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RE: Enterprise 2.0's is beyond a crock. It's dead
pevans-greenwood Updated - 10th Nov 2010
Nice summary of the argument. People all too often forget that the point of business is to be in business. Stuff like wikis etc can be nice, but if they don't move the bottom or top line then they're a distraction.

As you rightly point out, most of the noise around E2.0 and social business is either buzzword compliance or someone trying to refresh their brand. Smart consumers/customers are ignoring the discussion.

A friend of mine ( Mr Mulholland over at Capgemini ) nicely summarised this when he pointed out that business only really cares about three things.

Changing the cost of production.
Creating new products or services which customers want.
Creating new ways to communicate with customers.

(I seem to be quoting this a lot at the moment )

Social Media for most intents and purposed is just a tool to communicate with customers earlier in the sales cycle. Enterprise 2.0 is a tool to improve employee communication and capture (some) tacit knowledge. These are all good things, if you need them; however, most/many businesses don't need them.

I think Seth Godin backed into this question when he argued that Jazz is more interesting than bowling. The idea is that we'd all rather be a creative, improvising Jazz musician than a do-the-same-thing-every-time bowler; so why do we treat business like bowling rather than Jazz?

The reality of business today means that most people will be bowlers, and the best they can aspire for is to be road crew for the Jazz musicians, as business has always needed (and will always need) a lot more road crew (and bowlers) than musicians. Until we change this fact, we can expect command and control to remain, and both social business design and e2.0 will be niche plays for the majority of the business community.
ie8 fix

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