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Developing social media innovation strategy – Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Government 2.0. Adoption of the latest digital business models in 2010.

6 Mar
2010

Participatory business models become the focal point of strategic modeling for 2010 and probably a decade to come. Web 2.0 (we design and market such social media portals), Enterprise 2.0 and Government 2.0 are still just buzzwords for many, but quite a few organization start successfully implement new digital programs to connect various members with their ecosystems, engage them in the conversation, collaboration and real-time dynamic research.

Web 2.0 is mostly understood as user interaction hubs such as Facebook, Twitter you name it, out of wide adoption of which, created around specific business needs & workflows Enterprise 2.0 Solutions emerged. I find it interesting that many companies that want to integrate social media environment in their businesses, focus on Enterprise 2.0 Architecture as a set of tools and features that social networks use, instead of understanding the culture and psychodynamics of “the crowd” and built their internal portals around it. Look for example how IBM defines it. “What is Enterprise 2.0?
Enterprise 2.0 is the concept of using tools and services that employ Web 2.0 techniques such as tagging, ratings, networking, RSS, and sharing in the context of the enterprise…” – fresh from their web site. Well, that’s exactly what Enterprise 2.0 is not. Or here is what NewsGator suggests “Rather than build a social networking application from scratch, simply layer social computing features like networking, communities, discussions, tagging, social bookmarking and blogging on an existing portal or intranet. NewsGator Social Sites software, for example, transforms any Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) implementation into a full-featured enterprise social network without altering user habits.”

I don’t think I fully agree at this point with this approach. First and foremost it’s about the purpose and the process that govern the ideal future operation. If it can be done with existing tools, great. But most of the features mashups that I’ve seen just remind of a collage of widely available web 2.0 tools. And now what? Yes, users will use it by habit of hanging out on Twitter and Facebook, but will it improve the productivity of the enterprise? Your business sis unique, and often requires starting fresh. “What do we want to accomplish?’ vs “What can be done with all those available tools and features?”

Our IR Web 3.0 is just one of the examples of Enterprise 2.0 solutions that has a particular purpose of engaging company stakeholders in products innovation, new strategy design, expansion by engagement and business development by units diversification.

Here are couple of article excerpts that I think can be useful for those marketing and operational leaders who are just learning their ways into participatory media.

On Design Thinking by Dan Hudson.

Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the “building up” of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation in the ideation and prototype phases. Outside the box thinking is encouraged in these earlier processes since this can often lead to creative solutions.

In organization and management theory, design thinking forms part of the Architecture/Design/Anthropology (A/D/A) paradigm, which characterizes innovative, human-centered enterprises. This paradigm also focuses on a collaborative and iterative style of work and an abductive mode of thinking, compared to practices associated with the more traditional Mathematics/Economics/Psychology (M/E/P) management paradigm. [Wikipedia]

5 Quick Dev/Design Tips from Twitter & Facebook

How we interact with technology is evolving. Our expectations are higher and our patience is lower. The World Wide Web is a very competitive place, but twitter & facebook are seeing unbelievable growth. Solutions inside the Enterprise have less competition and should experience rapid adoption. Adoption rates may vary, so here are some areas to review, if adoption rates are not meeting expectations.

Adoption by Design is superior to any well written manual with petty pictures.

User Experience using Web 2.0/3.0 technologies to improve speed & behavior.

Use of standard Design Patterns for intuitive interfaces.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) supporting sharing information across multiple devices in multiple formats & views.

Experimenting with Features along with collecting feedback, helps to keep users interested and shows you care.

On Adoption Strategies for Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 by Dion Hinchcliffe.

12 Adoption Strategies for Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0:

Learn: Educate – Brown bags, internal Webcasts, strategy white papers, innovation unconferences. Digital business models are evolving so quickly that keeping up can be a real challenge. Hot new topics such as Social CRM and online customer communities have become major new subject areas in the last 18 months, but most traditional businesses don’t know about them yet. There are many other emerging topics now and getting a steady flow of information into your organization about what’s happening will greatly assist your efforts. Lunch presentations, Webinars (great for large and/or distributed organizations), reports, social media, and internal events to share ideas about the possibilities are all good ways to break ground and get fresh ideas into heads. Use the attendees of these to identify like-minded change champions for some of the strategies below.

Learn: Find out what leaders in your industry or related industries are doing. While the adoption of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 is often very industry specific (either a big player gets way ahead or consensus is reached and adoption suddenly happens broadly within an industry), you can often find great examples of approaches in industries that are different yet closely related. Find case studies that have good measurements and data and use this to extrapolate to others.

Learn: Discover and coordinate with what other internal Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 change champions are doing already. Use the people you met in the first strategy to find other pilot projects and resources that can be pooled. Internal success stories are always the most convincing, even if turf concerns and not-invented-here continues to be problematic. Often you can join in or combine efforts, particularly since Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are so driven by participation that it’s virtually required by definition to get any sort of success, internally or externally.

Prepare: Identify the likely areas where Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 can grow and/or improve your business. I covered this topic late last year as the recession began to hit. There are major areas where growth, cost reduction, innovation, and business transformation can be achieved. Understand clearly how these approaches work and provide value, what growth/cost factors they consist of, and get specific with likely approaches in your organization matched to hard data to support the strategy in the next bullet. If you’re still not sure then explore these ways to use Web 2.0 to reinvent your business for the economic downturn.

Prepare: Build a compelling business case. If you can’t explain the benefits clearly to the business, you don’t get to do it. But this can sometimes be hard with Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 because there are on occasion long cause-and-effect chains. But more likely there is just what I like to call the “digital DNA” problem. Most businesses are far enough away from the technology itself that they have a hard time grasping exactly how these ideas actually work and can be made successful in their organization. It’s the ultimate not-invented-here problem. So don’t make decision makers figure it out themselves, provide step-by-step explanation of the specific whys and hows of your social computing strategy, open API division, or whatever it is that you’ve decided that presents the best opportunity.

Prepare: Solicit senior sponsors for advocacy, budget, and pilots. This one is fairly obvious except that a sponsor in this case must be personally involved both in the up-front support as well as actual participation. One of the single most important adoption factors is executive involvement through personal interaction. This works best if it’s a social computing approach, but can affect most Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 efforts positively and significantly. Here are some specific tips for CIOs and CTOs.

Prepare: Broadly socialize the potential benefits in clear, lingo-free business terms. Transmit the message loudly and clearly. Don’t become overly zealous. The bigger the organization, the longer it will take to change. Often, by the time you’re just about ready to give up, things will begin to happen. Use social tools to spread this message by example. You can try using one of the freely available enterprise microblogging tools to do this..

Act: Initiate social media internally to drive forward internal change, under the radar if necessary. Walk the walk and start a blog or internal community that discusses innovation or otherwise drives change. Use this to support the previous strategy but if it’s done right it will broaden and can easily become viral. Worst case the change champions have a place to work together, best case it forms an early basis for an enterprise social computing strategy. It can also provide an initial demonstration of results and adoption statistics. Only do this under the radar if necessary and even so be ready to accept the consequences if this is the first of these strategies you start with (the ground not yet being fully prepared.)

Act: Create a targeted customer community. Engagement with real customers is the only way to trigger some of the larger benefits of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. This can be tricky since it frequently requires much more support and approval to go outside the company. So start targeted and highly focused. Trusted customers and pre-identified loyalty groups or even trading partners are good places to begin and usually offer friendly audiences to try many of these techniques with until you learn the ropes and gain deeper understanding of the issues.

Act: Launch a pilot that is likely to produce noticeable returns in the medium-term. Use all the strategies above to get started with a pilot that proves the ideas out. Critical mass is a frequent issue with the pilot approach however and many recommend going as big as possible (but no bigger) to ensure there is enough participation. Document everything and don’t set expectations too high or too low. I say medium term since social systems in particular are generally less deterministic and are not as predictable (though far more rewarding) than traditional mandatory engagement models.

Act: Measure the results of any local Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 effort, even if it’s not yours. Get the numbers and try to make sure they are accurate, they are ultimately hard to ignore. I’ve seen a number of otherwise terrific efforts derailed by not backing up what was done with good measurement.

Act: Proactively manage and promulgate upsides as well as having a ready-to-present mitigation plan for any perceived risks. In the end, business leaders want something that will move the business forward but they don’t want the risk. Have answers ready for them, though you don’t necessarily need to broadcast this unless asked. There are often unstated risk, control, and trust issues with Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 and you must proactively defuse them.

While some of these may seem obvious and will be true of almost any business initiative heading into the unknown wilds of something new, there are important nuances for the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 arena for each one of these. I’ve left out a few good strategies including acquiring your way to Web 2.0 competency, it’s just not going to work for most organizations at the moment, until there are richer targets.