Enterprise 2.0: The Death Of Slow Business Process

When I hear people talking about Web 2.0, I'm constantly surprised how few people really "get it." Its not about technology, its about empowering people. Its about giving people access to data, even if they are outside your domain. Its about jump starting innovation with scary new ideas. Its about tools that are easy to use -- perhaps even fun -- so a greater number of people can join in the process.

Setting up a wiki for your company is vaguely web 2.0... but what's really Web 2.0 is a blog with comments that allows instant feedback between customers and R&D... even tho it allows the public bashing of your product. Heck, an email listserv that connects customers and developers is more web 2.0 than an internal wiki... but do you see Google Groups getting any buzz? Maybe a little... they are Google, after all.

Now... when folks talk about Enterprise 2.0, you hear a lot of talk about technology: Service-Oriented Architecture, Complex Event Processing, BPEL, and Enterprise Service Buses. These are all great, but what matters is what you do with them. Each plays a vital role, but they are just pieces of the puzzle. What matters is the whole... and the whole needs to be people- and context-aware.

Do you plan on using the latest technology to securely connect users, data, and applications, to allow scary new innovations? Hooray! You're Enterprise 2.0! Have a cookie.

Are you BPEL-ifying every process and turning humans into mindless scrambling automata, afraid to use their judgment instead of "The Process", thus becoming alienated, terrified, and demoralized? Boooooo! Bad architect! No biscuit! Go back into the Kafka book from whence you came.

Lemme break it down for you... the economy is an evolutionary process. Not all business ideas are great... you have to see if they thrive in the market. No matter how well designed your idea is, the world changes under you, and your good idea might flop. You need to adjust you idea, hedge your bets, and change with the market.

The same holds true for any business process in Enterprise 2.0. Its not about what you're doing now... its about ensuring that you know when its time to change... Small changes can be automated, but many others can't be. This is the paradox of using technology to replace people: once something can be automated, soon everyone will be doing it! As soon as everybody does it, it's no longer a competitive advantage, no matter what.

Relying on process instead of people is a rapid race to the bottom... To survive, you need much more than just process. You need people who know how to survive without process. You need to constantly search for ways to add value to your business, and make it a part of a bigger and better process.

Web 2.0 increased the pace of idea evolution... Online collaborative encyclopedias ensure constant improvement of content... Blogs allow ideas to spread virally, turning the Blogosphere into a giant meme-incubator. Comments allow instant feedback, whereas links and trackbacks create these wonderful overlapping zones of connected ideas... Most web content is garbage, but that's not the point. Every once in a while you'll find an idea that changes your life...

This has little to do with the "wisdom of crowds" semi-nonsense... its just a numbers game: more minds, more ideas, better odds for brilliance.

If you dare to call yourself Enterprise 2.0, you had better be increasing the pace of business evolution. Forget uber frameworks that claim to solve every problem: design small stand-alone apps, and tie them together with SOAs, ESBs, and Mashups. Forget locking your information away in rigid silos: get identity management, risk management, and content management, then open the floodgates! And forget trying to design a "perfect process": tie together multiple small processes, and let experienced employees use their judgment to help the process evolve.

Face facts: evolution is smarter than you. If you want to be Enterprise 2.0, you had better not get in its way...