Why web 2.0 doesn't work in the enterprise (yet)

Be prepared. This is my first controversial post and you may find that you disagree with my views.

Let me say upfront that I love collaboration, I love connecting people, I love doing it so that people in our company can deliver what's important. blah blah blah, but is web 2.0 really the best way of helping our people do that?

Firstly, I'm going to assume the definition of web 2.0 as the ability for anyone to publish and create content (and a bit of people connecting with others)

With that in mind here are my reasons that web2.0 doesn't work in the enterprise

1. Not enough people in your company understand it
You would not believe the number of people who I meet who don't know what a blog is, haven't tried facebook, or used a wiki (although I'd have to admit that nearly everyone I meet has used wikipedia). Even if they did understand those things, I would suggest that it is not these things that define web 2.0, they are examples of possible web 2.0 executions. If you can't understand something at a practical level, how are you going to exploit it? - which leads me to point no. 2


2. it needs to support your strategy
I don't mean the strategy that says we 'need to communicate openly' and so on, I mean the basics of your business - deliver car parts on time, get the right products to market, reduce costs, increase quality. Until you can connect web 2.0 concepts to those things then I would doubt that you can make much impact.

3. It challenges existing structures
When the web arrived into the mainstream big companies had to learn how to do e-commerce and existing structures were challenged and changed. This change had to be sponsored from the top and had to have major investment in all kinds of things. Some companies haven't quite worked it out even now. If we are hoping for web 2.0 to 'just happen' from the ground up then I think you are being overly optimistic.

4. Just because something is popular in life in general doesn't make it worthwhile in business.
I love watching TV soaps. I don't do it at work - neither is there any value in it if I did.

So what hope for all our web 2.0 projects? I fear that most of them are doomed, but if we can address these kinds of challenges and ensure alignment between opportunity and capability then new and exciting ways to exploit the web will surely appear. I'm just worried it's going to take a very long time.