Library clips

A lot of people have different views on “emergence”, stating that this is the true essence of “enterprise 2.0″.
Using blogs and wikis doesn’t necessarily mean you are being social or are doing “enterprise 2.0″, it’s only when you these tools are certain way, and ultimately when a new social organisational culture has emerged.

Further to this, the best kind of “enterprise 2.0″ is when the participation and contributions are not just Directed In-the-Flow social ways of doing tasks, but moreso when people are Volunteering Above-the-Flow tacit knowledge.

Emergence isn’t just what content emerges from using these social tools, that would have never otherwise emerged. It’s also that these social tools are unstructured (not rigid) allowing people to use them for whatever purpose they like…rather than desiging tools for a specific purpose, we see new ways emerge in how people use these free-form tools.

For more see my posts:
Collaboration, Emergence and Culture
Why km 1.0 failed in a nutshell
KM 2.0 : catalyzing voluntary participation

Emergence is technology populism
- people start using a social or productivity tool as it helps them get work done, and it spreads virally
- it emerges as a tool of choice and method of choice to get things done

Emergence is similar to above but deployed by the enterprise as a bottom-up approach
- a pilot with ground level people may spread virally by word of mouth (rather than a roll-out)
- it emerges as a tool of choice and method of choice to get things done

Emergence is invention in the ways people creatively use free-form unstructured tools
- a team uses wikis to gather input from everyone to make a list
- it emerges as a great use as everyone is now using wikis this way

Emergence is collective intelligence
- a wiki is used to start a glossary of terminology and acronyms used by the enterprise
- it emerges a massive glossary, like wikipedia, via the collaborative input by the whole enterprise

Emergence is evolving ideas
- people have distributed blog conversations and leave comments
- it emerges a new concept or solution…an initial blog post may of had nothing to do with the end solution, but it’s existence spurred related ideas, and debate within the collective evolved a concept that no-one person thought of at the time

Emergence is seeing patterns in explicit data
- people that tag their wikipages, blog posts, bookmarks (folksonomies), etc…are contributing to a collective tag cloud
- it emerges concepts people are talking about, and we can see what they are most and least talking about…this tag cloud analysis reveals what’s going on in the enterprise and decisions can be made from this raw data

Emergence is seeing patterns in implicit data
- people click things leaving behind a recorded trail of what they pay attention to (clicks stream)
- it emerges a way to graph offerings like What’s Popular, and Personal Recommendations

Emergence is a new culture change in organisation dynamics and autonomy
- people are being socially productive using social tools; by participating, contributing, being visible and having conversations, they are drawing on the social captial to get things done, learn and create
- it emerges a learning organisation of an autonomous nature where people are tuning in and particpating to knowledge flow…you are aware of what’s going on, and perhaps the right projects and tasks fall into your lap (the right person is doing the right job as the enterprise social graph is aware of everyone and everything).

[ADDED 13/11/08: Emergence is the platform. “VCs usually don’t like the idea of a “platform”. They want to see a killer app first. But, it is quickly becoming obvious that having a platform IS the killer app. Or at least the killer differentiator. By platform, I mean something beyond a simple API. It is a mechanism for letting 3rd parties add value to your application through extensions and plug-ins.
WordPress, with all the 3rd party themes and application plugins is a great example of something that gets better as more people use it.”]

Explanation

Andrew McAfee
“Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.”

Mike Gotta
“The emergent use of social software platforms” vs. “use of emergent software platforms”

Mike Gotta
“Enterprise 2.0 is not about “all collaboration”, “all types of information sharing” or “all types of communication”. The context of E2.0 is anchored around “emergence”. Addressing organizational dynamics, which includes culture, is important to fully leverage and sustain the goals associated with E2.0″

Gordon Taylor
“The traditional approach is to build something autocratic, and deployed from the top down, that works along vertical reporting lines. Working this way, silos of information are preserved. and communication is kept within the traditional areas.

For a system to be emergent, the emphasis needs to be on how quickly the users will adopt the system rather than on its structure. That explains why a hallmark of these Web 2.0 technologies is that they are accessible and less restrictive.”

Gordon Taylor
“Emergent systems are decentralized, self-organizing and organic — the antithesis of the top-down, rules-based engineering approach taken by most enterprise software. To build an emergent system — an ecosystem — you target the bottom of the pyramid, building it up one user, one connected node, at a time. The value of an emergent system is derived from its flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness.

Emergence isn’t another feature to add to the enterprise technology stack. Emergence isn’t a feature at all — it’s an approach to solving a problem.”

UPDATE: I just noticed Ray Sims has a post about emergence.