In the last post – on defining social collaboration – I had also applied it in the context of social business. It was a brief mention and I did describe it as a utopian thought at this stage. However it reminded me of a debate late last year on Social Business and Enterprise 2.0, because ‘collaborative tools’ found mention then. The reasons for the debate notwithstanding, it was still interesting.
It began with a post from Andrew McAfee, written in favor of Enterprise 2.0 and in which he pretty much called ‘social business’ geriatric. 🙂 Stowe Boyd shot back with this post, giving his definition of social business and insisting that the nomenclature was important.In keeping with my generally agreeable nature, I subscribe to parts of both thoughts. Social business as an idea is indeed old, but its adoption has been patchy at best. The ‘social’ tools of this era can enable greater, better and more consistent adoption, as there is indeed much potential for synthesis when people, processes and technology meet. Because of this, the manifestation of ‘social business’ would be new.
But in my mind, there is quite a dichotomy between Social Business and Enterprise 2.0 anyway, primarily because of intent, and therefore the way they’re pitched as ideas. To use them interchangeably would be doing injustice to both. Enterprise 2.0 focuses on using social technologies to address the objectives of the organisation. But Social Business has a larger role and (for the purpose of a direct comparison) would involve setting organisational objectives with a social-societal perspective and a purpose that people can identify with. In Hugh MacLeod’s words, “the need to belong to something that matters”.
Is one better than the other? I don’t think so and it is perhaps not an apt comparison. Enterprise 2.0 is perhaps a better fit (relatively) to the current organisational frameworks, while Social Business is much more radical. But it is quite possible that over a period of time, an organisation that adopts Enterprise 2.0 will transform into a Social Business. As for social collaboration, it is a process that can fit well into both.
until next time, a social enterprise 🙂
Actually the roots of the movement started in the 90s, with “Knowledge Management” – first with a view to “capture” the information/knowledge held in people’s heads. And when that “extractive” nature of KM didn’t succeed, was replaced with the empowerment of employees – getting them connected via yellow pages/bulletin boards/communities of practice and capturing the discussion.
So from document management we moved to conversations.
Stowe has a take on social business that Andrew doesn’t – he looks at it from an empowering perspective and moving from business as usual to the next level of business – socially connected to the larger ecosystem and empowered employees (Josh Bernoff’s Empowered, and Charlene Li’s Open Leadership – talk about the same thing)
Andrew’s narrative is the Tech as a connector of employees, which is valuable – but doesn’t really touch the philosophical journey the social business must make.
@gautamghosh:disqus Nailed it, and though I still maintain that a comparison is not really the right approach, in the long run, I do feel it’s the philosophical journey that will matter. But maybe ‘walk before you run’?