The term “Enterprise 2.0” was coined in 2006 by then Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee. Its proponents advocate the use of Web 2.0 tools - blogs and wikis, and so on - as vital channels for unleashing creativity and innovation within organisations.
The traditional barriers to innovation result when people with ideas are hindered by distance or hierarchy, or simply by not knowing who is whom, who is qualified, interested or accomplished in what, or even that each other exists.
Yet through blogs and wikis, McAfee and his supporters proposed, an organisation could open up and enable those within to identify and reach each other and thereby capitalise on the talent, wisdom and “human capital” – the specialised sum of personal knowledge – of those within the firm, wherever it could be found.
Enterprise social technologies, McAfee and others argued, create the sort of structured platforms that foster innovation by reducing the internal barriers faced by would-be innovation creators. And they could be effective in capturing precisely the “emergent” organisational learning that results from change.
Enterprise 2.0's applications for driving organisational learning, agility, adaptability and sustainability are many. These ingredients and their wellspring – the underlying, under-used tacit knowledge to be found in a majority of workplaces – are inseparable, but also the juice fuelling the future’s most creative, responsive and inventive enterprises.
The traditional barriers to innovation result when people with ideas are hindered by distance or hierarchy, or simply by not knowing who is whom, who is qualified, interested or accomplished in what, or even that each other exists.
Yet through blogs and wikis, McAfee and his supporters proposed, an organisation could open up and enable those within to identify and reach each other and thereby capitalise on the talent, wisdom and “human capital” – the specialised sum of personal knowledge – of those within the firm, wherever it could be found.
Enterprise social technologies, McAfee and others argued, create the sort of structured platforms that foster innovation by reducing the internal barriers faced by would-be innovation creators. And they could be effective in capturing precisely the “emergent” organisational learning that results from change.
Enterprise 2.0's applications for driving organisational learning, agility, adaptability and sustainability are many. These ingredients and their wellspring – the underlying, under-used tacit knowledge to be found in a majority of workplaces – are inseparable, but also the juice fuelling the future’s most creative, responsive and inventive enterprises.
