(SAN JOSE, CA) “Digital work became more social… but work has always been social,” says Thomas Vander Wal, InfoCloud Solutions, addressing the KM World 2009 conference. “Businesses by nature are social – you need to have people in your org talking to each other.”

Drivers of social media and enterprise 2.0 include:

• Office productivity tools are not efficient for collaboration.
• Social tools augment face-to-face.
• Volume of information has grown
• Gaps in enterprise tools, CMS, and other traditional work tools
• Individuals are making a difference
• Ease of sharing & connecting with others
• Easier knowledge capture

“All of this is similar to e-mail in the 1990s. It was a strange new way of thinking… and now we’re using social tools and saying the same things that we did about email.”

“Social software creates a lot of information – many layers of information. We need tools to understand this information and structure for understanding.”

1–9–90 rule (Charlene Li) helps understand the ‘who’ in social media: 1% creates the information; 9% curates it; 90% merely are consumers of the information.

SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE INTRANET

“We’re looking at our intranet and it’s an utter mess. Something is really broken here,” says Thomas, emulating a typical intranet client. “Social media helps fill in some of the gaps in the enterprise tools (example: BBC intranet: 115% wiki use in 7 years)”

When comparing Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 Vander Wal has a clever analogy: Web 2.0 is like tunneling through a mountain (it’s tough to sort out the context in the mass of information, and problems are merely small cracks in a large mass); Enterprise 2.0 is like tunneling under water (it’s easier to get started, but problems quickly become massive problems). “Web 2.0 is about numbers of users, Enterprise 2.0 is about % of users (% of employees using social media).”

We need to encourage social comfort for employees:

• Comfort with others (people to interact & share with)
• Comfort with tools
• Comfort with subject matter

“It’s been said that walled gardens are bad for the enterprise, but they give comfort to employees,” says Vander Wal, citing Andrew McAfee’s opening keynote at KM World 2009. “What we really want are comfortable walled gardens with permeable walls.”

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Follow Thomas on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/VanderWal

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(SAN JOSE, CA) “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals,” says the man who coined the phrase, Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist, Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management; Author, Enterprise 2.0.

“A key word is emergent… we’ve always been good at imposing things on people,” adds McAfee, who was addressing the KM World 2009 conference in San Jose. “What we’re now doing is not dictating what people need to do… but instead throwing out a technology blank slate, and letting people fill it in.”

Key ingredients for Enterprise 2.0 success:

• Altruism: People want to help (stop obsessing about risks)
• Process: Beware of the ‘one best way’ (use tools that let structure appear)
• Innovation: Expertise is emergent (build communities that people want to join)
• Intelligence: Crowds can be very wise (experiment with collective intelligence)
• Benefits: Real, measurable benefits (increased innovation, employee satisfaction)
• Impact: Sitting this one out is a bad idea (look at technology with fresh eyes

“I think it’s (Enterprise 2.0)  as big a leap forward in the 90s as enterprise-level technology (e.g. ERP),” stresses McAfee. “We’re not going back to business as usual.”

However, McAfee emphasized that failure is common and that it is, in fact, easy to ‘snatch’ defeat from the ‘jaws of victory’ by not avoiding some common barriers:

• Declare war on the enterprise (“Its bad marketing to management.”)
• Allow walled gardens to flourish (silos kill)
• Accentuating the negative (spend less time on the risks)
• Try to replace email
• Fall in love with features (we don’t want more, keep it simple)
• Overuse the word “social”

McAfee concluded his keynote address to KM World 2009 with the following quote from futurist Norbert Weiner in 1954: “The world of the future will be an even more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.”

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(SAN JOSE, CA) While an innovative intranet may be cool, and look great, a truly innovative intranet delivers true value and advances an organization's standing in its industry.

The Intranet Innovations 2009 report celebrates the winners of the 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards, produced by Step Two Designs, sharing remarkable ideas from across the globe.

Intranet Innovation Award winner, SabreTown (Sabre's social networking for employees)

Winning entries include intranets from all over the World including:

• CRS Australia (Australia)

• IDEO (USA), IBM (USA)

• SunGard (USA/NZ)

• NYK Group (UK)

• Sabre (USA)

• COWI (Denmark)

• ChTPZ (Russia)

• Prophet (USA)

• AEP (USA).

The Intranet Innovations Awards celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the enhancement and delivery of intranets.Now in their third year, the awards have uncovered many innovative ideas from across the globe. Use these ideas to gain senior management support and to deliver an ever-better intranet.

For example, AEP, a US-based electric utility have created an online ideas system that has identified $8 million in savings, $2 million in the first month alone.

With winners across four categories (core functionality, communication and collaboration, frontline delivery and business solutions), there are valuable ideas for every intranet team.

The 198-page Intranet Innovations 2009 report shares the full results of the awards, including screenshots and details of the winning entries.

For more information:

• Winners at a glance

• Table of contents

• Reviews & feedback

• Global supporters

• Licence conditions

• Previous year’s winners

• Enter the 2010 awards

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The breakdown of specific types of social media on intranets include:

• 47% have wikis (10% have no plans or interest)
• 45% have blogs (11% have no plans or interest)
• 46% have discussion forums (9% have no plans or interest)
• 37% have RSS (12% have no plans or interest)
• 23% have podcasts (30% have no plans or interest)
• 9% have social networking (20% with no plans or interest)

I am not sure which is better the high numbers who have already adopted or the low numbers with no plans or interests. The study concluded that an organization without Intranet 2.0 tools, or plans to use them, risks being out-flanked by their competition.

Read Bill Ives' complete column from (New Study Finds Social Media Becoming Mainstream on Corporate Intranet)

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Employee engagement is the top priority and the organizational coup de grace for many HR practitioners in both the private and public sectors. However, corporate communications plays one of the most important catalytic roles in determining employee engagement, and the intranet is increasingly the most important catalyst in heightening engagement levels, which in-turn improves HR metrics such as employee recruitment and retention (even customer service).

Read my full article Intranet 2.0 Increases Employee Engagement (Insidedge newsletter)

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According to the results of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey (561 organizations of all sizes from across the planet), 46% of those with 2.0 tools have spent nothing or very little on the solution:

• 46% have spent $10,000 or less

• 35% have spent between $10,000 and $100,00; 19% have spent $100,000 or more

It should probably come as no surprise then that satisfaction levels with 2.0 tools is also quite low:

• Satisfaction rates with executives is dangerously poor: 38% of executives rate the 2.0 tools as poor or very poor; a lowly 23% rate them as good or very good

• Employee satisfaction is almost poor: 35% of organizations say employee satisfaction with the 2.0 tools is poor or very poor; only 27% rate the tools as good or very good

• Only 29% of organizations rate the tool functionality as good or very good; 24% rate them as poor or very poor

In short, organizations are spending very little on their 2.0 initiatives, and the satisfaction levels are correspondingly low. Investment doesn't necessarily deliver satisfaction, but a look into the technologies used reveals some further insight. The vast majority of organizations with 2.0 tools use free, open source solutions or those bundled with a platform solution like SharePoint:

• 48% of organizations use SharePoint

• 20% of organizations use Facebook

• 17% of organizations use MediaWiki

• 16% of organizations use WordPress

There isn't a single, dedicated 2.0 licensed solution used by more than 13% of organizations. The vast majority use free, open source with the exception of SharePoint which sports 2.0 tools that leave very little to be desired (although the social media components in SharePoint 2010 are supposed to be spectacular, and represent a heavy portion of the investment in the SharePoint upgrade).

Two lessons are worth noting:

ALSO READ:

Intranet 2.0 Becomes Mandatory

THE INTRANET 2.0 GLOBAL SURVEY:

The findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey are highlighted in the report "Intranet 2.0: social media becomes mainstream on the corporate intranet."

To download a free, summarized version of the Intranet 2.0 report please visit:

http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/download-summary-report-of-intranet-2-0-global-survey

To purchase the full, 44-page Intranet 2.0 report of analysis & recommendations please visit: http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/purchase-intranet-2-0-global-survey-report

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