Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges Review

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Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges ReviewWriting this review has been is one of the hardest things I have had to do. I wanted to like this book, it's a great subject, a knowledgeable an author and great prior reviews. Unfortunately this book does not deliver making this review tough to put together. I would not suggest using this book to introduce Web 2.0 to the business. I know that this review may draw some heat from the other reviewers but here are the reasons behind my review and why I recommend reading McAfee's HBR article rather than investing the time in this book.
The book covers an important topic and a critical time in its formation. What is the impact of social computing technologies like Wiki's, blogs and other forms of social media. McAfee defines Enterprise 2.0 as the use of emergent social software platforms by organization s in pursuit of their goals. (p.71) McAfee says that Enterprise 2.0 is not primarily a technology issue. This is not born out in the text as majority of the book spends time defining the technology behind E 2.0 (chapter 3 and 4) and the capabilities provided by the technology (chapter 5).
McAfee treats E 2.0 technology at a high level. Its is as if, McAfee does not believe a business person would be interested in how the technology works, which makes the web 2.0 technologies seem trivial. If McAfee had expanded the view of technology to include the integration of business processes and information with these technologies he could have provided powerful business based descriptions.
McAfee intended to write a business book about Enterprise 2.0 but he concentrates the vast majority of pages on emergent social software platforms (ESSP). There is little discussion of the business impact of the software, how it applies to major business processes or activities and how these platforms change the way business work at a strategic, market, financial, product, organizational or operational areas. These are all questions business executives have and they are not treated sufficiently in this book. This is one reason why I would not suggest using this book as a platform for launching new social software initiatives.
Business books relies on case studies to illustrate their points and while McAfee has case studies from Google, Serena Software, the CIA, and Vista Print which should provide a solid foundation. However, the cases talk about how these people implemented Espy's in a generic fashion saying that company A implemented a blog to solve their problem. Only the description of Google's adoption of predictive markets constitutes a strong case. The limited use of practical or detailed examples is puzzling, as it does not give the reader access to McAfee's experience and insight.
McAfee further weakens his argument as the book draws on academic frameworks outside of E 2.0 and technology to answer critical issues. Normally, this is where a strong case study would illustrate how people have addressed these challenges. However, McAfee chooses strong academics including discussion of theories of Granovetter (Strength of Weak Ties), Hayek and Harford (Theory of Knowledge), Gourville (Behavioral economics and slow rates of adoption) to make his points. This unfortunately weakens the book's business impact and credibility. Not that the ideas of these thought leaders are weak, its just that they give the book a stronger academic feel than other business books. While the case studies are a good touch, the examples involve implementing relatively generic web 2.0 a wiki for one, a blog for another. While the cases do discuss the results achieved, the cases would have been stronger if the case studies provided more detail about how the cases used these technologies to achieve these results.
Finally the book seems to be stitched together from three separate research pieces. The best part of the book is actually the final chapter. It describes the book that I believe you should have read as it hints at the business, financial and other issues opened by Enterprise 2.0. The tone, content and focus of the final chapter is distinctly different from the rest of the work. If the whole book could have been like the last chapter this would have been one of the best business books of the last three years.
The first five chapters of the book are more descriptive of the phenomenon and suffer from McAfee's desire to assert his brand of the terms Enterprise 2.0 and ESSP. This assertion comes from his frequent use of the first person to define and drive the book forward, I believe this or I see that. This weakens the book and gives it a self-referential style that does not go over well with a business audience.
In chapters six and seven the book branches off into a discussion of the business value of IT and refuting Nicholas Carr's IT doesn't matter argument. This part comes out of the blue and discuses IT in general rather than the specifics of how ESSP changes the definition of IT and its role in the enterprise. Another opportunity lost in my estimation.
The introduction of Web 2.0 and social software into enterprises is a significant opportunity for every organization. This book has the potential to introduce business to these technologies in much the same way that Hammer and Champy set the stage for re-engineering, or Negroponte and the internet. However after thinking about this review for more than a week, I felt that the book does not do this and I cannot recommend it as the way of introducing ESSP's to the enterprise. I do not intent to criticize the author, his knowledge or his experience as I am sure that McAfee knows more about how to make this technology work to create value, it just did not show in this book. Sorry to offer a different view on this book, but I hope that you can see the reasons behind this review.Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges Overview

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Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources to Fit Your Needs Review

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Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources to Fit Your Needs ReviewRawn Shah's book, Social Networks for Business, is a top down technical view on implementing social media. He provides a view of social networking that will appeal to IT professionals as it is based on a premise that social networking is a technology that should be structured and controlled at the center like other technologies. While this is possible, the advice Shah offers is based on the fundamentals that if you build it right, manage it right, then they will come.
That logic is simple but it assumes that business professionals are users of the technology rather than creators of the solutions that operate on a social network. That last piece is important as those following the advice in this book bear a high probability of simply recreating existing low value low activity intranet portals and knowledge bases in new social networking clothing.
A warning that this is a rather lengthy review in order to explain why I see the book as technically correct but not enough to address the issues fully. Shah is not wrong, its rather he is narrow in the ability to his advice to work beyond his experience and he is looking at the issue with an established techno-management lens that does not capture the potential of these new technologies. Perhaps no book can capture it all, in which case this becomes part of a social media library and body of study.
That has been my observation at more than two dozen companies I have met all of whom have the same question "We, meaning IT, have built a social network with all the bells and whistles but no one wants to use it." The reason behind the low use is in the question itself. Social networks are not built and provided by one party for others to use. Social networks are not software in the traditional sense, but generative technologies that require engaging the business in their creation of the applications that matter.
My intent in this review is not to degrade Shah's work. The book is first rate, complete, well written and very thoughtful. Its just that Shah's application of traditional heavy weight IT management principles do not consider the idea that the business, not IT builds the solutions. This is understandable as the author comes from IBM and the advice he provides reflects their unique sales/engineering culture that looks for structure and unfortunately is unique to Big Blue. There is nothing wrong with IBM, the same way that there is nothing wrong with the advice in this book.
Readers need to be aware that this book treats social networking as a management and technical issue. A view that I have observed is incomplete at best and detrimental to the enterprise efforts to gain the collaboration, knowledge sharing and flexibility needed to compete in this environment.
Shah recognizes this issue, devoting five of the ten chapters to issues related to the social system. Unfortunately here he takes a technical management view defining the roles, governance and structures required to set up a central management of the network. The work is good and complete down to salary ranges for community managers and their assigned work tasks. I can see this working in a highly structured culture where people look for the right way to contribute before making a contribution. The issue with gaining value from social networking is not that they do not have enough management; it is more like they do not have enough emphasis on the social systems. In this regard I like Seth Godin's notion of mavens as a lightweight structure to make the social systems work.
Strengths:
*Comprehensive in addressing the management and technical issues involved in implementing social networks in a modern top down corporation
*Strong focus on defining terms and laying out the taxonomy of social networking
*Chapter 10 the last chapter's first few pages summarizes a strong definition of social media and networking. It should have appeared in the first chapter as it sets a good context for the book
*Proves technical and operational management best practices for those technologies
*Clearly written and focused as it delivers a significant amount of information in 162 pages.
Challenges
*The absence of examples is regrettable, as we need to see how these practices work in reality rather than being described in the abstract. Changing social relationships is always contextually heavy and some examples would have gone a long way to addressing the points mentioned earlier.
*The book does not address business issues that can be addressed by social networking. The focus of the social networking solutions implied by the book is in terms of people using wiki's, blogs and the like rather tan what the business uses the tools to accomplish.
*The view of social networking as fundamentally a technical and central management issue. This is despite the fact that Shah offers models that are not based on central control like the starfish model. Unfortunately as he goes to illustrate potential applications the management structure turns out to be centralized more often than not (Chapter 5).
*The book outlines solutions that are dependent on the authors experience within IBM and that colors the recommendations and views. IBM is mentioned sporadically throughout the book and while they have accomplished a lot using social networking, the book is a little too IBM centric to be viewed as an entirely independent analysis of what works in the market place. This does not make what Shah writes wrong - it just makes it narrow in is potential application.
*Social behavior is assumed to come from management structures rather than the motivation and interest of people. This gives the reader the feeling that a top down approach, driven by sponsors can tacitly coerce collaboration out of a corporation.
Shah's book brings a technical set of practices that compliment McAfee's business-social definitions in his book Enterprise 2.0. This is a good thing and readers will find value. However they must recognize the limitations and implied mental models found in the book.
I need structure for social networking and this book does a good job of describing structure. However, you need the right social systems first as no amount of structure will overcome weak social dynamics and create value.Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources to Fit Your Needs Overview

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The Executive's Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business (Wiley and SAS Business Series) Review

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The Executive's Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business (Wiley and SAS Business Series) ReviewThis book hits the nail on the head. It covers all topics of social media clearly and concisely. As the co-creator of a social media certificate program at a state university in New York I think I will use this book as a text for my next course. Thanks for writing this!The Executive's Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business (Wiley and SAS Business Series) Overview

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