Synergise IT

I have been thinking about this question for a long time and I have somewhat came out with an answer.

Critical mass is important for enterprise 2.0 as it can help pool in ideas/information from around the company (across departments, locations and cross hierarchy). Ultimately, collaboration techniques and social media is probably the best way to connect everyone up and provide a platform for employees to input information that is related to them. So to answer the question if critical mass is important for the success of Enterprise 2.0, let me give you a small scenario. A company of roughly 20 employees sitting in the same office. Simple enough.

Let’s assume if the company has something like Jive’s Clearspace. Its a Enterprise collaboration software and social media platform. It features some of the most exciting tools organisations are looking for like rich profiles, document management, Wikis, discussions and project management. I feel that Clearspace is a good tool to use to analyse this question that I am discussing here.

Lets look at each of the feature with regards to the short scenario above.

1) If everyone is sitting in the same office, rich profiles would not really matter as everyone would know everyone and they would probably have small talks and catchups over coffee or something like that. Human interaction is normally preferred over internet communication - at least its more personal. Online discussions is an additional channel for the 20 employees to discuss work. How that would work out would really depend on the culture and environment of the company.

2) Document management, project management tools and wikis - these tools are important for any organisation. It helps you locate, manage and store information.

From the above, it seems apparent to me that a software like ClearSpace would help a small organisation to manage their operations better through a single collaborative platform. However, the social aspects of enterprise 2.0 would probably not work so well due to the close proximity of the employees.

I can then conclude saying this. A single collaborative software would be helpful whether the company is big or small , but social media/networking would require critical mass to achieve its benefits. (edited Monday morning) Critical mass is important no matter how you look at it. Everyone should be using it or contributing to it for Enterprise2.0 to be successful. If no one uses the collaborative software, it becomes just a pile of code doing nothing. If people do not contribute to the Wiki or upload files to the document manager, it becomes useless. The more people who are actively using it, the more successful Enterprise 2.0 would be for the organisation.

Please leave your comments if you have any. I would love to discuss more about this.