounting has to say about streamlining manufacturing methods, ready to be ravaged by both employee and customer blogs and prepared to rethink who gets access to what information. It remains to be seen whether corporations can ¯ or even want to ¯ affect such a change.

It's hard to imagine many companies fostering a culture in which a lowly clerk would be given or take advantage of the power to change his boss's wiki entry, let alone the company CEO's. Are workers going to be willing to change entries made by higher ups or even by fellow co-workers? And how will they react to having their own entries edited?

The Web 2.0 approach assumes there are a lot of untapped ideas out there, and no doubt there are many a bright individual who never meet their potential, but how often does Joe from accounting really have something salient to say about streamlining manufacturing methods? And if he does, will the VP of manufacturing be any more willing to take his wiki entry seriously than she would have been willing to read an email from him on the same point? Equipping workers and managers with Web 2.0 tools won't necessarily mean they'll gain all of the benefits that the technology has to offer ¯ especially if the tools aren't accompanied by a profound cultural shift.

The Web 2.0 world as envisioned by the likes of Harvard Business School associate professor Andrew McAfee, who coined the term Enterprise 2.0, is one in which office politics can be transcended.

And even if wikis, blogs and podcasts do take hold, will they make life in the corporate world any easier, or will they add another layer of complexity to the already overloaded worker who has to deal with 300 emails a day. Email isn't likely to disappear as the new technologies are adopted. It might diminish some, but will the number of wikis, blogs and podcasts that workers have to keep up with on a daily basis grow exponentially, as emails did? Will a great deal of the entries ¯ like a great deal of email ¯ really be worth the time?

Jon Husband