It’s likely you have been following the pressure Facebook has been getting concerning its privacy policies.  The pressure seems to be working, as Facebook recently announced it will change its approach to privacy and make it easier for users to protect their personal data. This has been an on going battle.  I first commented on the need for better controls in Facebook 3 years ago, prompted by the then reaction of Facebook to privacy violations related to its Beacon advirtisements.  At that time I commented that “mature” uses of 2.0 (especially those that take the form of Enterprise 2.0) have to address the issue of privacy and learn from established corporate practices concerning responsible content management.

Here it is  three years later and Facebook is in a similar situation, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is still resisting the demand to do the “right thing.”  While the ability to set privacy controls within Facebook has “been made simpler,” defaults are still set to “open.”  The ability to disable the mining/access of personal profiling by marketers is still “not that simple.”  Sure, Zuckerman is moving in the right direction, but he is going kicking and screaming, one small step at a time.

But enough critisism on that issue. You can read the many articles and commentary out there, and determine for yourself if Zuckerman and Facebook are doing enough. In this post, I want to focus on one of Zuckerman’s recent quotes in particular. In commenting on the struggle between social computing and privacy, Zuckerman stated,  “The company [Facebook] treads a delicate balance between protecting privacy rights and promoting social networking.”  When I read this quote – I could not help but think of Seth Meyer and Amy Pohler on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update: “Oh Really.”

I have stated for years that as the adolescent  we know as “2.0″ matures, it will become a bit more cognizant of the realities of the real world – for many reason. The issue of balancing access and security is not new, nor unique to 2.0. I have been describing ECM as such a balancing act for over a decade.  I first developed the graphic above over 10 years, as a way to explain how to approach an ECM strategy. At the top  a grayscale bar represents  a continuum between  control/secure and collaborate/innovate. This is framed under the competing business practices of risk management and knowledge management.  This is the highest level design decision you must grapple with when controlling any and all forms of content – social content included. Depending on the context and the point in the content’s lifecycle, the balance between security/privacy and access/collaboration need to be treated perhaps differently, but always proactively.

So, come  2.0  GROW UP.  Social computing – open, transparent emergent platforms – sure they are powerful  and should be exploited, but you cannot throw caution to the wind.  It’s time for social platforms to  take responsibility for what they create – whether inside or outside the firewall.  Inside the firewall, there really is no excuse, not to address this issue head on.

The concept of balancing access to content against security is the focus of the IAI Primer: “Enabling Collaboration While Managing Risk.”  (Free download)  The issue is also addressed from many angles in a series of IAI Primers on Enterprise 2.0. (Free download)

I also recently authored a study on behalf of The 2.0 Adoption Council, sponsored by NewsGator, entitled, “Implementing Enterprise 2.0 Within the European Union:  Transparency and Emergence vs. Privacy and Compliance.”

I will also be addressing this very issue head on at the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, on June 17, in a presentation entitled Implementing Enterprise 2.0 in a Controlled Environment:  Lessons Learned.

Want to hear more, and/or debate this point with me? I hope you can attend the talk, (Thursday at 9:30 AM). If you cannot make it, stay tuned, I will be posting my slides and the reaction I get from the audience in an upcoming post – promise.

About a decade ago Knowledge Management (KM), was the focus of business and technology leaders alike.  But after only a few years in the limelight, KM all but disappeared.  Still smoldering, however, knowledge management morphed, to a series of related applications, technologies and practices.  Among these are/were portals, intranets, BI, collaboration and two that are enjoying much attention of late Web and Enterprise 2.0. With these newly defined applications as arsenal, knowledge management is rising like the phoenix, though some do not recognize it or label it as such. But be forewarned, the focus of these applications may obscure the underlying complexities that still belie knowledge management.  Too many think their applications de jour are so new and revolutionary that they have nothing in common with the past. For those with such a perspective, they are destined to make mistakes already made and not benefit from lessons learned.

A knowledge management implementation, under any name, is, at best, only partially about technology.  This is particularly the case with initiatives that fall under the 2.0 umbrella. Definitions and discussion all too often focus on technology. The inclusion of a technology focus provides a direction, however, you must still define the business imperative behind your initiative. What are the business goals for the initiative and how will they be measured/justified?  I continue to be amazed at the number of KM initiatives (aka Enterprise 2.0), I encounter that fail initially for this very reason.  Indeed, my last client, a major financial institution in New York, had put in place an E 2.0 team and program over a year ago.  Despite the good intentions of business and technical staff, the program never came to fruition.  It took me less than a day to realize the root of this failure.  There was no consensus on what the purpose of the initiative was, the direction in which it would take them, its primary benefactors, and the goals it would achieve – beyond “make us more collaborative, smarter and more aware”.

So, as I look back on the lessons learned as a KM consultant and practitioner, I do believe there is much advice that can be offered. Here are 2 important lessons learned.

Lesson One: Clearly define the intended community and become intimate with its purpose and attitudes regarding knowledge sharing and innovation. Will the initiative allow users to function in a personalized manner, or be the foundation to building community and establishing common practices? Will knowledge production and sharing be viewed as a universal obligation or the domain of a few? Will the opinions and attitudes of some be drivers or magnets to the community? Is security necessary to regulate the community? Consider that the 2.0 Adoption Council, for example, is heavily policed. Admission requires passing the scrutiny of leader Susan Scrupski. This “exclusionary approach” seems to fly in the face of the mantra of E2.0 zealots, “open, transparent and user driven.” But Scrupski regulates community membership for good reason. Scrutiny of community can immediately determine if the practice is a case of Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0, which leads to, typically very different goals, objectives and approaches.  Some time ago I blogged about a Web 2.0 collaborative site, Sermo, that similarly policed admission and participation. The post is worth a (re)read – the community, eventually opened the doors to “outsiders”, but only under strict regulations that included obvious and clear identification of any and all content submitted by these “outsiders.”

Lesson Two: Take inventory of the knowledge sources the community uses/seeks, and those they do not use/seek. Challenge the validity of these assumptions and inclination. Identify each knowledge source as explicit or tacit.  Determine the best means to organize the collection of explicit knowledge and make it assessable.  Whatever approach is taken to collaboration and knowledge exchange, capture the knowledge in as much a facilitated fashion as possible and tag it appropriately. The value of the exchange will hopefully have a very long tail – well beyond the initial exchange. But remember knowledge captured but not findable is captured in vain. The goal should not just be to make it accessible however, but to shed light on its history, validity – its context. This is where understanding how community members place emphasis, faith and value on content is critical – aka context is critical.

Several months ago I was called into a company in the Boston area, Impassioned by the market promises of social collaboration inside the firewall. Using a popular (unnamed) product, they had a collaborative online community up and running in 15 days. But, this success quickly turned to failure when the user community abandoned it as quickly as they took it up.  The site lacked a clear objective, had a poorly defined audience (“everyone”) and mostly consisted of random content.  It was a technology success – but a business failure.

Despite the fire that has re-ignited KM, ala Web and Enterprise 2.0 initiatives, an effective KM initiative (no matter under what rubric it is brought in) requires the coordination of the cultural, technological, strategic and personal facets associated with a well-defined organization/community. The truth today is the same as it was 10 years ago: for knowledge to be managed it needs to be defined and quantified.

The Content Convergence Continues!

As computing power increases, “mashable” and findable data/content grows, GPS shrinks, partnerships and individual innovation explore, and it all comes together in the form of a handheld device like the iPhone, Blackberry, and myriad Androids being rolled out on a weekly basis, we continue to see the rise of applications that only a few years ago seemed the stuff of science fiction.

Ladies and Gentleman, it’s the mobile content economy – and it’s going to impact your business one way or another. Isn’t it time get prepared?

The latest indication of this is Siri – Your Mobile Virtual Assistant.

Smartphones are not new, speech recognition is not new, but the concentration of power/content/data and location with contextual, “geographically smart” speech recognition, opens up interesting possibilities.

View the demo below (or download the app to your iPhone or Blackberry), before going on…

Just as with the business models of travel sites such as Orbitz, or Kayak, and similar meta-aggregators or “meta businesses” – new business model innovation is afoot!

It turns out that being *the* aggregation point for information, even given away for “free” (as far as the user is concerned at least), is quite the healthy business model.

The trick is to:

• Do it well = user experience and usability
• Do it with completeness = solid data/content partners
• Make it idiot proof = semantically smart speech recognition
• And not to presume that as the, in this case, mobile app provider, you have to create and own it all yourself.

Siri uses licensed data from allmenus.com, Google Maps, City Search, Taxi Magic, MovieTickets.com, OpenTable, eventful, Gayot, livekick, WeatherBug, BooRah, Rotten Tomatoes, Yahoo! Local, yelp, FlightStats, Vlingo and TrueKnowledge, and licenses the speech recognition engine of Nuance, and combines it into a self-contained application that is, as they say, a “person-centric app.”

It’s essentially the mobile generation of the “Single Point of Access” or Portal that had been all the rage in the 90s – it’s the “Personal Portal” – hyper-localized, and personalized, as it always should have been.

Of course in testing the application, there seem to be some data gaps, and some taxonomy work that needs to be done (hint: a wrap = burrito here in Boston, and vice-versa), but all told, it’s a sign of the mobile times to come.

Where to from here?

How are YOU approaching digital content strategies for a mobile world?

Is  your business found in the content/data aggregators for your market?

Is your business “socially connected” to applications like FourSquare and Gowalla

In short, are you leaving money on the table for your competitors to run off with? It’s early days, but disruptive innovation wins go to those who start the trend first, unless you’re an extremely fast follower.

Weigh in with your thoughts and concerns – and while we don’t do app development, at Information Architected, “there’s a consulting service for that!” (Need digital content strategy for your enterprise? Get in touch.)

Yesterday I tweeted (@carlfrappaolo) about a Boston Globe article on ECM search company, Endeca. I was going to let it go at that; congratulations Endeca for getting the attention of the Sunday Globe and for having the popular press cover the fact that search is more than just findability and Google, that search can be used as a form of business intelligence (BI).

But then this morning, serendipitously I heard a story on NPR about the dramatically changing world of television watching and the impact that is having on the services provided by Nielsen.  For decades Nielsen has had a monopoly on this market; reporting on the “popularity” of television programs based on eyeballs on TV sets at a particular time.  This data is extremely valuable because it provides potential advertisers with insight on how much a spot on a given program is worth, and to which audience. But television watching just isn’t what it used to be (echo newspapers and magazines).  Television content consumers have  alternative ways to access content (e.g.TiVo and Hulu) via alternative viewing devices that include smart phones and laptops, to name just a few.  (I know my kids are forever watching TV without the TV on.)

The viewing audience, including the way they view is changing. Nielsen customers (i.e. advertisers) are demanding that Nielsen keep pace and monitor these viewing habits. The television ad market is not dying – it is morphing and as a result is potentially more valuable.  Through ECM-based technologies,  it is possible to compile BI on multiple consumer habits, at unprecedented levels of granularity. In the case of television viewing, for example, not only what viewers are watching, but also when, where, what was skipped, re-played and shared.  As Nielsen’s president Steve Hasker put it. “”We’ll be able to tell what type of video they watch, what type of sites they go to, how they interact on those sites, what they buy on those sites, what types of news articles they’re reading.”

That is BI at a far lower and wider level of granularity than Nielson provides today.  Now think this new proposition through. Advertisers, using more ECM-based technology (e.g. e-publishing and DAM) advertisers can deliver more personalized and granular messages, in a timely manner – ads in context. Yes, once again, CONTEXT is king, and BI is the keys to the kingdom.

ECM is at the foundation of great new opportunities and challenges for organizations. I recently completed an article for Ron Miller in which I focus on the circle between ECM, KM and Innovation Management. This triumvirate will soon become a requisite to remaining competitive in virtually any  market. The article discusses this concept in some detail, more than here. Here, I draw attention to the tie between Innovation Management and ECM (in that order). In a phrase: get innovative with ECM.  As highlighted in this blog post, the integration of new content types and new means of content distribution and consumption, coupled with new approaches to BI creates amazing opportunities; truly personalized real-time publishing, contextual publishing and a constant loop of feed back (including web 2.0 emergence) that allows the content provider to continuously fine-tune the presentation and make-up of content.  The future for advertising and marketing is ripe with positive change, and ECM is at the foundation of this.

An article in today’s Boston Globe, reports that a new regulation will compel bloggers to disclose any affiliations or gifts they have received.

As Web 2.0 matures, it will be more regulated. This is an issue I have blogged and spoken about many times before.  But what makes this article even more interesting to me is the reaction of bloggers. In this case the regulation actually seeks to make blogs more transparent – exposing any and all connections between the author and another possibly conflicting interest. The article states “Beginning today, bloggers, Twitterers, and others who write online reviews or endorse products … must disclose it when they receive free merchandise or payment for writing about an item.” Ah – disclosure – full transparency.  This is a good thing – right?

Web 2.0 zealots have long pontificated that the 2.0 movement is grounded in transparency and openness. And yet, in this instance they are “unhappy” with a ruling that makes their sites even more transparent. Oh the irony.

As previously stated, I have many times before blogged about the need for responsible use of Web and Enterprise 2.0 technologies, including the strategic leveraging of security, control and yes full-disclosure.  As Web 2.0 matures, perhaps many of its zealots will have to mature as well and realize that in many cases their  writings are not random ramblings but real business content, which needs to be responsibly managed and  accurately positioned for what it really is.

The article is really worth a read. The commentary and arguments from bloggers are telling and at times almost amusing.

Today I had the great fortune to attend the Center for Information Management Studies (CIMS) program at Babson College.  I almost didn’t go – having just returned from the Enterprise 2.0 conference, I was feeling a bit “full” of talk on collaboration and technology. But luckily three things coerced me into attending.

1. The event was being produced by Kavin Moody of CIMS, who I had worked with a few weeks back on a similar symposium at Olin Innovation Lab (Olin College of Engineering), and was impressed with the group and his work.

2.  The speaker, Karen Sobel Loeski was highly recommended by my colleague Joe Wehr, whose opinion I respect and value greatly.

3. The topic was just a bit left of center – Leading the Virtual Workforce.

So I decided to go. WOW – OMG am I glad I did.

Karen Sobel Loeski was not only a dynamic, engaging and entertaining speaker, but her message was fascinating.  As those of you who follow my work know, when I address collaboration and knowledge management audits I utilize an 8-dimension model. Using a variety of techniques I measure the effectiveness of (and obstacles caused by) these 9 facets.

In performing these assessments leadership style is assessed – as part of team structure, communication and structure. But, Karen’s work focuses deeply  on leadership.

While I  pontificate on the value of leadership and best practices in leading collaborative teams – and the need for a different approaches when teams are virtual – Karen actually has come up with something called the virtual distance, an approach by which one can measure the reach or gap that exists amongst a virtual team.

I will not go into her talk and work in detail here. I recommend that you buy her 2 books – really.

I will summarize my favorite points.

1. The need to address the issue of virtual distance is critical in this era of Enterprise 2.0.  One of the biggest value propositions of E2.0 is the ability to support and facilitate effective team-based collaboration regardless of time and distance between team members. This is empowering, but as we migrate to a virtual workforce, we need to realize that the approach and role of team management needs to be adapted. All too often we hear that E2.0 is about collaboration without leadership, anarchy, and the destruction of business management. Karen (and I) averts that this simply is not so. Teams – virtually any team (no pun intended) – begs for leadership – of some sort. The leader of a virtual team faces different challenges and requires different sensitivities and skills but is as critical as a “traditional” team leader.

2. Although typically associated with geographically dispersed teams, virtual distance can occur between 2 people sitting in the same car (you had to be there to appreciate this comment). Virtual distance is a cognitive and psychological distance as well as a physical distance. Karen provides a 10-dimension model to assess the virtual distance of a team.

The Virtual Distance Index^TM

3.  Glocalization of our workforces has changed many issues for business – not just leadership style. We need to reexamine how we evaluate the value of our workers and the work they perform. ROI models steeped in “cost/time of widgets produced” models simply do not work any longer.  Karen offered many great examples; one:  Adobe Reader makes no money directly for Adobe, so it has no value right? – We all know the answer is “wrong” – it is “new value”.  Although “its not about the technology” – technology is changing the economic models of the past.

Interestingly enough, I was speaking with Michael Idinopulos of SocialText the other day. SocialText  provides a host of services (including assessments) along with their E2.0 technology, because (as a virtual company themselves) they appreciate that the value derived from technologies that enable virtual collaboration and teaming is only maximized if the culture AND LEADERSHIP associated with the technology usage are specifically adapted to leverage the technologies and the environments they create. Michael addresses the issue of “leaderless collaboration” very well in his post Transparency, not Anarchy.

I think part of the reason we are having such a difficult time getting through this transition is partially based in our lexicon. Perhaps we need to think of another term for technology-enabled teams and collaboration  that transcend time and distance.  We call them virtual – but there is NOTHING virtual about them.  They are very real, and they are very powerful.  I’ll wrap this somewhat lengthy post up by stealing a quote from Karen’s presentation – she quoted Albert Einstein “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.”

Yesterday I was preparing for an Innovation Management training session I will be doing later this week. The sponsor, after reviewing my credentials asked “How you make the leap from information and knowledge management to coaching/developing innovation
skills?  … Your background seems to be IT.”

I provided what I hope was not too lengthy a response. In essence it stated that I view Innovation Management as a fully ingrained component of KM, and IT as a strategic facilitator of both. It’s interesting, but to many friends, family and colleagues my background appears disjointed. To me it is completely synergistic and logically intertwined.

Well, this morning I saw an article that pulled it all together.  It seems that the State of Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Transportation (EOT) has initiated what it calls “The Developers Challenge.”   This program facilitates the creation of new applications for public transportation riders, utilizing newly released state-owned data.  Several challenges exist. One for example calls for the creation of a mobile phone/web-based app that makes it easier to navigate the Boston subway system – or “T”.

Eureka I thought, – this is the perfect blend of IT (apps) in the form of Enterprise 2.0 technologies (mashups), in a collaborative and knowledge sharing environment (More E2.0 and KM), being used to foster and drive innovation – in an emergent fashion (again E2.0).  The challenge even leverages one of the basic tenets of KM – Incentivization (the  winner of each challenge gets free T rides for a year.)

To today’s casual user of “apps” it may just seem like a tool – but for me it is my life, my  career, the perfect blend of IT, KM, E2.0, ECM, information management, collaboration, information architecture, findability, taxonomies, user interfaces, process management …

Last Friday’s cover of the Boston Metro proclaimed “ How recession is forcing creativity in entertainment.”
It’s an interesting article on how the current economy mixed with the advent of Web 2.0 is affecting the entertainment industry, but the title held a different appeal for me.

Serendipitously, I am working on IAI’s soon to be released whitepaper on Innovation Management. The whitepaper includes the results of a 180 respondent survey on how innovation is managed in the enterprise.

In line with today’s headline, it came as no surprise that 70% of those surveyed felt that the current economic conditions increased the perceived need for innovation in their organization. As is the case with much of the market research work we do however, the interesting findings came from cross-correlation and analysis across questions and responses. Despite “heightened need”, most organizations aren’t doing anything proactive about accelerating and nurturing innovation. While 68% stated their organization believed that innovation should be managed as a corporate asset and process, only 49% have put in place any formal process to manage innovation. Similarly, only 49% have any form of executive management presiding over innovation.  More shockingly, perhaps is the fact that 46% of the organizations do not specifically reward innovation.

Innovation is not serendipity or discovery. You cannot wait for it to happen to you.  It is a process that you have to nurture and manage as a major asset.

Innovation Architected will publish a whitepaper that details all the findings of the study later this month, and hold a webinar to discuss the findings on October 29 at 2pm ET (-5 GMT). To pre-order a copy of the whitepaper and/or register for the webinar go to the registration page.

There is no charge for the whitepaper, as it was partially underwritten by DiCOR, Imaginatik, Brightidea and Spigit.

You can also learn more about how we train organizations to proactively manage their innovation.

In 2008, Dan Keldsen and I published on behalf of AIIM, a groundbreaking report on Enterprise 2.0. One of the more startling and fundamental facts that we uncovered was that age did not matter as much as folks thought, as it relates to the adoption of Enterprise 2.0. In fact it really didn’t matter at all, and in some situations the exact opposite of what most believed (that with youth came wider adoption and use) was the case. The findings were startling and insightful enough that we were invited to present them at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston in 2008 (video).

Well, despite that, some still believe that Enterprise 2.0 belongs to the young. Earlier this year AIIM published another report on Enterprise 2.0. In it they claim that Millenniums are more apt to use Web 2.0. Huh – could the market have changed so quickly? No, not really.  This research, like many individuals that spoke at the Enterprise 2.0 2009 show in Boston did, confuses or interchanges Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. This naïve misunderstanding often leads to market confusion, and great frustration amongst market analysts and practitioners, (See earlier post which includes further in-sites from Ron Miller on this issue.) Although based on the same basic technologies, Enterprise 2.0 is fundamentally different than Web 2.0 in its audience, purpose, goals, and challenges. This is something that is all too painful to anyone that has implemented these technologies inside the firewall. (More on this below.)

But why am I bringing this up now? Two important reasons.

A recent article in Federal Computer Week reported that a panel of experts at the FOSE conference made the case that, at least in many government applications, the heavy hitters in Enterprise 2.0 are “older people.” In fact, in the case of Intellipedia, the number one contributor is 69 years old. (Wow, that even makes me feel young.) Furthermore, a panelist from Buffalo State College claimed that his graduate students barely even understand, let alone use blogs and podcasts. Sure, the younger set may more readily embrace social networking in the Web world, but Enterprise 2.0 is so much more than that. [Note: The article is entitled “Panel: Age doesn’t dictate Web 2.0 fluency” – OK – good article but again – misuse of Web 2.0 – Intellipedia is Enterprise 2.0). Oh the frustration.]

Information Architected (i.e., Dan and I]) is again embarking on what promises to be groundbreaking and insightful research on the state of the Enterprise 2.0 market. This time we are collaborating with Susan Scrupski and the Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Council. We are in the process of surveying and interviewing the members of the council, ALL seasoned Enterprise 2.0 (and I mean that accurately and literally) practitioners in the throes of implementation and management. Each of these members is pre-screened by Susan, guaranteeing that they speak from real experience with organizations committed to leveraging Enterprise 2.0. Council members have first hand experience with the audiences, purposes, goals, and challenges of Enterprise 2.0 – specifically. (Are you such a person? Want to be a member of the council? Apply – but I warn you, Susan will carefully screen you. Not all who apply are admitted.)

And the results of this research? Well, we all believe that the findings will be as insightful and valuable as those that Dan and I presented at the Enterprise 2.0 2008 show. So, the folks at TechWeb, producers of the Enterprise 2.0 conference,  have agreed to let us release them at the Enterprise 2.0 2009 conference in San Francisco. Like Enterprise 2.0 itself – we hope our research only gets better with age.  I hope to see many of you there, and of course will be blogging and tweeting(@carlfrappaolo) about the findings.

I have said it before, as have many others, Enterprise 2.0 is not just about technology. As I have commented on, this was a common theme at this year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference. Indeed, if web-based collaboration were only about the technology, then any organization with even a modest IT budget would be doing it and doing it well.  But this is not the case.

As stated over and over,  its not about the technology – its about culture.  But perhaps we stuff far too many issues into that “box” labeled culture.  What exactly does it mean when we say Enterprise 2.0 is mostly about culture?

As you might expect it means many things. Culture is not only fundamental to but a multi-faceted aspect of Enterprise 2.0 execution. This post focuses on one of the aspects of culture – the basic approach used by a community to collaborate (e.g. networking, communication style, establishing trust and knowledge exchange). This aspect of culture is particularly relevant to Enterprise 2.0, because, as I have blogged about before, one of the primary end games of Enterprise 2.0 is collaboration. Thus, like Enterprise 2.0, collaboration is not just about technology.  If it were, we would all be doing it  – well. While Enterprise 2.0 technology can facilitate and support collaboration, the underlying collaborative environment has to be managed.  The degree of management is partially dependent on other aspects of culture – but I digress.  Back to collaboration itself.

One of the things we have to realize is
that there are many ways to collaborate. Even if you are fortunate enough to have a supportive culture in place, you must determine what needs to be shared through collaboration, and what the goal or focus of the collaborative effort is.

We at Innovation Architected, believe that there are three basic types of collaboration (Interpersonal, content/content, and procedural), and 5 basic models or goals (COP/I, content, process, project and goal-oriented).  I provided a web-based lecture on this several months ago, sponsored by Google. You can view that presentation here.

These ideas are further discussed in a great article in the December Harvard Business Review entitled, “Which Kind of Collaboration is Right for You?.”  You can download a free copy of the article.  One of my favorite insights in the article is the strong case it makes that collaboration can occur in a closed environment, in spite of the  “open transparency” mantra of Enterprise 2.0 zealots. The article addresses the need for incentives to attract collaborators – another favorite topic of mine, one steeped in the Knowledge Management best practices.

In another Harvard Business School paper,  best practices in orchestrating and managing collaboration in an outsourced, or extended enterprise setting are provided. The bottom line of this article, for me anyway, is that collaboration needs to be deliberately designed and managed in order to maximize effectiveness and the value of the outcome.

In my own
work as a knowledge management and innovation management consultant,  I know that there is not only corporate culture to consider, but also the personal approaches or personality types of the individuals in the community, to creative problem solving. Yes, there are many different personality types or inclinations to collaboration and innovation. One is not better than another, they are just different.  In fact, the different approaches are symbiotic and complementary. Best practices in innovation management indicate that as part of the management of collaboration you should ensure that a range of “collaboration personalities” are deliberately brought together to achieve higher quality output.

So while it is nice to think that Enterpirse 2.0 and collaboration are all about viral and organic growth, research and experience indicate that there is ample room for some control and management of the processes and systems used, as well as teh knowledge and content captured in the process. In deed we have built entire practices around services for innovation management, effective collaboration and knowledge management.