Enterprise 2.0

Yesterday I introduced the 4Cs model for applying enterprise 2.0 in any business and outlined the elements that make up the first C - communication.

Today it’s the turn of the second, cooperation (or co-operation, if you prefer).

Day Two: Cooperation

With cooperation I am interested in social software that supports informal working where there are no pre-defined goals, where each contributor retains authority over their contribution, where information is shared as needed and where the software takes on the task of assembling data in order to show the combined picture.

This is in direct contrast to the third C, collaboration (which will be the subject of tomorrow’s post).

In Enterprise 2.0, I consider three social computing technologies that can enable cooperation in an enterprise setting.

Media sharing

Sharing photographs and videos is possibly one of the most popular uses of social software on the public internet, but you might be forgiven for wondering what their application in a business setting could be. Admittedly sharing photos may be a little unlikely in most organizations, but video sharing has great potential for informal learning and knowledge sharing situations (Google has been quoted as wanting to offer YouTube-type technology to its enterprise customers). And it doesn’t have to be limited to images and video - presentations and documents can be just as easily shared.

Fine, you might say, but we can already share documents on our intranet. That may well be true, but social media sharing requires more:

• Everyone should be able to create, publish and share, not just a select group of authors or editors;
• They should be able to tag what they share with any keyword;
• They should be able to extend the value of others’ contributions through tagging, voting and/or commenting;
• The system should extrapolate this information to identify patterns, relationships and common groupings of content and people;
• It should also provide multiple ways for employees to filter the information for themselves and for others;

Social bookmarking

In business, relatively little use has been made of social bookmarking tools even though they have applications in almost every corporate department, from research to product development and customer service to PR. In addition, being able to visualise the connections between employees and topics should benefit those with geographically dispersed and fragmented workforces.

Many knowledge management professionals baulk at the thought of employees using tags to generate the metadata on which their classification systems get based. But one of the major benefits this brings is the ability to locate expertise with the organization, by finding experts (or potential experts) based on the tags they use.

Social cataloguing

As with media sharing, just about any type of information can be subjected to the collective wisdom of the organization. Consumer-focused social cataloguing applications cover things such as academic citations, books, music, products and wireless networks. In the enterprise, it has endless possibilities.

Any type of corporate data - competitor intelligence, supplier recommendations or contact information - could be handed over to employees for collective management rather than relying on a single owner or administrator and outdated data collection techniques.

The biggest barrier to social cataloguing is managers reluctant to risk reducing their headcounts (and power bases) by replacing them with software that allows everyone to do the task and thus intermediate their reports.

Summary

Cooperative social software is very good at enabling interaction in organizations with informal cultures, but for more formal organization structures, collaborative social software may be more appropriate.

Tomorrow: Collaboration