Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges |  | Author: Andrew McAfee
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 55453
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 240
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Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 1422125874
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4038
EAN: 9781422125878
ASIN: 1422125874
Publication Date: November 16, 2009
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Product Description
"Web 2.0" is the portion of the Internet that's interactively produced by many people; it includes Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and prediction markets. In just a few years, Web 2.0 communities have demonstrated astonishing levels of innovation, knowledge accumulation, collaboration, and collective intelligence.
Now, leading organizations are bringing the Web's novel tools and philosophies inside, creating Enterprise 2.0. In this book, Andrew McAfee shows how they're doing this, and why it's benefiting them. Enterprise 2.0 makes clear that the new technologies are good for much more than just socializing-when properly applied, they help businesses solve pressing problems, capture dispersed and fast-changing knowledge, highlight and leverage expertise, generate and refine ideas, and harness the wisdom of crowds.
Most organizations, however, don't find it easy or natural to use these new tools initially. And executives see many possible pitfalls associated with them. Enterprise 2.0 explores these concerns, and shows how business leaders can overcome them.
McAfee brings together case studies and examples with key concepts from economics, sociology, computer science, consumer psychology, and management studies and presents them all in a clear, accessible, and entertaining style. Enterprise 2.0 is a must-have resource for all C-suite executives seeking to make technology decisions that are simultaneously powerful, popular, and pragmatic.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
 Worth it even if you're already an Enterprise 2.0 believer November 15, 2009
Bryce Williams (Indianapolis, IN USA)
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
I was a little concerned when I started reading the book, being that I am a self-proclaimed Enterprise 2.0 "convert", that it may feel a bit like "preaching to the choir." But in reading Part 1, even though some pages are spent on introducing concepts and benefits with which I am already familiar, reading the book has been time well spent. And here's why:
- Andy uses 4 real world case studies that demonstrate how Enterprise 2.0 collaboration methods can be valuable, and if you are involved with trying to drive adoption of similar tools within your organization, these case studies are great examples to recall. Also, the examples of the US government looking to open collaboration capabilities in response to some communication failures that led to 9/11 make for great reading.
- While understanding how various 2.0 style tools work and how organizations have leveraged those tools in the past is important, having the ability to analyze existing organizational inefficiencies and identify effective collaboration methods/tools to aid those problems is where you can separate yourself. Andy provides a well thought out mapping between relationships within professional networks (Strong Ties, Weak Ties, Potential Ties and No Ties) and how Enterprise 2.0 methods/tools can be applied to build/strengthen those ties in ways that can positively impact an organization's issues. So instead of blindly throwing a wiki at a business problem, for example, you'll have the background to identify other potential tools that may be a better fit to help a specific business problem.
- While reading, I thought to myself on multiple occasions, "That's exactly what I have been trying to tell people, but now I have examples, human behavioral studies as evidence and a credible resource as another weapon in telling my story." If you have responsibility for driving adoption of 2.0 tools, trying to make a business case, or approving the business case for evolving an Enterprise 2.0 agenda, this book will be very helpful for you.
I couldn't put the book down getting through Part 1, and I am anxious to complete Part 2 having read that it is even more valuable for Enterprise 2.0 practitioners than Part 1.
A "Groundswell"-like introduction to an important business topic November 23, 2009
John Caddell (Camp Hill, PA USA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1UV7K56XU56B A 6-minute video review of Andrew McAfee's book "Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools For Your Organization's Toughest Challenges." Covers book's theme, the SLATES acronym, the use of different E2.0 tools for different types of ties between colleagues, McAfee's cautions, and Model1/2 behaviors and how they connect with E2.0 platforms.
TRANSCRIPT:
I'm John Caddell from Caddell Insight Group [...].
We're here today to talk about "Enterprise 2.0" by Andrew McAfee. He is with MIT, used to be at Harvard Business School. Just switched over a couple of months ago. He writes an excellent blog on IT and business, that I'd recommend you read if you haven't come across it yet. And so, he's just produced his first book. To explain the title, Enterprise 2.0 is a term he coined to refer to using web 2.0 tools like Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and similar tools in a business context.
The book is a lot like a recent book, "Groundswell," that explained to general business people how social tools affected customers and markets and how to use those to communicate and listen. Communicating from inside the business to outside. "Enterprise 2.0" performs a similar task, focusing on using those tools inside the business, more for collaboration and tapping the collective intelligence of employees. And so it takes this marginal topic and moves it to a general management-type discussion. Which I think is really important, to get it out of the IT discussion into the management discussion.
So as part of that objective he does a really good job of explaining how these tools work and also what ties them together because if you think about tools like Flickr or YouTube or a blogging platform or a messaging platform or a wiki there are a lot of differences among those but he's tied together the common threads, using an acronym called SLATES (search, links, authoring, tags, extensions and signals). Signals, for example, like RSS that allows people who follow these platforms without having to log on to them every single hour to see what's changed.
Another important part of the book is in putting the different tools into a context in terms of how useful they'd be for different organizational problems. He uses a bullseye metaphor focused on the strength of ties between colleagues to explain that. At the center of the bullseye are strongly-tied colleagues meaning people who work together in the same department, in the same location, all the way out to the edge of the bullseye. meaning colleagues who have no relationship at all. Different tools apply at different levels of the bullseye. In the center, people with strong ties would use tools like wikis, or collaborative development tools, like Google Docs.
Midway out the bullseye are colleagues with weak ties. People who know each other but don't get together often, who don't talk often, but would like to keep apprised of each other's activities for the purposes of sharing knowledge, best practices, identifying solutions to problems, and so forth. For that ring of the bullseye, Facebook-like tools are very useful.
At the outer edge of the bullseye, where colleagues have no relationship other than that they work for the same company, a prediction market is a useful tool, that gathers people's guesses about the possibility of certain things happening like a certain sales volume being reached or likelihood an innovation will succeed in the marketplace and aggregating that information to get a better answer than any individual would come up with themselves.
He doesn't go overboard in terms of enthusiasm for how great these things are and how it'll change companies overnight, and he has a pretty clear-eyed view of how difficult it is going to be to bring these tools to wide use. It just takes a long time -and he dwells on that at some extent - how long it takes for revolutionary innovations to take hold, and he doesn't think this is any different, though he is optimistic that it'll happen eventually.
And finally in the book he talks about kind of different management models or practices that work well with these tools, and by contrast he talks about typical Model 1 behaviors which are more command-and-control type behaviors, self-protecting behaviors and less-collaborative behaviors, which don't go well with these new tools. To really utilize these new tools, people have to adopt what he calls Model 2 behaviors, which are collaborative, not so much focused on self-protection but looking out for the best interests of the company. Quite a different model than what most people have seen where they work. And I think that heaps underline the challenges in getting these systems adopted and in wide use.
It's an excellent book, very well-organized and well-written. It takes an important topic and brings it into the mainstream. I really enjoyed it and I think you will too.
If your company has an intranet, this book is for you. November 13, 2009
Gil Yehuda (Sharon, MA USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Which is easier: finding information on the Internet using Google or finding information in your corporate intranet? If you say that finding information on the Internet is easier then this book is for you. If you said the opposite, then you are probably lying (and I bet you are a salesman for an intranet search company too). It seems illogical that your intranet (which you pay good money to have) fails to perform nearly as well as the public Internet (which costs you nothing). Enterprise 2.0 by Andrew McAfee explains why corporate information sharing has failed to live up to our expectations - and more importantly what you can do about it. Read this book to learn what companies are doing that fundamentally changes the way they view their information, their intranets, and the teams of people who come to work every day to turn that information into business results.
Enterprise 2.0 is a book about the definition, motivation, challenges, and direction of a movement that many companies are taking to rethink the way information is created and shared within the corporate structure. The change in thinking is inspired by a change in the way we use computers in general. We once viewed our computers as a terminal connection, a publishing station, or a emailing device - the explosion of social networking behaviors in the personal lives of many are causing many businesses to consider the potential for harnessing analogous social behaviors (of documenting work activities, asking questions publicly, and reaching beyond to people you don't know well - but can trust by virtue of their reputation of connections to people you do know.) The discussion frequently references Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, and Delicious - but the topic of the book is squarely focused on business, not social activities.
The first half of the book is anchored by four very different case studies that each illustrates examples of where an organization had a business problem that could not be solved any other way than with an Enterprise 2.0 solution. Through the lens of these four cases (and a one other mentioned in less detail) McAfee explores the unique and compelling way Enterprise 2.0 can improve and indeed transform the workplace into a place of greater trust and access to information. McAfee gets into enough detail to be perfectly clear. But this is not a technical review the topic. This book is for a thinker who is willing to be challenged to think and be challenged.
It is primarily a management book that discusses IT-related topics from a non-IT perspective. But IT thought-leaders should read this too. The book directly addresses three audiences: The primary reader is any line manager, director, VP, or business leader who is involved in working with groups of people in large office environments. If your employees use computers at work to create and share information, you'll want to read this book. But there are two other reader-types that will get direct benefit too: Anyone involved in the Enterprise 2.0 industry (Chapter 6 in particular, also Chapter 7). And I think that any CEO, firm partner, or senior executive will benefit greatly from Chapter 8 (which I think should be Chapter 1 or 2 of McAfee's next book).
Andrew McAfee has the perspective and reach that few in our industry enjoy. The fact that he holds positions at Harvard Business School and at MIT indicates impressive credentials. This alone, not the reason I recommend this book. Rather it is the consistent manner in which McAfee provides one more level of insight than you might expect for everything he says. So even if you think you know a lot about this topic, you'll finish the book knowing much more. And yet, the book is targeting people who don't know what term "Enterprise 2.0" means.
[...]
Realistic and informative laydown November 14, 2009
Owen Lawlor (Boston, MA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Having just completed this book as well as having heard Andrew McAfee speak at the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco, I have to say that in person and in print Andrew pulls no punches in presenting a well thought out case for Enterprise 2.0 as well as laying down the critical issues surrounding and challenging a successful implementation of social collaboration technologies in any organization.
This technology area has been somewhat of a magnet for industry fueled hype and McAfee does a great job of cutting through the BS and getting down to the core business benefits and issues revolving around these new technologies and why understanding them is so important to driving future business competitiveness. McAfee has been very successful in this book defining and detailing not just this new wave of Web 2.0 technologies in the Enterprise, but also of articulating the organizational challenges and benefits of folding Enterprise 2.0 into any company through use of the many case studies.
Harnessing the power of these new collaboration technologies is critical for companies to stay ahead by leveraging the power of network effects of their employees, to attracting and retaining the next generation of smart younger employees and to benefiting in this next wave of internet innovation by harnessing and discovering the hidden power of your workforce in the areas of innovation, collaboration, and productivity.
This book is a realistic and practical resource for those executives looking to increase the transparency of their workforces, breaking down those organizations false Chinese walls, and enabling a bottom up workforce paradigm to flourish. IMO those companies that do not take the lessons and opportunities posed in this book to heart are doomed to a painful future. Ease your anxiety about these technologies, and read this book NOW. Highly Recommended not just for C suite execs but also general managers and anyone else with interest in this area.
McAfee and "Enterprise 2.0" March 8, 2010
John Gibbon (Oakland, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Andrew McAfee coined the term "Enterprise 2.0" and recently wrote a book with the same title. McAfee defines Enterprise 2.0 as the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuits of their goals.
He begins by saying that many of the problems of the early and largely unpopular computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) tools (such as groupware and knowledge management applications) were resolved with Web 2.0 technologies that:
-are free and easy platforms for communication and interaction (texting, email, IM, etc.)
-lack of imposed structure on workflow, decision rights, interdependencies, and information.
-have mechanisms to let structure emerge (search, tagging, etc.)
These led to new Emergent Social Software Platforms (ESSPs) such as YouTube and Facebook. ESSPs share technical features such as search, links, authoring, tagging, extensions, and signals (SLATES).
Knowledge workers can take advantage of ESSPs to help them interact with different type of colleagues. For example wikis can help strongly tied colleagues work together more effectively, social networking software can help connect weakly tied colleagues, blogs can help connect colleagues with potential ties (in part by enabling discovery), and prediction markets creates interaction between colleagues who may never form a tie.
The benefits of Enterprise 2.0 come from using features of ESPPs such as group editing, authoring (people publicizing what they know), broadcast search (people publicizing what they don't know), network formation and maintenance, collective intelligence, and self organization (perhaps the broadest benefit).
The adoption of these new tools can raise concerns around inappropriate behavior and content, the appearance of embarrassing information, and non-compliance with laws, regulations, and policies. However McAfee contends that the benefits outweigh the risks and that most of these risks are actually decreased by Enterprise 2.0.
It may however be a long haul to adopt these new technologies in part due to our tendency to stay with the status quo even if a better solution exists. Therefore McAfee lays out six organizational strategies for Enterprise 2.0 success which includes:
-determine desired results, then deploy appropriate ESSPs
-prepare for the long haul
-communicate, educate, and evangelize
-move ESSPs into the flow (of every day work)
-measure progress, not ROI
-show that Enterprise 2.0 is valued
Towards the end of the book McAfee says he is most interested in Enterprise 2.0 because it can help organizations move from a Model 1 to a Model 2 style of behavior; from unilateral control of both the goals and the tasks used to accomplished goals to an environment where decision making is based on valid information and where "winning" is replaced with free and informed choices.
"Enterprise 2.0" is a good baseline book on a topic that by its nature needs to be further explored by web 2.0 powered discussions, such as those found on McAfee's website and blog.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
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