SocialText and BlueOxen are similar in that we both are interested in
collaborative tools, and that we both share similar philosophies about
tools. SocialText sells these tools as enterprise applications,
however, whereas BlueOxen is focused on understanding how best to use
and improve these tools and on disseminating that understanding
widely.
Over the weekend I listened to IBM’s Dave Snowdon discussing the need
for organisations to try lots of options and focus on emerging
successes rather than to try to define what would be successful and
then only try out that option.
A metaphor for this would be starting lots of fires. Some
will be quickly extinguished by their environment, some will burn a bit
but go out and some will become the centre of attention encouraging
people to add wood or dance and sing around the flames.
Absolutely. In contexts where experiments costs little, it makes sense
to try many things, even if you expect most of them to fail. The Web is
just such an environment, which is why we're seeing so much
experimentation all around.
Ming writes about a few experiments that indicate "just how deeply social suggestion can penetrate the neural mesh through which we
think we see hard-and-solid facts."
