Enterprise 2.0: How a Connected Workforce Innovates
Enterprise 2.0 tools—wikis, tags, Twitter and other microblogs, Google-style searches, and the like—are transforming companies’ innovation processes, according to Andrew P. McAfee, a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the author of the forthcoming book Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges (Harvard Business Press, 2009). McAfee explains why in a recent conversation with HBR senior editor Anand P. Raman.
How do the new social technologies transform innovation efforts?
Companies have traditionally been very specific about who’s going to do the innovating: their designers, engineers, scientists…Those people have the credentials—the right combination of education, experience, success, failure, and so on. More recently, companies have allowed major users of their products to participate in the product-development process.
Some companies now say: Why stop at lead users? Why not let everyone take a crack at helping us develop a new product, improve an existing one, or solve a vexing problem? They no longer specify who can participate in the innovation process; they welcome all comers. Enterprise 2.0 tools are designed to help with these more open innovation processes. In fact, most new types of innovation, such as open innovation and crowdsourcing, are based on these technologies.
Procter & Gamble, which has embraced the open-innovation philosophy, does some smart things on its Connect + Develop website. P&G doesn’t only publicize what it knows and what it can do; it also highlights what it needs. That’s radical; big companies don’t usually display their ignorance. In addition, the company doesn’t restrict itself to product development; it’s looking for new ideas in everything from trademarks, packaging, and marketing models to engineering, business services, and design. Finally, P&G invites everybody to submit ideas—not just prequalified partners. It recently bought the technology for an antimicrobial product from an unknown company that submitted a proposal through the website.
Does the use of Enterprise 2.0 technologies yield better ideas? Won’t a company simply drown in bad ideas?
Keep two things in mind. One, there’s no guarantee that your next innovation challenge is going to look anything like your last one. It might require a fresh perspective or skills that your existing innovators don’t possess. A company that uses Enterprise 2.0 technologies can publicize the challenge widely and collect responses from many people. Two, the community that forms around the challenge can help sift the ideas. People suggest improvements and vote on one another’s ideas, so the best ones eventually rise to the top.
Because of Enterprise 2.0 technologies, good content becomes apparent over time. A good idea isn’t always obvious. For example, Gwabs is a game that lets characters fight one another using the elements on a computer desktop, such as toolbars and icons. It came out of a crowdsourcing start-up, Cambrian House, which solicited ideas from a large community and let them vote. It then had the top vote getters face off in a tournament. The company’s executives thought Gwabs was a pretty dumb idea, but it won the tournament. In fact, investors are now funding the game’s development.
Enterprise 2.0: Marketplace 2009
via SocialComputingJournal.com
Latest analysis of the Enterprise 2.0 marketplace for 2009 with over 70 social computing platforms evaluated.
The term Enterprise 2.0 itself is used to describe “emergent, freeform, social” collaboration tools in the workplace. In their simplest form that means blogs, wikis, and social networks and we’re seeing wide adoption of these types of tools in the workplace this year. In fact, nearly half of large companies around the world have these tools in one form or another.
The challenge is that because it’s such an interesting space both in the consumer world and the enterprise, that means there are lots of players including commercial products, SaaS (hosted online), and open source. Sorting them out and figuring out which ones are strong contenders is hard work.
Read the full analysis of the Enterprise 2.0 Marketplace for 2009: Robust and Crowded. The Enterprise 2.0 Marketplace Map is below, you can also click on the visual to expand it to full size. You can get a list of the companies and their segment ranking here.
Click To Enlarge
The visual is broken down into two primary: incumbent enterprise players that are frequently taking their CMS, DMS, and ECM systems and adding Web 2.0 features such as tagging, blogs, wikis, and user profiles, or Web startups and open source-based firms that have built Enterprise 2.0 apps from the ground up.
There’s a third category that represents the Enterprise 2.0 “Sweet Spot”. Only a few products reached this critical space (marked in green in the upper right) because they are both enterprise savvy and capable as well as had the right ingredients to enable Enterprise 2.0 and create vibrant internal collaborative communities.
Further Reading: The enterprise microblogging marketplace for mid-2009. The folks over at CMS Watch have created their own version of the enterprise social software map as well. You can read the details from Tony Byrne and I’ve included one of their key graphics below:
Social Media Sharing Trends 2009 – Cosa Condividiamo sui Social Network
via SocialTwist e Social Media Explorer
We’re starting to see an interesting by-product of cool social media tools emerge: Research pulled from user data. One such effort, a new study released by SocialTwist, makers of the content share widget Tell-A-Friend, reveals some interesting facts about how people share information online. You can see the report in its entirety on the SocialTwist website.
First, let’s set the expectations appropriately. The data behind the study is collected from anonymized user data for people who click on the Tell-A-Friend widget where it is used on blog posts, newspaper websites and more. That widget represented just below this paragraph, is similar in functionality to ShareThis, AddThis and others. While the design, functionality and placement of the widgets do skew the data in various ways, the widget has served almost two million billion (yeah … with a “b”) impressions to date, so there’s a lot of data there. The parts of the report that caught my eye included the following:
- People still share via email and instant messenger more than via social networks. An astounding 59% of all shares on the widget were done via email, 25% via instant messenger and just 14% were passed along on networks like Facebook and Twitter.
- Twitter, which has recently emerged as the share site du jour for those in the social media world, accounts for only one percent of all shares. Facebook is 11%. Yahoo mail is the highest individual share channel at 26%.
- Yahoo (44%) and MSN (25%) mail are way ahead of Gmail (19%) as the email provider used by Tell-A-Friend users.
- Facebook accounts for 79% of all shares via social networks. MySpace is second at 15%. Twitter is just 5% of all social network shares via the widget.
SocialTwist is the creator of the popular social media sharing widget Tell-a-Friend. SocialTwist takes the sharing experience to a whole new level and turns a simple sharing button into a powerful referral marketing tool. SocialTwist helps marketers position their products and services correctly in all visitor communication (shares). Ever since its launch in September 2008, Tell-a-Friend has emerged as a popular referral marketing and social media sharing tool for big brands like Intel, Bertelsmann Media, P&G etc. Today, SocialTwist enjoys a user base of 50,000+ websites and blogs using Tell-a-Friend.
SocialTwist’s Social Media Sharing Trends 2009 Report is based on the social media sharing behavioral analysis of recent 10 million referral messages sent using the Tell-a-Friend widget. The report provides details of the most preferred medium of social media sharing, the popular and emerging channels, and the social media trends to look out for in 2010.
Major Findings
- The top channels of sharing include, email, instant messenger, social networking sites
- Despite the social media revolution – traditional forms of networking like email and instant messaging continue to be the most popular mediums of sharing content across the Internet. Nearly 60 percent of overall sharing happens over emails.
- Since it opened itself to all age groups in September 2006, Facebook has displaced MySpace as the most popular social networking site especially when it comes to sharing content online.
- It is clear that Twitter is perceived to be a news broadcast platform and not a “sharing” platform. It enjoys only 5% of “shared information” traffic among popular social platforms.
- Bookmarks are rapidly losing their significance in the social media space. Only 2% of shares happen over Bookmarking sites.
- When it comes to email services, Yahoo Mail is still the most preferred, followed by MSN. Gmail is way behind.
- Google’s services like Google Bookmarking, Google Talk, Gmail, and Blogger have failed to replicate the brand’s search engine success online, especially when it comes to ’shared information.’
- LinkedIn, as a networking site, ranks the lowest when it comes to social media sharing.
Email is the most popular channel for sharing information
Most Used Social Media Channels
Analysis shows that the most popular channel for sharing content is email. Nearly 60 per cent use email to share content. However, fewer people like to manually type in email addresses. Just about 10 per cent of email shares had people typing email addresses.
Instant Messaging with 25% of total sharing was the next preferred medium followed by Social Networks with 14 percent.
Top 10 channels represent 97% of the total share.Twitter shares have risen 23X in the past one year
Most Popular Email channels for sharing
Of all the email services used, Yahoo Mail with 44 percent is the most used for sharing followed by MSN Mail with 25 percent. Gmail enjoys only third place with 19 percent.
Yahoo mail is the most popular service followed by MSN email
Most Popular IM channels for sharing
Yahoo Messenger is the most popular IM service among all others when it comes to sharing – it enjoys 49 percent of the total number of shares. MSN Messenger follows with 34 percent of shares. Here too Google comes at the third position with 15 percent of shares.
IM is the second most shared channelYahoo and MSN lead the pack
Most Popular Social Networking channels for sharing
When it comes to social networking sites Facebook is the clear winner with a whopping 79 percent people using it to share with their family, friends and acquaintances. MySpace follows with 15 percent of shares. Twitter enjoys a meager 5 percent of shares.
Facebook is the most popular amongst all social media channels
Most Popular Social bookmarking sites for sharing
Bookmarking sites seem to be losing out as a preferred channel for sharing when compared with other social media channels. In this space, Digg stands out as the most popular bookmarking site followed by Google Bookmarks and Delicious with 11 percent and 12 percent respectively.
2% of the total shares happen over bookmarks with Digg as the clear leader
Most Popular Blog channels for sharing
When it comes to blogging services, WordPress with 45 percent and Blogger with 42 percent are the most popular platforms for social media content sharing. The surprise element in this space is Typepad, which is never used.
WordPress and Blogger are the most popular blog channels
