It’s been a while that I have published something on this weblog - still a lot of things have been gone on in the world since then. One can unfortunately state that we are in a major collapse of the world’s financial systems - with downturning effects on all money-reliant markets - means every market. We have to painfully realize that the fundament of our economy system, a robust financial market, is build on a pile of sand and collides even faster because of the global interdependencies.
So - we are heading for some hard times because a bunch of investment bankers were too greedy to look closely at what they are trading. In a recent post Markus Breuer links to a very nice article of the New Yorker about “The Rationality of Panic“:
People don’t generally panic in the sunshine. They panic in the dark. And we are in the dark about what assets and liabilities are truly held in what has been properly labeled the “shadow banking system”–the global aggregation of hedge funds, privately placed debt securities, and the hedging or insurance contracts known as credit default swaps. By some accounts, the value of assets held in this shadow system is as large or larger than then value of the assets held in the formal, regulated banking system. But nobody really knows, as there is no transparent market for many of the securities of concern, and no systematic disclosure of assets and liabilities to government regulators–not here, not in Europe, and not in Asia, either.
And as transparency is a key condition for a working market structure we do not have to wonder why it is not working. The market is closed and private though it plays a fundamental role on all other markets - hopefully the crisis will change this and leads us to a more open and transparent financial system where the profits for all the actors may be a lot lesser (because of a working market!).
And despite all the overrated hype about Web 2.0 the underlying principles of easy-to-use and decentralized information sharing systems is a way to more transparency of markets. This might give the chance of turning from a seller’s market of scarcity to a buyer’s market of abundance. This leads to another great post of JP Rangaswami discussing the failures of the “scarcity economics“:
You see, scarcity economics is about hiding needles in haystacks; abundance economics is about making haystacks out of needles. What would you prefer?
So - we have to see the financial crisis as a major outburst of the old world as we know it and hope for a change by a far more transparent and decentralized eco-system supported by the new conversational landscape of social media.
The diagram actually visualizes a 3×2 matrix with two axes - one standing for the evolution of dezentralizing the information systems by adding the value of collective information and actions - and the the other representing the evolution from information (contextual data) to knowledge (action-related information) towards competence (person-related knowledge).
Transfering Richard’s diagram to this systemization led me to the following matrix:
Well - this diagram is a “hot shot” and I am eager for your thoughts.
It has been quite a while that I have posted to this blog but actually I am quite busy planning and organizing some new exciting and challenging conferences - I am therefore hardly able to keep up with all the discussions. In the sense of this weblog I also have very much “dezentralized” my writings to several places - if you still want to catch up with me then take a look at my FriendFeed that aggregates a lot of these sources (but be aware not everything is in English!). But I will also try to get back my writing efforts to this place.
This said I’d like to promote briefly the discussions on our Enterprise2Open community blog project - and reflect the issues of us cutting the short leashes of driving the Enterprise 2.0 discussions on our own. The Enterprise2Open blog was originally installed by Martin Koser and Frank Hamm as a weblog project that helps to organize the Enterprise 2 Open at CeBIT this year. This summer I have talked to Martin on the prolongation of the project with a new focus and new approach. The mission we defined for this weblog project is to help bonding the E2.0 community more closely together as well as documentating corporate cases in this field.
Following this path I started some first profile interviews with E2.0 experts - see this and this. I’m still hunting down some more folks on this - if you have ideas on who to interview, feel free to tell me. Furthermore Martin and i have recently started a case study project we want to publish soon on a wiki at Enterprise 2 Open. With this we are trying to documentate the cases out there - starting with those that are being discussed at our events (here, here, here, here and here). For the last mentioned event, the Enterprise 2.0 FORUM on Sept. 18th, Prof. Dr. Joachim Niemeier, one of Germany’s expert in the E2.0 field and moderator of the event, has conducted some interviews with the speakers - that are also being discussed out there - see #e20forum at Del.ico.us.
With this I also want to answer a tweet of Andrew McAfee yesterday questioning how far European companies are behind in implementing E2.0 concepts. As all the IT and Web ideas are mostly being invented in the US it is without doubt that Europe always is lagging behind. Especially when it comes towards concepts and methods that are based on less hierarchical and more open principles for organizational structures like the collaborative idea of E2.0 our cultural background is hindering the adoption. Control and structure are still two core values that drive the taught and conducted management doctrine - and can be explainded very much anthropological as the state of power within the social structures of the European culture were long time ruled by clerical and monarchical constitutions where as the American culture started with the economical constitution.
Regarding the companies where E2.0 concepts are adopted very early and likely to succeed I assume from the anthropological explanation that those firms are mainly global players with non-European headquarters or at least strong non-European branches within the organization. Examples for this from our case lists are Deutsche Bank, Adidas, BT but also ABB or Motorla. They are characterized by bottom-up approach regarding their E2.0 projects. The typical German case - in comparison - is characterised rather by a top-down approach like ProSiebenSat1 (corporate Intranet with social features), B. Braun Melsungen (corporate knowledge & collaboration management), Bosch (corporate wiki strategy), Fraport (corporate wiki strategy) as well as Festo (corporate wiki and social networking approach). Most of these cases have problems with the corporate-wide roll-out and acceptance of the E2.0 idea - though they are already further than a lot of other companies.
Therefore coming back towards the question of Andrew McAfee - yes - Europe is always running late in the adoption of new IT and Internet ideas, but there are projects and some of them are leap frogging the adoption.
In der Publikation der ersten Referenten-Interviews zum Social Media FORUM (siehe Interview mit Ehrhardt Heinold und Markus Franz) bin ich auch noch einmal über die Definitorik von John Batelle zu Conversational Media gegangen. Dabei ist mir folgender Satz entgegengesprungen (Quelle):
And while the major media companies are unparalleled when it comes to running companies that live in the Packaged Goods Media world, running major companies in the Conversational Media field require quite a different set of skills, and consideration of radically different economic and business models - models which, to be perfectly frank, conflict directly with the models which support and protect Packaged Goods Media-based companies.
Das stellt mich vor die Frage, ob das klassische Online-Medienmodell und Social bzw. Conversational Media nicht vereinbar sind. Was meint Ihr dazu? Ich bin gespant, was unsere Praxis-Referenten auf dem Social Media FORUM zu dieser These sagen.
Unbestreitbar ist wohl aber, dass es eines Wandels bedarf. Ehrhardt Heinold sieht dabei allerdings Probleme darin, dass
die oft nicht klaren Erlösmodelle und die fehlenden internen Voraussetzungen wie Personal, Knowhow oder finanzielle Mittel
den Wandel schwierig machen. Interessant ist in diesem Zusammenhang auch ein Kommentar von Nic Brisbourne bei John Batelle (Quelle):
I think successful enterprises will increasingly delegate power to the edge and senior management’s job will change from control to co-ordination.
Fazit: Web 2.0 Konzepte können nur durch eine dezentralisierte Unternehmenskultur realisiert werden.
Seit ich ihn ‘89 mal auf N3 mit einem Live-Konzert gesehen habe, bin ich ein Fan, MP3-Konsument und Käufer aller seiner Alben (soviel zum Thema Verlust der zentralisierten Musikbranche durch den P2P-MP3-Tausch) - wenn etwas gut ist, will ich es in meiner Sammlung haben(!):
