Web 2.5: The Social Enterprise - Part I

A recent Harvard Business School case study of Wikipedia (an interesting read in itself - here's the epilogue ) has put the term "Enterprise 2.0" on the map. Essentially the concept of moving Web 2.0 to the Enterprise, it is the next logical step to - dare we say it - Web 2.5. Although Jakob Nielsen, the high priest of UI Design, hates the idea, it seems to be getting significant traction as the Next Big Thing (TM). There has been a spate of recent announcements of Web 2.0 products for the Enterprise, which have received strong coverage from top bloggers - for example, here are Guy Kawasaki on Coghead, Don Dodge on SocialPoint, Robert Scoble on ConnectBeam and Peter Rip on Teqlo.

The Social Enterprise
But what exactly is "Enterprise 2.0"? The main themes that are emerging, seem to be products/technologies that:

1. facilitate better communication
2. harness collective intelligence and innovation
3. enable user-generated applications (enterprise mashups !)

The communication aspects present the most powerful paradigm-shift; in my mind, I see the change as the following two pictures:

But is Social Enterprise an oxymoron? Stowe Boyd and Donna Bogatin point out the differences between group-first and me-first mindsets.

Of course, given that we're talking about the Enterprise (that's a capital "E"), deployment alone is not enough; adoption is the major stumbling block. The inimitable Fast Forward blog, which is completely focused on this topic of Enterprise 2.0, has many articles on this topic.

Finally, the Great Question for Enterprise 2.0: Should CEOs blog? Jack Welch's reply, when asked about this topic: above all, a CEO should focus on one authentic message for everyone, and then work hard to get it across everywhere.

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Comments

[clyopa]

Could you please give more comments on pictures? Not completely clear.

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[Jeremy]

The term social enterprise is already taken, and refers terminologically to a host of different structural business types, all of which are engaged in some kind of social mission. The field itself is young, and there is huge terminological ambiguity and disagreement already, so please, I beseech you, don't add to the confusion by coining social enterprise as a web 2.0 term as well. Thank-you.

[Carol Verret]

May I have your permission to quote you in an article that I am writing for a hospitality technology magazine? The article deals with the shift from 2.0 to 2.5 and how it impacts the hospitality comunity.

Thank you for your consideraton -- my blog is www.hotelsales.com.