Thursday, October 05, 2006
What Goes Around, Comes Around
As I talk to people working in and around the Enterprise 2.0 space, I am struck by how "the more things change, the more they stay the same." The collaboration aspects of E2.0 are getting a lot of play - basically, wikis and blogs being used to let people communicate better within the organization. While I do not belittle these new technologies and the possibilities they offer, business was, is, and will always be about providing a product or service to customers with the "best" price/value. Providing that product or service in the most efficient way possible has always been a challenge. With the increasing deluge of information that people have to deal with (customers, suppliers, inventory, service records, etc.), this is becoming more and more complicated, particulary with the shift towards information-intensive service industries. It seems to me that the real challenge of Enterprise 2.0 is providing a user experience to employees and clients that makes them more efficient in their jobs, not only more efficient at communicating with their peers.
In my opinion, one of the people who gets "it," is Bill Raduchel, former CTO for AOL/Time Warner and CIO at Sun, who recently spoke at the Longworth Ventures Annual Conference. According to Innovation Creators , Raduchel identified "navigation" (and not "collaboration") as the killer app for Enterprise 2.0. If that means connecting knowledge workers with the information they need to do their jobs, then I think Raduchel is on to something. More on this later.
As I talk to people working in and around the Enterprise 2.0 space, I am struck by how "the more things change, the more they stay the same." The collaboration aspects of E2.0 are getting a lot of play - basically, wikis and blogs being used to let people communicate better within the organization. While I do not belittle these new technologies and the possibilities they offer, business was, is, and will always be about providing a product or service to customers with the "best" price/value. Providing that product or service in the most efficient way possible has always been a challenge. With the increasing deluge of information that people have to deal with (customers, suppliers, inventory, service records, etc.), this is becoming more and more complicated, particulary with the shift towards information-intensive service industries. It seems to me that the real challenge of Enterprise 2.0 is providing a user experience to employees and clients that makes them more efficient in their jobs, not only more efficient at communicating with their peers.
In my opinion, one of the people who gets "it," is Bill Raduchel, former CTO for AOL/Time Warner and CIO at Sun, who recently spoke at the Longworth Ventures Annual Conference. According to Innovation Creators , Raduchel identified "navigation" (and not "collaboration") as the killer app for Enterprise 2.0. If that means connecting knowledge workers with the information they need to do their jobs, then I think Raduchel is on to something. More on this later.
