Collaborative Structured Databases (or Social Cataloguing)
The team behind GroupSwim are asking if collaborative structured databases are an opportunity for business:
We believe this the principle of a collaborative data source is a very powerful extension to the corporate wiki and will enable very effective collaboration among organization and individuals. It harnesses not only the collective knowledge within an organization, but also enables the organization to leverage knowledge outside the organization itself.
I think this is an area which has largely been ignored by most social software commentators, yet it is very easy to demonstrate clear, practical examples to business. I left the following comment:
Yes, they [collaborative structured databases] are [an opportunity for business]. I have used them in the past for capturing and organizing ideas, but there is clearly a bigger opportunity. In my book, I call them Social Cataloguing tools and consider them to be more cooperative than collaborative due to the fact that they support informal working where there are no pre-defined goals.
In the enterprise, social cataloguing has endless possibilities. Any type of corporate data - competitor intelligence, suppliers, contact data, etc. - could be handed over to employees for collective management rather than central administration.
I think the biggest barrier is that in large organizations there are people employed specifically to do this job. Managers are therefore reluctant to risk reductions to their headcounts (and power bases) by replacing them with software that allows everyone to do the task and thus intermediate those people.
