Is Enterprise 2.0 Stagnating?

January 17th, 2008
by Jeremy Thomas

I’ve noticed that the ideas behind Enterprise 2.0 have remained relatively unchanged for a year and a half or so. Sure, we’ve seen the evolution of Andrew McAfee’s SLATES mnemonic to one called FLATNESSES by Dion Hinchcliffe. “SLATES” appeared in Spring, 2006, and “FLATNESSES” over a year later. Fundamentally the elements both are made up of are the same:

  • Links
  • Social Bookmarking
  • Search
  • Authorship
  • Signals/Syndication
  • Social Networking
  • Folksonomies

And maybe that’s all there is to Enterprise 2.0 from a technology perspective. I suppose we could also talk about prediction markets and knowledge markets adding those to the mix. But I think we’ve exhausted all of the technical possibilities.

So I ask, is Enterprise 2.0 stagnating? What I mean is, is there anything else that needs to be thought out and developed, or is it time to simply start doing it?

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Tagged With enterprise 2.0, adoption

7 Responses to “Is Enterprise 2.0 Stagnating?”

  1. Michael Loke Says:
    January 17th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    From the outset, it does look like the technology space is stagnating.

    I think what the next major drive is to see adoption of these technologies in the enterprises, and the socio economic outcome of the companies for adopting these technologies will be interesting to watch at least.

  2. Barry Tallis Says:
    January 18th, 2008 at 9:13 am

    I agree with Michael in regards to the next major drive is adoption. The initial hump in the hype cycle is over and now its where the rubber meets the road. I have been working with a number of companies who are starting to roll out Enterprise 2.0 technologies and are already seeing benefits from the technology.

  3. Simon Carswell Says:
    January 20th, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    Jeremy,
    Personally, I think the rise to prominence of social networking is a negative in the overall Enterprise 2.0 space. It obscures the ’small pieces, loosely joined’ and ‘emergence’ aspects of the blogs-wikis-RSS-folksonomy-social-bookmarking side of the equation, and invites too much easy sniping from the more conservative corporate types who equate social networking with ‘poking’ people on Facebook. That’s not to say that social networking doesn’t have a place in corporations. It just needs to be positioned differently in a corporate, as opposed to public/consumer, context.

  4. Yonni Harif Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am

    Jeremy, I agree that the hype cycle seems to be fizzling out. Now the real business drivers to adoption will determine to what extent Enterprise 2.0 tools are incorporated into the workplace, on a technology level and culture-wise.

    Social networks are a big part of this, as we have seen with the feedback we got on WorkBook. These tools are already present at the workplace and should be leverage for business benefits, but I agree with Simon - it would be a mistake to ignore the other components of Enterprise 2.0.

    Another item that you can add to the list is - Web 2.0 access and control of enterprise applications. This goes beyond collaboration and networking, and relates to the fundamental output of employees.

  5. Jeremy Thomas Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    @Simon I agree with what you’re saying regarding how Facebook hype can be damaging. It does distract the would-be corporate implementer from some of the more promising technologies that you outlined. It would be nice to see an enterprise social network receive some of the hype Facebook is getting to raise awareness that social networks can indeed be made business-worthy.

    @Yonni - legacy systems definitely need to be included in any E2.0 solution. While they may not be “emergent”, they do nonetheless contain valuable information that, when made discoverable through things like SOA-enablement, can increase efficiency and output as you say.

  6. Daniel Siddle Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 2:10 am

    I think, like others have said, that we’ve all talked a lot about E2 but not actually got much done. I think the relative silence is just because people are getting their heads down and getting on with delivering what people want.

  7. Kishore Balakrishnan Says:
    January 26th, 2008 at 2:37 am

    The link behind SLATES http://adamkcarson.files.wordpress.com/…/enterprise_20_-_the_dawn_of_emergent_collaboration_by_andrew_mcafee.pdf points to “File Not Found” !

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