RIC ROBERTS

At the end of last month, I went to a Startup 2.0 event in Manchester which featured a great presentation by David Terrar. (Slides here).

In May 2006, Andrew McAfee of Harvard defined Enterprise 2.0 as “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers”. More recently Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen redefined it as “A system of web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise.”

the application of Web 2.0 technologies (e.g. blogs, wikis, social networking, IM, mashups) to the enterprise.

David’s talk put into words some of my thoughts on Enterprise 2.0 – i.e. that sharing in general is good for business: both inter- and intra-organsation. In applying Web 2.0 principles (i.e. principles of the community driven, participatory, 2-way web) to business and the enterprise, benefits can be had for all.

The adoption (or not) of Enterprise 2.0 doesn’t seem to depend on generational or demographic boundaries, but rather whether those in decision-making positions realise how it can affect the bottom line, especially in today’s economic climate. As David said, Enterprise 2.0 can help with many aspects of business, including (but not limited to):

idea generation, co-innovation, customer service, amplifying word of mouth, new product development, capturing knowledge, market research, project collaboration, public relations, member networking and employee communication.

Some of these provide obvious efficiency benefits and some help in generating sales and revenue.

Additionally, Enterprise 2.0 applications are frequently available as SaaS (software as a service). This removes the requirement to hire someone to maintain and secure a server inside the organisation. Or, if a company already has someone working in this capacity, it frees them up to be assigned elsewhere.

Instead of investing a large amount of money in the development of a bespoke application (whether in-house or outsourced to contractors/consultants), many Web 2.0 apps are available free or relatively cheaply. They can be used in the enterprise to achieve perhaps 80% of what that bespoke application would have, at a fraction of the cost.

In my experience, it’s often the case that custom application development doesn’t achieve what it sets out in the first place (at least on the first iteration), and the very nature of Web 2.0 tools empowers users to customize their experience themselves, helping to alleviate this problem.