McKinsey has recently released their second annual survey on the business use of Web 2.0 technologies : Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results
It's a pretty well crafted presentation of the survey, that would certainly bring additional hope to those involved in the matter. Have a read! It is particularly useful because McKinsey is used to cascading this type of reports to their clients, who happens to be key senior managers. We can thus expect additional attention from our clients and our clients should expect more attention from their hierarchy. Good news for implementing successful devices.
Now there are some elements of the report that need more details or explanations.
I personally find that not considering personalized pages is kind of a mistake when it comes to surveying enterprise social software. Okay, there are few vendors but they offer social and customizable portals and dashboards that help increase knowledge workers' productivity and create meaningful dashboard, with relevant information flows and traditional professional applications. In that sense they are "smarter, simpler, social" tools (than the heavy and expensive traditional portals). Some companies start getting down that fascinating road.
The authors note that "companies are coming to understand the difficulty of realizing some of Web 2.0's benefits". Depending on how projects are being managed, this is fairly normal ; most organisations are used to implementing technologies after having reviewed their impact only on the information systems.
At Headshift, it's been ages that we claim that "social software = social + software". The social side of implementing social software is key and goes from situated interfaces to changing cultural habits of management, particularly in hierarchical, top down entities. The "Getting Web 2.0 to employees" section of the report clearly highlights this point. Social software is an opportunity to change the routines, for the better.
In the "More tools for more reasons" section of the report, authors note that social software diffusion is increasing in corporations that already have implemented social software.
This is very natural. Enterprise social software massively starts with local needs and widespreads within the organisation. They are emergent technology in the corporate landscape. They don't enter in the organisation like a CRM or an ERP system. When implemented, those devices serve as internal usecases. Non adopters see the benefits and want to get them for their own activity. Additionally, social software is not a binding technology : one can improve one process with a mix of tools (aka the social stack), but one can improve many processes with only one tool.
In the "What matters where" section of the report, the authors claim that social networking is more popular in the US than in the RoW, because this is the native place of MySpace and FaceBook.
I am sorry to say that this part is unfortunately culturally-biased and misleading, for two reasons:
1 - This argument of geographic diffusion of innovation is not valid here, because the web has no frontier so that there are no geographical barriers for adoption [Barriers are linguistic, technical and financial]. If this were the case, France would certainly not have witness years ago such a massive boom in the blogosphere.
2 - The US is not the native place of social networking, but rather Japan and Korea where these platforms are massively used by a vast majority of the population. People actually access those platforms both by computers and mobile phones, thanks to world-class broadband networks.
In the "looking ahead" section, the authors of the report imply that enterprise social software is a competitive weapon for adopters.
In fact and after the Y Generation, this is another "I hold a gun to your head" argument that some enterprise social software specialists and vendors use on a daily basis. That is a fake argument. And the reason is very simple: As any other tool, social software tools enhance competitive advantage if - and only if - they are correctly implemented. Setting up blogging platforms or wikis for the sake of it shall bring no value; it shall bring additional costs and disorder. It's only by carefully scrutinizing existing processes, finding the areas of improvement, crafting the right mix of situated tools that corporations will increase their competitive advantage. This is very natural. Every time you review processes, they appear not perfect, because usually not fully applied by employees, and one find ways to improve them.
Update on "the US is not the native place of social networking: Benjamin Joffe made a useful presentation about this (via Chang-Won Kim's blog).
It's a pretty well crafted presentation of the survey, that would certainly bring additional hope to those involved in the matter. Have a read! It is particularly useful because McKinsey is used to cascading this type of reports to their clients, who happens to be key senior managers. We can thus expect additional attention from our clients and our clients should expect more attention from their hierarchy. Good news for implementing successful devices.
Now there are some elements of the report that need more details or explanations.
I personally find that not considering personalized pages is kind of a mistake when it comes to surveying enterprise social software. Okay, there are few vendors but they offer social and customizable portals and dashboards that help increase knowledge workers' productivity and create meaningful dashboard, with relevant information flows and traditional professional applications. In that sense they are "smarter, simpler, social" tools (than the heavy and expensive traditional portals). Some companies start getting down that fascinating road.
The authors note that "companies are coming to understand the difficulty of realizing some of Web 2.0's benefits". Depending on how projects are being managed, this is fairly normal ; most organisations are used to implementing technologies after having reviewed their impact only on the information systems.
At Headshift, it's been ages that we claim that "social software = social + software". The social side of implementing social software is key and goes from situated interfaces to changing cultural habits of management, particularly in hierarchical, top down entities. The "Getting Web 2.0 to employees" section of the report clearly highlights this point. Social software is an opportunity to change the routines, for the better.
In the "More tools for more reasons" section of the report, authors note that social software diffusion is increasing in corporations that already have implemented social software.
This is very natural. Enterprise social software massively starts with local needs and widespreads within the organisation. They are emergent technology in the corporate landscape. They don't enter in the organisation like a CRM or an ERP system. When implemented, those devices serve as internal usecases. Non adopters see the benefits and want to get them for their own activity. Additionally, social software is not a binding technology : one can improve one process with a mix of tools (aka the social stack), but one can improve many processes with only one tool.
In the "What matters where" section of the report, the authors claim that social networking is more popular in the US than in the RoW, because this is the native place of MySpace and FaceBook.
I am sorry to say that this part is unfortunately culturally-biased and misleading, for two reasons:
1 - This argument of geographic diffusion of innovation is not valid here, because the web has no frontier so that there are no geographical barriers for adoption [Barriers are linguistic, technical and financial]. If this were the case, France would certainly not have witness years ago such a massive boom in the blogosphere.
2 - The US is not the native place of social networking, but rather Japan and Korea where these platforms are massively used by a vast majority of the population. People actually access those platforms both by computers and mobile phones, thanks to world-class broadband networks.
In the "looking ahead" section, the authors of the report imply that enterprise social software is a competitive weapon for adopters.
In fact and after the Y Generation, this is another "I hold a gun to your head" argument that some enterprise social software specialists and vendors use on a daily basis. That is a fake argument. And the reason is very simple: As any other tool, social software tools enhance competitive advantage if - and only if - they are correctly implemented. Setting up blogging platforms or wikis for the sake of it shall bring no value; it shall bring additional costs and disorder. It's only by carefully scrutinizing existing processes, finding the areas of improvement, crafting the right mix of situated tools that corporations will increase their competitive advantage. This is very natural. Every time you review processes, they appear not perfect, because usually not fully applied by employees, and one find ways to improve them.
Update on "the US is not the native place of social networking: Benjamin Joffe made a useful presentation about this (via Chang-Won Kim's blog).
I appreciate that your post on the McKinsey study is one of the few that include some critical reflextions and do not only summarize the survey results. I pointed this out in one of my blogposts and gave this post a three-star rating for this. This post with my critical reflections on the McKinsey study is in German language though:
http://www.business20.ch/2008/08/04/was-sagt-uns-der-mckinsey-global-survey-building-the-web-20-enterprise/