Social Glass

I spoke with a prospective client about Enterprise 2.0 the other day. I started with the origin - how Web 2.0 came to be, the core philosophies of Web 2.0, then how those philosophies can be applied behind the firewall. The audience was mid-level management, and I should have realized earlier in the presentation, but a lot of them had never heard the term “Web 2.0″ before, nor had they ever visited wikipedia.org or indulged in MySpace or SecondLife. So I had to spend a lot of time educating them on what these sites do so that I could link the relevant characteristics of these and other sites to the business value of Web 2.0 later on in the presentation.

The question that ran through my mind during this process was “is it worth it?”. Is it worth spending the time to educate these 40 somethings on E2.0 when it’s supposed to happen organically, from the bottom-up anyway? In our inner circle we read posts like Euan Semple’s, dare I say, notorious suggestion that management do nothing and Enterprise 2.0 will happen. I agree with a lot of the points from this argument and am a believer that generation “Y” is going to catalyze Enterprise 2.0 adoption.

Despite all of that, it is worth it. I found that after the meeting, having taken the time to properly explain the value proposition and site examples of Enterprise 2.0 adoption (nobody wants to be the first for some reason), even my once oblivious audience, rational as they were, wanted to hear more and continue the exploration.

The bottom line is businesses want to innovate, they want to compete, and if we successfully relate the business value of Enterprise 2.0 to business people they will implement it.