Intelligent Enterprise

I have to comment on my colleague Doug Henschen's article, "Is Social Networking KM All Over Again?" Doug did right at the Enterprise 2.0 conference to focus on cloud computing, a much more appropriate topic for enterprises than social networking. From the corporate perspective, the "cloud" is a diverse source of information, including all kinds of social and traditional media, out there to be searched and filtered for exploitable enterprise-relevant nuggets. But precipitous enterprise adoption of social networking? That would be foolish, destructive and not just disruptive. Corporations rely on and benefit from hierarchies and restricted lines of communications. Being selectively anti-social, for corporations, is a good thing.

I'm encouraged that for 27% of AIIM survey respondents, the topic Enterprise 2.0 never comes up, and that of the remainder, 24% consider it only "a new approach to collaboration." The 9% who dismiss the term as "just a marketing buzzword" are wrong, but the 27% plurality for whom it never comes up aren't missing much... yet. What they are missing is precisely and only the new approach to collaboration seen by nearly a quarter of respondents.

The most popular aspects of social networking are not for the enterprise. Yes, it is good for corporations to treat the "cloud," including social networks, as a source of enterprise-relevant information. And enterprises should be looking to improve collaboration. But they should be steering well clear of all the time-wasting, low-value fluff that pervades the vast majority of social-networking sites and tools. Why?

• Social networks are person- rather than role-based.
• Social networks are always-on interruptive; they destroy concentration.
• Social networks are ad hoc, too dynamic (frequently changing) for the enterprise, where regularity, traceability, and compliance matter.

What of Knowledge Management? Doug states that KM failed and I agree. It failed because, like social networks, KM attempted to impose a poorly fitting collaborative model on enterprise knowledge workers.

In contrast to bottom-up, chaotic social networks, KM was top-down and rigid. Chaotic versus rigid: everyday corporate life is lived between those extremes. Enterprises rely on collaboration that neither binds knowledge workers in a KM straight jacket nor looses them in a cult of me-centered structure-manqué, present in appearance only. Enterprises need dynamic, facilitated approaches that are neither rigid impositions nor a figurative bra-burning.

The sooner we can put a stake through the heart of Enterprise 2.0 — Enterprise 1.2 works for me — 1.2 = 1.0 + cloud sources + enhanced collaboration — the better.