If you don’t have fresh vegetables, you can get canned.

I was most recently the Forrester analyst who covered Enterprise Web 2.0.  Now, those of you in the social media space are probably familiar with my colleagues, Jeremiah Owyang and Josh Bernoff.  They, along with many others at Forrester and some who have left Forrester, share a passion for the way social computing and social media has evolved.  Some of you may know my other Forrester colleagues, Oliver Young and Rob Koplowitz.  Their coverage is much closer to the areas I was covering at Forrester.  I was honored to be part of the social media “dream team“ at Forrester.  They are an amazing collection of people.  Moreover, I’m very proud to have lead the internal collaboration effort at Forrester which gathered and shared our research ideas, so that we’d have a platform for internal discussions about social media and Web 2.0. 

In this blog, we’ll explore the dynamics of social media and social computing.  But we’ll focus our efforts on an element of the space known as Enterprise 2.0 — the application of Web 2.0 to Enterprise computing.  We’ll spend a bit of time looking at how this space is evolving.  And even more time on some of the most important issues that companies face – related to Enterprise 2.0.  I encourage your participation by commenting here on this blog, and by blogging about my posts on your blog.

Oh, about getting canned.  Yah — that’s a new trend these days.  Companies find themselves pressured to lay off their talent in moves that are intended to demonstrate near-term improvements to their bottom line.  It’s a growing problem, as very talented and capable people find themselves out of work.  I’ll share three implications this has to Enterprise 2.0.

1. There is an abundance of talent in the marketplace, people who are not working for a company, but who are between jobs and creating new ways of working together with others.  This opens the door for new extra-corporate collaborative efforts.  Since the consumer Internet provides more technology for collaboration than most enterprise provide — this means that loosely configured groups of professions, who happen to be between jobs, can create new business opportunities and business models. In fact, they have the technology at their disposal to do so.

2. Companies are pressured to show return on investments for each move they make.  OK, that’s not new.  What is new is that the ROI has to be demonstrated this quarter, or this month.  They don’t know what the next year will bring.  So strategic technology decisions are being put on the backburner.  Many are just looking for quick ways to improve immediate results.  For many, this means they are looking at creative ways to leverage cheap technology on the Internet, rather than going though traditional long-cycle vendor plays.

3. Companies face huge knowledge gaps by virtue of laying off workers.  Many will have to figure out how to re-establish working teams.  Workers who remain will have to find the new “go-to” person for many tasks.  This will cause companies to rethink their organization structures and gain a better understanding of their information circulatory systems.

These three changes, along with others that well talk about in future posts, send signals to the business thought leaders that their organizations must change in order to survive to recovery, or face a cascade of failures toward obsolescence.

My experience as a practitioner in the Enterprise 2.0 space, and my insight from being a Forrester Analyst, tells me there is a path to success.  And we’ll find that path together.

Tagged as: economy, Enterprise 2.0, Forrester