This panel was interesting in that it came accross as Collaborative business being generally more depressed, compared to other areas being discussed. That's because other areas are at the beginning of the adoption lifecycle and the guys on the panel were more immersed with the key customer issues of the day -- fixing leaky pipes.
Collaboration's proposition is that it saves people's time, above the other stuff. Today time isn't that valuable, so you have less innovation and instead are focused on applying existing technology to leaky pipe hard cost savings problems.
- David Weinberger, JOHO
- John Parkinson, CGEY Americas CTO, has spent $1b
- Narry Singh, Commerce One
- John Hagel, Consulting & Author
Collaboration has no meaning unless you are in France where it has a very precise meaning. Lots of collaborative apps: defining best practices, document management, bug databases, open source, eBay, epinions, smart mobs, workflow apps, sales mailing list.
John P -- there is no good collaborative software. 90% of the difference is email, beyond that its hard to find a difference/impact.
John H -- why still bundle activities within enterprises? collaborative still focused on manual data processing and distribution, not enough time left over for real value added collaboration to enhance processes.
Narry -- is the mandate for collaboration at all time high? High tech is increasingly outsourcing. Now one process has many companies, not one company have many processes. Governance, incentive and dispute management is what's missing(Hard part is changing behavor, IMHO), but that's not a lack of technical development
John P -- the successes have been the bottom up developments. Too much diversity for a good answer to arise.
John H -- agrees on governance. Company most advanced in these issues is a Chinese company, LiYungFong(sp?), loosely coupled business practices because of an absence of tech. Now that web services are available they can code, but not be locked in.
Narry -- but connectivity is not collaboration.
David -- top down demands for governance counters the bottom up development
Rheingold -- dont drop the discussion of social aspects. Englebart quote: people use language, artifacts and training, but people focus on the artifacts
John P -- 3 email populations:
- people who know how to use email
- old folks who use others for email
- others that dont get it
Which purposes did the collaboration tools fail in?
John P -- focus has been in KM, cant entice people to get them to use/share.
Narry -- only 5% of collaborative activity is automated. Buying fails in content (semantics) and context management (exceptions) -- where collaboration breaks.
John H -- on problems:
- Structuring relationships -- a business problem
- Coordinating day to day activities around the process itself -- info aint flowing today, tech is a barrier, web services might address this
- Exception handling -- not much time to deal with these issues
Dave Winer -- Yahoo Groups is good. Used Instant Outlining for collaboration.
Joi Ito -- people collaborate because they enjoy it. take a more anthropological view of technology (Joi is right in some respects, although it doesnt apply to leaky pipes -- the real opportunity is making software adapt to people and social networks, not the other way around)
John H -- aggregate IT productivity benefit specific to industries (6 in the McKinsey study, the one who were driven by a single company to change like WalMart)
Phil Wolff -- loose vs. structured? social software and unstructured solutions that are being widely adopted transitioning to structured world?
Narry: you can only structure processes to a certain point and you need service oriented architectures to get the benefit of the technology.
Doc -- we are hacking the shit out of your panel right now. the organic unstructured activity in the audience vs. structured panel. Narry: Maslow's hierarchy of collaboration.
John P -- ERP was largest waste of money undertaken by civilization in two centuries. Narry: formatted data, transaction backbone. Issue is getting ERP to work with heterogeneous data and people.
P.S. -- The Key Issue: people's time isnt valuable right now and the value proposition of collaborative software is saving time. Also great to see Narry again.
