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There's not too much fundamental research on Enterprise 2.0. Deloitte recently published interesting research done on enterprise 2.0 implementations and their return-on-investment. In the EU research has also done as well. Study is being done for the European Commission and it was carried out by Tech4i2, IDC and Headshift. What was the goal of the study? Goals of the study To provide a clear definition of Enterprise 2.0 is, describe the market and the positioning of EU industry, also in comparison with US and Asia; To analyze the take-up of Enterprise 2.0, the organizational requirements, and the role on the transition to a knowledge based low-carbon economy; To collect evidence on its macro-economic impact, as a market opportunity for the European Software industry and as a productivity tool for European business; To identify and analyse both the direct and contextual challenges, including the need for Next Generation Access and the legal barriers; To analyse an...

I've always been intrigued by the concept of learning. It's one of the reason I like blogging so much and social media in general. It's a great way to learn! Every now and then I bump into a great post or interview about this topic. Just recently I read a great interview with John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas about their new book 'A New Culture of Learning' ( part 1 and part 2 ). I was planning to read the book. After reading this interview I'm going to push it up on my to-read list. Thanks Henry Jenkins for sharing this interview with us. I'll share some interesting statements from the interview with you here: One of the key arguments we are making is that the role of educators needs to shift away from being expert in a particular area of knowledge, to becoming expert in the ability to create and shape new learning environments. Our argument brings to the fore the old aphorism "imagination is more important than knowledge." In a networked worl...

Jane McConnell raised an interesting question about the relationship between social media and culture . She asked: Will cultural differences impact adoption of social media? Will culture “eat” social media for breakfast? or will social media “eat” culture? I find social media interesting because I see the relationship between social media and culture as bi-directional. The (company) culture has to fit social media (culture) for successful adoption. But I also see culture change due to social media use. I think this has to do with the underlying concepts of social media, like relational networks, information is social and humans as social beings. These concepts fit us people very well, because they are deeply human. Tapping into these concepts when rolling out social media is a key to success (and positive cultural change). Rolling it out as technology (non-human focus) is a key to failure (and negative cultural change). Als o refer to this interesting post about cultural differences ....

Next talk by Bertrand Duperrin , Ellen Trude , Emanuele Quintarelli and Mike Thompson (Headshift). Bertrand kicks off by focusing on Cultural issues in general, between Europe and the US and it's implications for Enterprise 2.0: self protection: culture as an excuse local identity protection vs globalization and mergers different attitudes towards autonomy, rules, hierarchy... philosophy of work trust/mistrust vs companies, colleagues... will engage with colleagues organization boundaries that reinforce cultural ones who said legal? Bertrand says this is a major issue and it's a good thing we are discussing it here. Every country with its own culture has to find it's own approach wrt e2.0. Now Mike Thompson ( Headshift ) who collaborated in a large research project on Enterprise 2.0 . This research is still going on. First results can be found here . He says the research shows that it's more related to company culture than coun...

Zappos is a bit far away from a Dutchman. We don't have it here, yet. But of course you hear a lot about them. Zappos is praised for its culture, very engaged workforce, use of social media in business, great profit, etc. Recently I wrote a post about 'Organizing on Passion'. Frederik Vieten , a student doing research at Océ, pointed me to Tony Hsieh's new book, Delivering Happiness . I hadn't heard of it yet, so that was a great pointer. I'm going to order and read it. But I also browsed the site and found a recent talk by Hsieh at Google . Man, I watched it this talk this evening. And it's absolutely great. If you have an hour, just sit down, watch it and be inspired. What a great company and what a great leader Tony is. Here's the video: I really liked the way the importance of company culture is stressed and how it can be crafted. I also love the way they select new employees based on questions linked to their core values . One of the most ...

If you're not from Holland, you probably don't know the largest walking event in the world is currently going on in Nijmegen , my home town. It's called the 'Vierdaagse' (in Dutch. Literally: the 4 day one) or 'the Walk of the World' . It's a great event for participants and spectators. The whole city of Nijmegen is flooded with people from all over the world (people from 67 countries participated this year!). Men and woman of 65 years and older have to walk 30 kilometers for four days to get a medal. Men younger between 16-65 have to walk 4x50 kilometers. And ladies walk 4x40 k's. Very long walks, that require lots of training, focus and determination! Yesterday I volunteered to give water to the walkers (- you may have noticed my tweets /here are some pictures ). I love doing that. It brings back lots of memories of the hardship and joy I experience walking 4x50 two years ago . It's great to see about 45.000 people walking by focused on reac...

Some time ago I blogged about a course I followed: Realistic Influencing . I promised I would write about day three as well. Here's my list of learning points: When in a discussion you have opposite conclusions look for facts and criteria (refer to previous post) you agree upon and/or have in common and starting talking from there. Remember to summarize someone's criteria when you think you see one and ask for feedback to see if you're correct. We all have several different voices in our head. You can give them names. Like my Einstein voice telling me to be creative, think out-of-the-box, etc. But this voice can have contradictory voice telling me to be pragmatic for instance. Talk about these voices out loud in a conversation, it helps people understand what going on in your head. It also buys you time. During the course we also looked at Hersey & Blanchard's situational leadership matrix. I really like that model. It's a great model to use to ...

Really nice talk about how to create cultural change. The answer is not by mocking, groaning, etc. But... with humor with social cover by changing perception Or: try something new create a group identity welcome newcomers be relentless be relentlessly happy Enjoy!

Recently Jan van Veen and I had the privilege to talk with Jacob Morgan about the work we (and other colleagues) are doing in social media. You can find transcripts of the interviews here: Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Océ, Part One: Business Drivers Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Océ, Part Two: Making the Push Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Océ, Part Three: Change Management Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Océ, Part Four: Operational and Financial Impact [... more will follow soon! ...] Others interviews about our work can be found here . You can compare them and see if we're making progress! ;-)

Note: This post was written with my friend and colleague Rob Veltman ( @robveltman ). We carpool together and regularly talk about innovation and culture. Rob is an innovative product developer always challenging himself and his colleagues to ask the right questions to solve problems and make wishes come true. Rob is deeply interested in new product development, processes for (breakthrough) innovation and sustainability. Introduction How could we contribute to a more innovative organization? We ask ourselves this question regularly, help each other to come up with new ideas in this area and try to lead by example. We would like to share with you an aspect of our daily practice, which is the observation that our colleagues can experience hesitance in being innovative. We will propose a solution to overcome this hesitance. Situation Knowledge companies consist of very smart people, educated in different disciplines. Their knowledge workers are confronted with all kinds ...

Have you seen the movie 'Pay it forward'? You probably all have and I'm the last one to catch up! ;-) But if you haven't seen the movie, go and rent or buy it. It's worth your time and money. Pay it Forward is an intriguing movie with a powerful message. It's about leadership, small decisions make a big difference, change can happen, social networks, etc. Here's a very interesting part to get you to watch the whole thing. Enjoy! Tags van Technorati: social networking , change , sharing

A couple of days ago I posted about 'candor'. In that same issue of HBR another article was written about 'trust'. Roderick Kramer wrote "Rethinking Trust" (June 2009) - summary pdf here . The open source, web 2.0 and knowledge management domain talks about trust a lot. We should be opener as people and as companies. We should trust our customers more. Etc. However the economic turmoil we're in and how we got there puts a question mark behind 'trust'. Isn't it naive to trust? And to be open? If you don't watch out people will run off with your product ideas and, even worse, your money. Kramer wants to 'rethink trust'. We can learn who to trust and how to trust in a more disciplined and sustained way. Even though "human beings are naturally predisposed to trust. (...) We're born to be engaged and to engage with others, which is what trust is largely about." Kramer defines several rules to help us trust in the ...

I recently learned an important new word: candor. "Candor" is honesty, openness, sincerity. HBR ran an interesting article about this term and what it means for business some time ago: "What's needed next: A Culture of Candor" (June 2009) by James O'Toole and Warren Bennis. When talking about 'enterprise 2.0' and openness and transparency, words like 'trust' and 'authenticity' are often also discussed. Another important aspect is 'candor'. The authors stress its importance due to the context we live and work in: Now the forces of globalization and technology have conspired to complicate the competitive arena, creating a need for leaders who can manage rapid innovation. Expectations about the corporation's role in social issues such as environmental degradation, domestic job creation, and even poverty in the developing world have risen sharply as well. According to the authors this context asks for a specific ty...

Can you have too many ideas? I've been musing about this question lately. And can the amount of ideas you have be stalled by the context you work in? With 'context' I mean: your colleagues, your work tools, the culture of the company, etc. I'm curious what your answer would be to these questions. I'll share my experience after you share yours! --- If You Read This and Like It, Tweet This to your Followers: Too many ideas? http://twurl.nl/jr7eov Tags van Technorati: ideas , innovation , culture