Who Should Attend

Our June 1 - 3, 2009 program is designed for those who have responsibility for some aspect of Enterprise 2.0 deployments:

• CEOs, CIOs, COOs, and other top level managers
• Division heads and line managers who make decisions about allocating resources to Enterprise 2.0 projects
• Line managers responsible for vendor selection, product configuration choices, rollout plans, and ongoing support
• Sales and service consultants

You can download our program brochure in PDF format.

Program Description

Tagging. Recommender Systems. RSS feeds. Reputation systems. Wikis. Blogs. Online communities. Social networks. Prediction markets. In the consumer space, Web 2.0 technologies have unleashed a social revolution: millions of people now contribute content rather than just consume it; reviews, ratings, and other metadata help people navigate and choose; and social tools help people connect to and stay connected with other people.

Software vendors now offer a variety of Web 2.0 technologies for use behind the firewall within enterprises, or to connect enterprises with suppliers and customers. Simply copying features that are popular in consumer applications and hoping that employees will make good use of them effectively is not a successful Enterprise 2.0 strategy. The central questions addressed in the course are:

• Which technology features are most useful for meeting business goals?
• What organizational and social interventions should accompany technology rollout so as to encourage productive use?
• What metrics should be used to assess the potential value of an Enterprise 2.0 project, and to manage the project on an ongoing basis?

The course offers a conceptual framework for understanding the Enterprise 2.0 space in terms of business functions rather than technology features. It also provides a grounding in underlying principles from economics and social and organizational psychology that provide guideposts for thinking about the introduction and rollout of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise.

Participants will learn underlying concepts that will be of long-lasting value for current and future decision-making about the use of social computing features in the corporate environment. The core conceptual ideas are:

• Everyone can be a source as well as a consumer of information
• People’s choices of actions as well as their words are good sources of information
• Effective socio-technical systems involve the design not only of technical features, but also social features such as incentives and norms

Program Take-Aways

• Which technology features are most useful for meeting business goals?
• Which organizational and social interventions should accompany technology rollout so as to encourage productive use?
• Which metrics should be used to assess the potential value of an Enterprise 2.0 project and to manage the project on an ongoing basis?

Session Outline

DAY ONE
8 a.m.: Breakfast
9 a.m.: Session begins

Introduction

Learn the core concepts of people as information sources and the socio-technical systems perspective. Take a whirlwind tour of social computing in the consumer space. As a group we will interactively identify opportunities and challenges of porting interesting social and technical features to the enterprise space.

Vendors and Products

There is a dizzying array of products available. What are the differences and how should you choose among them?

Network Analysis

Network analysis tools help you to measure and visualize the ways that people and information are connected to each other in an organization. Learn what to look for in the visualizations and how to interpret the metrics.

Case Study: Team Assembly

Hear from a company that has been using network analysis and other social computing tools to help assemble global teams for client engagements.

Dinner and Networking Reception

Interact with fellow participants and the instructors.

DAY TWO
8 a.m.: Breakfast
9 a.m.: Session begins

Incentive-Centered Design

Build it and they will come. If only it were that simple. Many internal knowledge sharing projects fail because the people who have to do the work aren’t the ones who get the benefits. Fundamental concepts from information economics such as signaling and network externalities, as well as psychological concepts such as norms and priming, provide a framework for designing social computing projects.

The Launch Phase

It’s hard to start group blogs, wikis, and discussion forums. A lot of their eventual value comes from the presence of other people, people who may or may not join. Learn about a wide range of social and technical interventions that are available to help get new projects to “critical mass.”

Motivating Contribution

Even after the launch phase, there is a need to motivate people to contribute to blogs, wikis, and discussion forums. Learn how to make the tasks intrinsically rewarding, as well as when to provide intangible and tangible rewards.

Getting Questions Answered

In big organizations, there are lots of questions people ask that are easy for someone else to answer. How can you leverage that question answering power without overloading any one person? When is it better to codify answers to frequently asked questions? When is it better to help questioners find an expert? And when is better to let the experts find the questions?

Case Study: Knowledge Sharing in Online Communities

Hear from a company that has been using social computing tools to encourage knowledge sharing.

DAY THREE
8 a.m.: Breakfast
9 a.m.: Session begins

Predicting the Future

Prediction markets allow people to place “bets” whose payoff depends on whether some event occurs. Collectively, the bets offer a group’s prediction about whether the event will occur. Prediction markets have been very accurate in predicting presidential election outcomes, predicting product sales at Hewlett-Packard, and predicting product ship dates at Microsoft. When is the wisdom of the crowd better than that of any individual, and how can prediction markets be organized to elicit that wisdom?

Metrics and ROI

Some social computing projects promise very real, but diffuse and hard to measure benefits such as improved morale or better environmental scanning. Others promise very concrete benefits, such as reduced product support staff or providing more accurate predictions for a high stakes decision about which product to market heavily for the holiday shopping season. Take home a spreadsheet to assess ROI for your projects.

Program concludes at 1 p.m. A box lunch will be provided.