Saturday, September 30, 2006
Purpose of this blog
This blog should be of interest to all those who wish to understand how NOBO can be successful in the growing knowledge economy. It is targeted at a wide audience.
To succeed in today's knowledge economy, organisations should transform themselves into communites of practice. Etienne Wenger, a globally recognised thought leader in the field of communities of practice, writes "Knowing is not merely an individual experience, but one of partaking in the knowledge of a community." He asserts that it is the practitioners themselves that manage their own knowledge therefore, connecting practitioners is the heart of their approach for cultivating and co-ordinating knowledge both inside the organisations and beyond its boundaries. They can do this by developing a comprehensive and visionary business strategy grounded in the practical and effective use of Web 2.0 technologies. This strategy can then be implemented rapidly and incrementally in the form of the NOBO Virtuous Circle:
Step One: Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice initiate Changing Conversation in Organisations
Step Two: Changing Conversation in Organisations supports the Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation.
Step Three: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation brings about Entrepreneurship.
Step Four: Entrepreneurship calls for Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks.
Step Five: Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks builds Alliances.
Step Six: Alliances lead to Social Computing.
Step Seven: Social Computing enables Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice.
The next set of blogs will take a closer look at the NOBO Virtuous Circle and each of the steps within it.
To succeed in today's knowledge economy, organisations should transform themselves into communites of practice. Etienne Wenger, a globally recognised thought leader in the field of communities of practice, writes "Knowing is not merely an individual experience, but one of partaking in the knowledge of a community." He asserts that it is the practitioners themselves that manage their own knowledge therefore, connecting practitioners is the heart of their approach for cultivating and co-ordinating knowledge both inside the organisations and beyond its boundaries. They can do this by developing a comprehensive and visionary business strategy grounded in the practical and effective use of Web 2.0 technologies. This strategy can then be implemented rapidly and incrementally in the form of the NOBO Virtuous Circle:
Step One: Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice initiate Changing Conversation in Organisations
Step Two: Changing Conversation in Organisations supports the Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation.
Step Three: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation brings about Entrepreneurship.
Step Four: Entrepreneurship calls for Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks.
Step Five: Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks builds Alliances.
Step Six: Alliances lead to Social Computing.
Step Seven: Social Computing enables Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice.
The next set of blogs will take a closer look at the NOBO Virtuous Circle and each of the steps within it.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Adoption Strategy for Enterprise 2.0
Gartner says Web 2.0 offers many opportunities for growth, but few enterprises will immediately adopt all aspects necessary for significant business impact.
“While Web 2.0 offers many new opportunities for companies to grow their business, few enterprises realize how to implement the full range of capabilities to succeed. By 2008, the majority of Global 1000 companies will quickly adopt several technology-related aspects of Web 2.0, but will be slow to adopt the aspects of Web 2.0 that have a social dimension, and the result will be a slow impact on business, according to Gartner, Inc. The challenge is that Web 2.0 is not just a set of technologies, but also has attributes that have a social dimension…”
What are the challenges?
Recently Socialtext, an enterprise wiki provider published a well documented case study of wiki deployment within Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the international investment banking arm of Dresdner Bank. Wiki had been heavily used by IT since 1997 but DrKW wanted to bring business people on board to enhance collaboration and communication between IT and the business. The wiki deployment was a success and is now being used by approximately 2,500 DrKW employees.
As user numbers were growing, social software consultant Suw Charman was brought in to manage and support and adoption. Charman subsequently wrote an adoption strategy which provides valuable insight into the challenges and process of deploying social software. The adoption strategy is written in the context of wiki deployment but I believe it is appropriate for other social software technologies too.
Briefly, the adoption strategy focuses on four main challenges:
Fostering grassroots adoption. This challenge centres around identifying users who would clearly benefit from the new software, helping them to understand how it could help, and progressing their usage so that they can realise those benefits.
Management support. As well as supporting bottom-up adoption, it is beneficial for there to be top-down support, but that support has to be based on openness and transparency.
Understanding time-scales. Having a clear adoption strategy, and ensuring that the correct key players are identified and 'converted', helps to speed up the process, but it remains a fact of human nature that it takes time for people to become comfortable with new technology, new ways of doing things and, most importantly, new cultures.
Remember what your goals really are. Adoption isn't a goal in and of itself. Lots of people use email an awful lot, but that doesn't mean that it's being used well. Think about what your ultimate aims are; make them discrete, measurable and attainable.
Social software is a very powerful tool within enterprise, but like any other business project, it takes thought and planning to ensure successful adoption.
“While Web 2.0 offers many new opportunities for companies to grow their business, few enterprises realize how to implement the full range of capabilities to succeed. By 2008, the majority of Global 1000 companies will quickly adopt several technology-related aspects of Web 2.0, but will be slow to adopt the aspects of Web 2.0 that have a social dimension, and the result will be a slow impact on business, according to Gartner, Inc. The challenge is that Web 2.0 is not just a set of technologies, but also has attributes that have a social dimension…”
What are the challenges?
Recently Socialtext, an enterprise wiki provider published a well documented case study of wiki deployment within Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the international investment banking arm of Dresdner Bank. Wiki had been heavily used by IT since 1997 but DrKW wanted to bring business people on board to enhance collaboration and communication between IT and the business. The wiki deployment was a success and is now being used by approximately 2,500 DrKW employees.
As user numbers were growing, social software consultant Suw Charman was brought in to manage and support and adoption. Charman subsequently wrote an adoption strategy which provides valuable insight into the challenges and process of deploying social software. The adoption strategy is written in the context of wiki deployment but I believe it is appropriate for other social software technologies too.
Briefly, the adoption strategy focuses on four main challenges:
Fostering grassroots adoption. This challenge centres around identifying users who would clearly benefit from the new software, helping them to understand how it could help, and progressing their usage so that they can realise those benefits.
Management support. As well as supporting bottom-up adoption, it is beneficial for there to be top-down support, but that support has to be based on openness and transparency.
Understanding time-scales. Having a clear adoption strategy, and ensuring that the correct key players are identified and 'converted', helps to speed up the process, but it remains a fact of human nature that it takes time for people to become comfortable with new technology, new ways of doing things and, most importantly, new cultures.
Remember what your goals really are. Adoption isn't a goal in and of itself. Lots of people use email an awful lot, but that doesn't mean that it's being used well. Think about what your ultimate aims are; make them discrete, measurable and attainable.
Social software is a very powerful tool within enterprise, but like any other business project, it takes thought and planning to ensure successful adoption.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Emerging Social Software Technology
“Enterprise 2.0 is an important concept… It represents the most important and potentially disruptive business challenge since the advent of modern management” says Jerry Bowles.
“For better or worse, Enterprise 2.0 has become the buzzword, or neologism, if you insist, to describe the convergence or collision of a new breed of widely available and deployed participative social networking technologies (those things we call Web 2.0) with traditional hierarchical organizational dynamics. No one yet knows exactly what this will produce in the long run or even if it’s a good or bad thing. It is, however, an incredibly BIG thing and one with enormous implications in the world of business which is one of key building blocks of civilizaton.”
Powerful words but in essence containing an important message for NOBO. Social software has the potential to be disruptive and provide the environment to enable core NOBO competencies such as dialogue, learning, creativity and innovation.
Which technologies are these? With reference to Gartner Highlights of Key Emerging Technologies in 2005 and 2006 the following technologies can be regarded as significant in truly empowering the twenty-first century workforce.
Wikis are great for group brainstorming and collaborative projects. Ideas can be collected and developed by a using the simple, web-based collaborative system. Users are able to change web pages created by other users.
Blogging involves the use of online personal journals by knowledge workers either individually or in a group, to further organisational goals.
Peer to Peer (P2P) voice over IP (VoIP) Telephony services like Skype currently enjoy significant consumer adoption and are beginning to make inroads into the business landscape.
Podcasting offers a way to ‘subscribe’ to radio programmes and have then delivered to your PC.
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a simple data format that enables web sites to inform subscribers of new content and distribute content more efficiently by bypassing the browser via RSS reader software.
Collective Intelligence An approach to producing intellectual content that results from individuals working together with no centralized authority.
Social Network Analysis (SNA) SNA is the use of information and knowledge from many people and their personal networks.
The social software technologies I have described in this blog will feature heavily in business landscapes of the future but before they do, organisations are going to have to foster strategies to adopt these technologies…
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Competing in the Knowledge Economy
The development of modern knowledge economies reflects a move from an economy based on land, labour and capital to one which the main component of production is information and knowledge. The most effective economies are those with the largest production of information and knowledge and in which they are easily accessible to the greatest number of individuals and enterprises.
To succeed in today's knowledge economy, organisations should tranform themselves into network-centric organisations in which space and time are not bound by four walls and the traditional nine-to-five schedule. These organisations are more flexible, more efficient, more productive in terms of both labour and capital, and more adept at both using knowledge, and producing knowledge and services as outcomes.
Network-centric organisations represent the decentralisation of power and authority in companies, and the creation of networks of information which enable localised decision-making and responses. These responses are adaptive responses to an unpredictable and rapidly changing external environment.
Those organisations that learn how to operate in the knowledge economy will gain significant competitive advantage over their peers. These organisations will be flexible and agile, adapting to an environment where the basis of business competition shifts from cost and value to imagination. Success in such an environment is determined by the speed at which new creative ideas are generated, synthesised and then implemented with entrepreneurial zeal and dynamism.
Competing based on these principles in the knowledge economy demands the development and deployment of some key social software technologies...the subject of my next blog.
To succeed in today's knowledge economy, organisations should tranform themselves into network-centric organisations in which space and time are not bound by four walls and the traditional nine-to-five schedule. These organisations are more flexible, more efficient, more productive in terms of both labour and capital, and more adept at both using knowledge, and producing knowledge and services as outcomes.
Network-centric organisations represent the decentralisation of power and authority in companies, and the creation of networks of information which enable localised decision-making and responses. These responses are adaptive responses to an unpredictable and rapidly changing external environment.
Those organisations that learn how to operate in the knowledge economy will gain significant competitive advantage over their peers. These organisations will be flexible and agile, adapting to an environment where the basis of business competition shifts from cost and value to imagination. Success in such an environment is determined by the speed at which new creative ideas are generated, synthesised and then implemented with entrepreneurial zeal and dynamism.
Competing based on these principles in the knowledge economy demands the development and deployment of some key social software technologies...the subject of my next blog.
Background to NOBO
The next three blogs aim to describe the business environment in which NOBO faces significant challenges.
The first blog focuses on competing in the knowledge economy. The second blog focuses on emerging social software technologies and the third blog focuses on the adoption strategy of these technologies.
The first blog focuses on competing in the knowledge economy. The second blog focuses on emerging social software technologies and the third blog focuses on the adoption strategy of these technologies.
Meme Map Narrative
Twenty-first century organisations such as the New Order of Business Organisation (NOBO) is a response to the changing economic and technological forces that exist in our world today. Globalisation and web technologies have precipitated a business revolution whereby dramatic changes in organisations, economies and the cultural assumptions of our society have been challenged and the mindsets of the industrial era are crumbling.
The drive for decentralisation and the empowerment of creative knowledge workers is releasing an unprecedented rise in innovative, pioneering leaders. These are not traditional business entrepreneurs but socially responsible individuals with a passion for sustainable business growth and increasing prosperity through value networks. The emergence of self-organising, self-governed, communities of practice enabled by open source social networking tools and practices is creating a learning environment grounded in emotional intelligence, transparency and dialogue.
NOBO is transforming the conversations between social entrepreneurs and business entrepreneurs merging the best of both perspectives. Business entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs no longer speak at cross purposes and argue for different values. Instead, the art and practice of NOBO helps entrepreneurs focus such conversations on the value of their products and services in a complex, socially responsible and sustainable business ecosystem. Sustaining advantage in the knowledge economy demands more than superficial actions, strategically, NOBO people understand organisations as participants in multiple business networks where developing and sustaining quality business relationships takes time to cultivate and co-ordinate. Participation in professional online communities ensures access to people who mentor and share their knowledge with the aim of unearthing shared pictures of the future or collective intelligence…
We can choose and design new futures for our organisations in the way we hope. We can choose to be NOBO.
The drive for decentralisation and the empowerment of creative knowledge workers is releasing an unprecedented rise in innovative, pioneering leaders. These are not traditional business entrepreneurs but socially responsible individuals with a passion for sustainable business growth and increasing prosperity through value networks. The emergence of self-organising, self-governed, communities of practice enabled by open source social networking tools and practices is creating a learning environment grounded in emotional intelligence, transparency and dialogue.
NOBO is transforming the conversations between social entrepreneurs and business entrepreneurs merging the best of both perspectives. Business entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs no longer speak at cross purposes and argue for different values. Instead, the art and practice of NOBO helps entrepreneurs focus such conversations on the value of their products and services in a complex, socially responsible and sustainable business ecosystem. Sustaining advantage in the knowledge economy demands more than superficial actions, strategically, NOBO people understand organisations as participants in multiple business networks where developing and sustaining quality business relationships takes time to cultivate and co-ordinate. Participation in professional online communities ensures access to people who mentor and share their knowledge with the aim of unearthing shared pictures of the future or collective intelligence…
We can choose and design new futures for our organisations in the way we hope. We can choose to be NOBO.
Introduction
This is the first entry to this blog by the author Rosalind Cannell.
It marks the starting point of my musings about NOBO, the New Order of Business Organisation.
The concept of NOBO began with a club on Ecademy (a UK-based online social business network). The club was set up as a discussion forum for turning imaginations into real, practical ideas about how to enable business organisations of the future.
“Imagine organisations in which bosses give employees enormous freedom to decide what to do and when to do it. Imagine electing your own bosses and voting directly on important company decisions. Imagine organisations in which most workers aren't employees at all, but electronically connected freelancers living wherever they want to. And imagine that all this freedom in business lets people get more of whatever they really want in life - money, interesting work, the chance to help others, or time with their families.”
(Extract from Thomas W. Malone's The Future of Work)
This blog aims to record my observations on the conversations I'm having within the NOBO forum and without. I intend to develop a strategic framework of new approaches to business organisation and provide insight to enabling social software tools.
Many thanks to all the people who have contributed so far to my understanding of NOBO and to those who will help develop the framework as a result of this blog.
It marks the starting point of my musings about NOBO, the New Order of Business Organisation.
The concept of NOBO began with a club on Ecademy (a UK-based online social business network). The club was set up as a discussion forum for turning imaginations into real, practical ideas about how to enable business organisations of the future.
“Imagine organisations in which bosses give employees enormous freedom to decide what to do and when to do it. Imagine electing your own bosses and voting directly on important company decisions. Imagine organisations in which most workers aren't employees at all, but electronically connected freelancers living wherever they want to. And imagine that all this freedom in business lets people get more of whatever they really want in life - money, interesting work, the chance to help others, or time with their families.”
(Extract from Thomas W. Malone's The Future of Work)
This blog aims to record my observations on the conversations I'm having within the NOBO forum and without. I intend to develop a strategic framework of new approaches to business organisation and provide insight to enabling social software tools.
Many thanks to all the people who have contributed so far to my understanding of NOBO and to those who will help develop the framework as a result of this blog.
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