One of the interesting sessions today was by Andrew McAfee from MIT, discussing Enterprise 2.0. His research is focused on social software platforms like Twitter, Blogging, Discussion Forums, etc. He started by discussing human altruism and why in a net-based social environment, individuals will choose to help others with their questions.
As an example he told of a personal situation where he was unable to get his key to work on a rental car. Using Twitter, he sent out a message looking for solutions and within 15 minutes had over a dozen solutions proposed. His belief is that we will jump in to help others because it makes us feel good about sharing our expertise and because the internet provides such a low barrier to helping others.
Based on his research he had these recommendations for organizations looking to improve their collaboration and knowledge-base and effectiveness using Web 2.0 social software:
1. Stop obsessing about the possible negatives upfront
2. Reduce the barriers to altruism via the net
3. Use tools that let structure arise naturally rather than enforcing it at the front
4. Focus on involvement not structure
5. Allow the wisdom of the crowd to work. The collective intelligence is very accurate over time.
6. Build communities that provide status indicators for regular contributors
7. Don’t try to replace email and the Inbox
8. Focus on building knowledge relationships, not just collaboration
One of his examples for the wisdom of the crowd was that social network systems more accurately predicted the final electoral college results in the past election than any set of polls or expert opinions.
He strongly recommends that businesses leverage these new social tools for the benefits they offer. These tools can improve knowledge transfer, build relationships, improve problem solving, recognize expertise, aggregate organizational knowledge and improve training for new employees.
The real key, in his opinion, is to avoid over-controlling the environment and to provide the right incentives for participation.