Culture 2.0: viral, beta, collective sense making, long tail-PART 1

Part 1: Collaboration and the enterprise’s DNA: a cultural mutation, as opposed to evolution, may be what is really needed.

By Leandro Herrero

Collaboration between employees as an organisational goal is hardly a new topic. So why is that today, when ‘social observers’ say that ‘collaboration is the real hot topic’ they do so without the expected red face of ‘déjà vu’. I’d like to examine what I believe are the key parameters that are driving a new enterprise agenda where collaboration is not just at the core, but ‘the core’. Consider these two corporate weather storms

Technology gone public

Storm one is what I call ‘technology’s gone public’. In the old days, email was a sophisticated communication tool that you had in the office, whilst a fax machine was something of a luxury that only sophisticated people had at home. Today, online, real-time talking-to-anybody-anywhere is something that everybody, sophisticated or not, can do from home whilst real time social networking (tools) in the office is something that only sophisticated companies have. Web 2.0 and the likes have shifted the collaboration power from the enterprise to home, from big IT departments to a free download from your bedroom, from training manuals to plug-and-go use. The new(er) digital generation of employees are ready to embrace social networking and mass collaboration, if only they had the same tools in the office that their teenage daughters have at home. Some of these companies do have Web 2.0 tools but they are stuck on Culture 1.0.



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