I was just reading the latest edition of the McKinsey Quarterly and there’s a very interesting article entitled: “Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work.” Surprisingly to me, the author states:
“Web 2.0, the latest wave in corporate technology adoptions, could have a more far-reaching organizational impact than technologies adopted in the 1990s—such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management.”
I say surprising because declaring web 2.0 could have a more far-reaching organizational impact than ERP and CRM is amazing indeed. Imagine if you can the billions upon billions of dollars spent over the last few decades implmenting these behemoth systems by companies throughout the world—and Web 2.0 could be bigger? That is an startling endorsement from a pretty traditional source.
And why on earth would McKinsey think such a crazy thing? Because they rightly see “…Web 2.0 as a way of unlocking participation” and “…the underused human potential at companies as an immense ‘cognitive surplus’ and one that could be tapped by participatory tools.” That is exactly right, as I have (often) said before—all that corporate IP locked in the heads of people throughout every organization with no good way to access it and leverage it for wide-scale productivity improvement.
Not surprising is their finding that as many companies are unhappy with their web 2.0 experimental implementations as are happy. “Many of the dissenters cite impediments such as organizational structure, the inability of managers to understand the new levers of change, and a lack of understanding about how value is created using Web 2.0 tools.” In response, McKinsey outlines six “management imperatives for unlocking participation”–which are certainly all true, but are disappointingly uninsightful or at least mundane. Besides these six, as we will see in the next post, is the unmentioned and most critical imperative–and the one that underlies successful Collaborative Knowledge Sharing.
Just in from our friends at learning research firm, 
The jury is finally back and the verdict is not what anyone wants to hear—the information technology revolution has failed us. After spending untold $billions over the last two decades on computer hardware and software, knowledge workers today still spend 15-30% of their time looking for the information they need to do their work—and find what they are looking for less than half the time! Who could have possibly imagined at the end of the first decade of the 21st century that individuals would still be spending 10 weeks or more per year looking for the information they need at work and still not be able to find it? And this dismal result after installing an endless number of three-letter acronym systems: ERP, CRM, CMS, DAM, DMS, LMS, etc., etc.—not to mention the explosive adoption of the Internet, Google, and countless other tools for creating and finding enterprise content.
I’m very focused right now on the corporate meeting/conference/event space because cutbacks in travel are forcing companies to rethink how they transfer knowledge—and the movement from in-person to “virtual,” or more likely a hybrid in-person/virtual approach is inevitable (as discussed in earlier posts). And that is bringing my company many new inquiries from existing customer and prospects.
That interest has prompeted me to subscribe to meeting industry publications like 
A recent study by CSO Insights, “
This same ‘paradigm transfer’ problem is happening with corporate meetings, events, and conferences. The current economic downturn has forced companies to drastically reduce their costs, and the first thing to go has been travel—specifically, travel for internal meetings and attendance at in-person trainings and conferences. Since the no-travel mandate limits in-person attendance, companies are naturally thinking that they should conduct these meetings, conferences, and trainings ‘virtually.’ But that’s where the technology train jumps off the tracks—instead of simply thinking that such meetings need to be online vs. in-person, they leap to the conclusion that virtual means virtual worlds. If people can’t be present in person, the reasoning goes, then we need to simulate the in-person experience online via a virtual world environment. This leads to the thinking that participants have to represent their presence in the online meeting with an avatar and move through the conference center to find the room in which an interesting presentation is taking place, find a seat, sit down, and look at the screen in the ‘auditorium.’
As mentioned in an earlier post, and consistent with the theme that is emerging here, the down economy is forcing companies to make significant changes in order to reduce costs. Travel was the first expense category to be axed—and when travel gets cut, other changes are sure to quickly follow. One change that has recently been hastened is the shift from face-to-face (F2F) attendance at business meetings and industry conferences to on-line participation.
When times get tough–the tough make changes. The hardships to companies and individuals in the current financial crisis cannot be overstated—layoffs are all too common and budgets are being slashed. But as some pundit recently said, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Companies are being forced to make difficult decisions, which may ultimately lead them to adopt much more efficient and effective ways of sharing knowledge than prior attempts using formal e-learning.
According to IDC learning industry analyst Cushing Anderson, “Respondents to 
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