Mayfield on Social Software in the Enterprise

Suw Charman lays out an excellent framework for the buildout of social software processes [i.e., wikis and blogs] within the enterprise. I came across the post originally in Ross Mayfield's blog today, but the post was originally posted by Suw on the Corante site.

• An adoption strategy for social software in the enterprise

For all the popularity of wikis and blogs, adoption within larger enterprises remains a challenge. Niall Cook discusses a recent group meeting of UK IT influencers, and his surprise at the relatively small footprint social software holds among them:

A few observations from the responses to the questions I asked, and some  discussions afterwards:

1. Awareness levels were surprisingly low
2. Hardly anyone was using social software, either inside the firewall or    externally
3. Only one person had read the Cluetrain Manifesto
4. Only one person (a different one) used del.icio.us
5. Most wanted to know about blogs
6. A handful were interested in wikis
7. Most were planning to publish internal RSS feeds
8. Almost all were still talking about the problems around "owning" and    "controlling" their intranets

There are early efforts and evangelists to be sure. Jeff Nolan is fighting the good fight within SAP to promote social software, as he discusses in his own blog [most recently here]. Plenty of other companies are starting to blog; but how many are embracing blogs and wikis as part of their core business process?

Ultimately, as an investor and active blogger, I've no doubt that social networking, wikis, blogs, et al...can play an integral role in fostering a more collaborative environment between employees, partners, supplier and customers. Those companies, large and small, who get out ahead of this trend are going to create a compelling competitive advantage that will be harder to replicate than many understand.

jeff ross social networking enterprise software blogs wikis woodrow

Comments

[Dennis Howlett]

Is Jeff fighting the good fight inside SAP? I thought he's employed to kick Oracle's butt.

[Jason Wood]

Hey Dennis,

I don't want to put words in Jeff's mouth, but it's my understanding that he's wearing several hats in his new operational role. Yes, he's focusing on Oracle and industry competitive dynamics, but he's also evangelizing social software and its potential as both an internal and external tool for a broad range of SAP initiatives.