Over the past week, I’ve taken a break from this series, but I think that now is a good time to get back to it, since there’s still much to do. In April of 2008, the debate over KM 2.0 received a number of interesting contributions. The first I’ll consider here is Mike Gotta’s blog entry of April 6, called “AIIM Completes Enterprise 2.0 Study.” Gotta takes the completion of the report as an occasion for considering what Enterprise 2.0 means and whether the collection of Enterprise 2.0 tools “amounts to anything.” Mike speaks favorably of Andrew McAfee’s original definition and quotes it as: “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.”
He then adds:
The only caveat that I have added to McAfee’s phrasing when I discuss E2.0 with clients or people in general is to phrase E2.0 as “the emergent use of social software platforms” vs. “use of emergent software platforms” which I believe preserves Mr. McAfee’s original intent.
I can’t say whether Professor McAfee meant what he said or meant what Mike said, but either way Mike’s construction makes clear that he thinks E 2.0 requires that the use of social software involve “emergence” in the social interaction resulting from using the software. Mike also proposes using Clay Shirky’s definition of social software as: “software designed for group interaction” to further clarify the definition of E 2.0. He then points out that:
We (as an industry) are still remiss in associating Enterprise 2.0 as a specific set of tools. That clouds the role of culture and other organizational dynamics which are so influential on “emergence”. What we also need is to a better job at is defining the use case scenarios and usage models around information sharing, communication and collaboration tools that make something “E2.0” (basically, adding legs under McAfee’s and Shirky’s definitions).
Here Mike Gotta is suggesting that use of E 2.0 tools is not enough to justify calling an organization E 2.0. To do that one also has to show that an appropriate cultural configuration and organizational dynamics giving rise to emergence are also present. And he drives home this point in the remainder of his post. While I can see the point of extending E 2.0 beyond the tools to include such social and cultural system requirements before the concept is applicable, I think the attempt to make these conditions a requirement for characterizing an organization as E 2.0 goes too far, because it makes the connection between E 2.0 and emergence as well as certain cultural and organizational characteristics a matter of definition rather than a matter of theory.
That is, in some sense isn’t the point of talking about E 2.0 to say that if one introduces an E 2.0 program then one will get certain beneficial social and cultural changes including increased collaboration, communication, and information sharing as a consequence of this introduction? But if E 2.0 is made to include these things then their connection to E 2.0 is made true by definition and where is the fun or the gain in that? But still further, if we define E 2.0 in a way that goes beyond McAfee’s definition above, then what’s to prevent us from saying that certain KM and knowledge processing characteristics are also included and therefore to begin to approach Tom Davenport’s claim that E 2.0 and KM are one and the same? Mike’s blog entry is an indication of the continuing difficulties in 2008 of clarifying relationships among KM, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and collaboration. Tomorrow, I’ll take up this theme again in a discussion of presentations given at the Boston KM Forum.
To Be Continued