Can Enterprise 2.0 help companies innovate?

Two weeks ago, I made a presentation in Paris on how I see the role of Enterprise 2.0 and its influence on innovation. From the beginning, I have decided not to speak about Technologies but more on the factors that could really influence innovation inside a company.

 

The term innovation means a new way of doing something . Davila et al (2006) wrote :

“Companies cannot grow through cost reduction and reengineering alone… Innovation is the key element in providing aggressive top-line growth , and for increasing bottom-line results”

Two major factors influencing Innovation are leadership and communication. The first factor was not the topic of my presentation and most companies have a strong leadership on innovation ( at least I hope for them).

What is the status of  communication among people inside an enterprise mostly dispersed worldwide ? James Thomas Allen published a book  “Managing the flow of technology” (MIT Press, 1984) where he showed how critical it is to have communication on  technological information in an R&D organization. Recently, he co-authored a new book which  investigates the relationship between space and Innovation. He wrote

"We do not keep separate sets of people, some of which we communicate in one medium and some by another. The more often we see someone face-to-face, the more likely it is that we will telephone the person or communicate in some other medium."

"In the realm of communication for inspiration … visual contact is probably the most important. If people do not see each other, they will not have the opportunity to interact and create that knowledge."

In the same book, Allen expressed his skepticism on the efficiency  of distributed R&D centers since for him even videoconferencing  can not replace effectively a face to face meeting (and I agree with him!). I was making a slide showing the exponential decrease of the frequency of communication Vs distance between the engineers (known as “Allen curve”)  when I realized that the cultural factor could be also important in a distributed engineering environment. I then made  further researches  and found one white paper I have read last year on virtual distance “ Making Virtual Distance Work in the Digital Age” (IIP, December 2007)

In this study, the virtual distance is showed as the sum of the physical distance, the operational distance and the affinity distance. The higher virtual distance is between 2 people the less they will communicate (and therefore innovate).

11 factors influence this virtual distance and this graph shows that the affinity distance has the major impact on virtual distance.

Those distances can however have a benefic impact on innovation since they increase the diversity of ideas like demonstrated by Mark Granovetter in his theory “the strength of weak ties”  (1973).

In the following graph, I have tried to represent the impact of the distance between engineers (to be understood as “virtual distance”) Vs the frequency of Communication. We do not have to prove that the more engineers communicate, the more they innovate which gives you the green line in my graph.

If we understand Enterprise 2.0 as a new social vision of the enterprise and not only as a new technological support, we can imagine it will leverage the curve in the preceding graph and clearly increase the innovation.

My belief is that implementing Enterprise 2.0 should first mean  forcing companies to identify their internal communication problems.  It is clear that most  companies have a distributed network and that it will be inconceivable to regroup them in one physical place. So, start by implementing "Respect 2.0" in your company and do not expect Technology to help you resolve those communication problems since human beings can not be changed by computer technologies (at least not in the world as we know it today).

 

2 green bookmarklets

I am not surprised to see people around me not knowing what a bookmarklet is. A Bookmarklet is a Web site bookmark that includes processing (javascript).

If you spend  time making research on the web, there are 2 bookmarklets that you should definitely install :

• Printwhatyoulike : enables you to print more ecologically blog posts or web pages on the web
• Readability : enables you to read clearly a Post in a blog without having to print it.

 

XIN FU – The martial art of emailing: Step1 Clean your pond.

Last year, I have reached a state of email bankruptcy which could be the origin of a certain anxiety for some. The number of emails and information I received was growing and will still grow this year, it was high time for me to reconsider the way I was handling them in order to get my head out of the inbox.

Today, the number of emails I received (everyday) has not decreased and I have finally realized that there are no such word as email overload or information overload, it’s just the way you control or not  those flows which might generate an overflow.

Having learnt martial art since my childhood, I have decided to apply the same philosophy to my emails. I was maybe already doing it but it was more in a Kung fu way that in a Tai Chi style. Every art has a name and thanks to my friend Xiaoli I will call this method "Xin Fu" ( 信 夫 : ”the skill of letters”). Xin fu is not the ultimate truth since I am still elaborating it but I propose to share this art of emailing.

If one imagines that an inbox is a pond and that all the emails represent thoughts, a free inbox would reflect a tranquility of no thought. A serene state of mind would deliver an inexhaustible power created by this tranquil pond (empty inbox) because it is free and open to everything (Yin)

Your quest for a serene state of mind (Zero thought- Zero email) will start by cleaning your pond of any existing remaining thoughts (emails)

Here are some steps to start cleaning your pond:

Stop bad sources that make your pond flowing off.

In Martial arts, repeating the same movements every day makes you progress. but when this gesture does not improve your skill or is done in the wrong state of mind, you should stop doing it. The same applies to emails that are systematically deleted every day.  Why are you spoiling your energy ?

• Create a temp folder named “to filter from my pond”
• Over a week, instead of deleting all the newsletters or reports you do not need every morning, you will place them into this folder (we will see on my next post how to deal with them )

Clean your Pond

A pond can be polluted in many ways, but the worst pollution is algae which decrease oxygen in water and multiply rapidly when they have dirt to eat. We will learn how to prevent algae from growing in your pond but first we need to clean the waste that feed them.

• Search (Ctrl + Shift +F) for big files that are polluting your emails and delete  or archive them.

Do not try to organize your emails  or making rules at this time, just clean your pond. This process is slow but like Confucius said “it does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop”

In my next post, we will see how to start controlling the flows and start the basic movement of Xìn Fu.

 

R.I.P. Enterprise RSS : Are you so sure ?

I came to read an article named  “R.I.P. Enterprise RSS” during breakfast this morning and I was really surprised to see such an article on enterprise RSS. First I must say that enterprise RSS like all the others called “web 2.0” technologies are just nascent inside enterprises and that having this kind of quick conclusion seems to me a little bit premature.

Before implementing enterprise RSS, companies will have to deeply modify their information structure already in place for years, changing existing and proven technologies  by nascent and “unproved” (not yet validated) technologies will be a long process in some industries. Implementing an enterprise RSS is not only installing a software but a majority of the work will be to start classifying the information still  lying on unstructured drawers like file shares.  Once those classifications are in place, then the enterprise RSS will be able to aggregate information from different existing sources ( and not only from new sources). Before getting a real ROI on enterprise RSS, you need to generate new information exchange and workflow inside the company.

How many enterprises still have most of their information stored on file share or in public folders ?  Enterprise RSS have to be seen as a new communication (information) channel and we should first kick out file shares and old communication channels before saying that Enterprise RSS is  born dead. It is our responsibility to be evangelists for those nascent technologies inside the enterprise since even on the Web RSS feeds are often not used for what it are really worth (see my post “RSS: a tool for only 11 % of web users ?” )

As said in this article “Neglecting RSS at work seems to us like pure insanity”  and Mr. Marshall Kirkpatrick should have named his post “ R.I.P. Enterprise which are not implementing RSS” since today Enterprises who wish to remain competitive will have to focus their strategy on information workflows.

 

Google Warns of Privacy Issues on the Social Web – ReadWriteWeb

For those who did not read my last post concerning Privacy on the web, I suggest to read this paper from Google ( and I am not a Google fan )
 Google Warns of Privacy Issues on the Social Web – ReadWriteWeb.

 

A conversation with Léo Apotheker and Andrew Mcafee

 

Privacy on the Web ? The risk of social network.

Private data is always a controversial  subject inside an enterprise and especially if this enterprise is spread around the world where the policy on this subject may vary a lot from country to country. I am then always surprised to see how people innocently give their data on the web without reading clearly between the lines.

Do you have a facebook account ? how did you setup your privacy settings ? If you answer yes to my first question and ask yourself what the hell  you did  with the security settings then continue to read this article.

First of all, work is work and friendship is friendship so please create friend lists in facebook to separate your colleagues from your friends. Every time you accept a connection to somebody, add this person inside a group (called a friend list in facebook).

Then, go to settings and select "privacy settings"

You will see that facebook provides you with some ways to protect your privacy. A good start for you will be to set up the security on your profile and define then who can see your profile and personal information. In this area, you will be able to set the security and refine it by friends list. For example, you can say that "photos tagged of you"  can be seen only by friends ( facebook friends) and not by your work colleagues ( see snapshot bellow)

This is of course just an example but I suggest you take 10 minutes of your time to set up those settings and define appropriate friends list.

If you are using other social network than facebook, make sure that these kinds of settings that can be defined.

If you need more info about  the risk on social networks just you to read this file here

You feel better now ?

yes ? Do not forget that there is no privacy on the web and especially on Social Network. you have just filtered some info but all your private data are still controlled by one corporate entity.

There is however some prototypes on social networking which will ensure privacy like Jan Torben Heuer tends to prove  inside this article with his project Diki. While waiting for those solutions, think twice before publishing something in your social network.

 

T N T — The Network Thinker: So many people, So little time

While Painting my walls this afternoon, I was thinking about Twitter and how people could really follow efficiently more than 200 people .
I wanted to start a post on that but  TNT ( The Network Thinker) already published somethink similar to what I wanted to discuss about and the graphical representation are to be seen.

Visit the post here:

T N T — The Network Thinker: So many people, So little time.

 

Ten tiny IT Things I wish people will do in 2009

1. Do not forget that Social network contains the word “Social“
2. Stop speaking of web 2.0, web 3.0 without knowing what it means. These terms are just good for marketers.
3. Do not only use the technology but teach it to other people. Do not only watch but act.
4. Share -> The more you give the more you get.
5. Promote technologies in which you really believe and not only to be “fashion” or to earn money. Before promoting a new software, take some time to test it and see if it’s really innovative.
6. Do not forget to donate when you feel the technology provided deserves it. Think about the people who spend time developing the software you are using everyday. Wikipedia will be one of the sources for the semantic web (dbpedia) and needs you to donate in order to stay free ( in all the sense).
7. Do not think that technologies emerging and working on the web side can work inside Enterprises like marketers want you to believe it.
8. Think twice before printing a document or an email. New technologies are green if you use them in such a way.
9. Organise your information workflow in order to  avoid information overflow.
10. And finally, before writing an email, take 5 sec to see if it’s really needed, 5 sec to see if another tool could not be more efficient and if you really opt for an email 10 sec to define a correct subject !

 

Have you Evernote ?

 

Over the past months I have tried to take more notes electronically not only to reduce my paper consumption but also to organise them centrally. For the past 3 years, I have been a devoted user of Microsoft Office Onenote and  I am really happy with the way it helps me organising my notes (private and professional) in different notebooks using different categories. But even if Onenote 2007 is still the best Notetaking system I have come across, the fact that I am limited to one computer to take notes is really not convenient. How many times was I with my tablet PC (without Onenote) and wanted to take note of an important quote or sentence found on a web site, my workaround was then to send an email to myself with the notes and then going back to my laptop where Onenote was installed in order to copy paste the notes in question. Then comes my iPhone (my best buy in 2008) where I can take voice notes and written notes anytime anywhere but the problem that occurred to me was again that I could not centralise and tag all this information in one unique application. 

After some research and recommendations, I have finally selected Evernote for my private notes. Evernote enables you to capture information on different platforms and makes it available at any time anywhere. It actually means that I can start a list (or a note) during my breakfast from the Evernote client application,  complete this list with a voice note through my iPhone (Evernote for iPhone) in the car and review it during my lunch time at work (Evernote Web site). If this list is for example a shopping list, all the modifications you have made (offline or online) are synchronised to your iPhone or to your Mobile Phone (they also have a version for mobile phones). Just remember how many times you have been in a shop and all you could remember was that your shopping list was lying on the kitchen table .

Of course, I do not only use Evernote for my shopping list but my main usage is to centralise my ideas and the notes I take during my researches.  Since I have a broad scope of research, the tagging system  enables me to categorise my notes (already divided in different notebooks). The Evernote bookmarklet directly clips info from a web site into one of your notebooks. I hope that one day, they will enable me to share my notes in a collaborative way but this was not part of my selection criteria ( I have other tools for that purpose).

For my professional notes (limited to one computer), Microsoft Office Onenote remains my favourite tool but I took the step to Evernote for my private researches and notes and I invite you to discover Evernote and its benefits on the following Web site : http://www.evernote.com/