E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Why Wikis Are Conquering the Enterprise

In the past, you may recall how I have been talking a few times about one of my favourite social software tools out there for teams, communities, and whatever other groups, to get together to collaborate and share knowledge with one another in order to be able to codify some of that tacit knowledge that abounds all over the place. Yes, indeed, wikis. Well, to continue building up further on that wiki social software evangelism here is a really interesting article that I have bumped into thanks to elearningpost titled Why Wikis Are Conquering the Enterprise by Michael Hickins and  that I though you would also be interested in reading up further.

In that particular article you would be able to find some interesting and relevant facts as to how much wikis are actually impacting the way knowledge workers get to share knowledge and collaborate within the enterprise, in such a way that they have been able to provide much more value in most cases than making use of some other traditional collaborative tools. For instance, the prediction from Gartner analyst Kathy Harris indicating that "by 2009, 50 percent of U.S. companies will be using wikis". That is just huge, don’t you think ?

What I really liked about the article itself as well, when conveying how relevant wikis are becoming within the enterprise, is the fact that their adoption has been promoted following the trends from the consumer market regarding its own acceptance: from bottom to top. So there would be a good chance that plenty of different project teams and communities may already be using wikis to collaborate, even though companies may not have adopted them widely just yet. Thus those grassroots efforts seem to be having the most significant impact within corporations: that of knowledge workers trying to get their jobs done through the frequent use of wikis to reach out to others and share whatever they would need or want to.

Another important aspect from the article itself that highlights the impact from wikis within businesses is the fact that they are helping out big time boosting innovation by allowing knowledge workers to find a space where they can freely hang out, share what they know, collaborate with others, make it better, reuse it, implement it, in short, innovating at its best. Here is another interesting quote that reflects on that fostering of innovation within businesses:

"Wikis also help address another problem companies have struggled with for years, which is how to collect and retain knowledge that is in people’s heads or in unstructured documents like e-mail.

Previous so-called knowledge-management solutions have foundered because people are loathe to spend time thanklessly regurgitating their experiences into some knowledge repository for the good of the company.

Wikis, on the other hand, are a more natural way for people to explain their thought processes and get kudos along the way."

That is just so spot on ! And totally in agreement with the initial paragraph I wrote above from this particular weblog post. More and more knowledge workers are finding their way through to wikis in order to share more of that tacit knowledge, that know how, that is actually helping enterprises codify most of the knowledge that was not possible in the recent past using whatever other traditional Intellectual Capital repositories. For many years, plenty of people have been having issues with sharing that Intellectual Capital in different places with which they couldn’t find a single connection. So their knowledge was stored consistently rather in their heads, or their own personal computers, or some obscured databases with access to only a few, which would make it really hard to find and reuse that IC.

However, wikis are becoming ever more popular than ever before because they have got that inherent flavour of social sharing. Sharing within a group, i.e. a team or a community, with some very high visibility on everything that is happening and with some instant gratification of having knowledge workers working through different wiki pages adding content on top of each other’s content. Yes, that gratifying feeling that they are owning part of the knowledge shared along with some others and that they are helping by contributing into something bigger. I know that some folks out there would probably say that most people do not feel comfortable with that. And that is perhaps too true, and an issue to do with the fact that people may not have been able to make the switch just yet and start to trust  each other some more in order to do the right thing.

After all, they are all on the same boat building up a better knowledge repository that could be reused all over the place at a later time. So that wide adoption of wikis within the enterprise may not be just yet at the level you would expect. And that is fine. There is no rush. The grassroots efforts I mentioned above are there already. And they are quite strong, so I am sure that it would just be a matter of time before wikis become second nature and part of the business as usual processes. And you know what? I can’t wait for it to happen, because the very moment that takes place social software will certainly transform enterprises into Enterprise 2.0. And that is not a fad. It is here to stay.

Tags: Wikis, Social Software, Web 2.0, Social Networking, Enterprise Wikis, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, KM 2.0, Innovation, Tacit Knowledge, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Communities, Teamwork, Intellectual Capital, Explicit Knowledge

A Weekly Glimpse of elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog – Week 44

As you may have noticed, yesterday I didn’t get a chance to post anything here, in elsua, as things were a bit hectic everywhere and some of that stuff needed my immediate attention. But now that is over here I am, once again, sharing with you that weekly weblog post where I try to put together some of the most popular discussions that have been taking place over at my other Internet weblog: elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog. It looks like last week’s discussions were more popular and significant around the subject of social software and how it is actually impacting the enterprise in its adoption. So you would be able to find out some interesting new facts about how Web 2.0 is entering the corporate world along with some other productivity tools that I have become very fond of and which I am hoping you would be able to check out for yourself further a bit, if you are also looking for some advice in that area.

So with all that said, here you have got the Top 5 most popular weblog post from elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog over the course of last week. Hope you enjoy them just as much as I did putting them together:

1. Importance of Empowering Your People through Trust and Social Software: While I was browsing through my daily ITtoolbox RSS feeds I have actually bumped into a fantastic weblog post put together by Larry Cone that touches base on how you, as a manager, can get the most out of your knowledge workers by simply empowering them to do what they need to do with just some little help: your trust. Check out Importance of Empowering Your People where you would be able to read some interesting insights as to what top management should be and how it should distance itself more and more from that traditional mentality of command-and-control that was not going anywhere. At least, not where the business and the knowledge workers would be getting the most benefits from.

2. Newzie – Finding Your Near-Perfect RSS Feed Client In the following weblog post I have tried to detail what are two of the most powerful RSS feed reader clients I have been exposed in the last few months as a way to actually introduce the latest release made a few days ago about one of them, which has now become one of my two favourites and for a number of reasons. That RSS feed client is Newzie and here is a small review of why you may want to look into it yourself. Yes, not to worry, it is also freeware.

3. How Is Your Email Etiquette?: It looks like this particular weblog post seems to have been rather popular as well last week, just as much as the previous week. Somehow it looks like e-mail still pulls its act together as the most preferred collaboration tool (If you can say that) and knowledge workers definitely want to know how to get the most out of it !

4. KMWorld and Intranets 2006: October 31st – November 2nd – California: Got anything to do from October 31st to November the 2nd? Are you going to miss out on the Knowledge Management event of events? Want to have a sneak preview of what such an incredible event is going to be like? Then look no further. This weblog post will provide you with some details around the "KMWorld and Intranets 2006" event, taking place this year in San Jose, California. The KM event of events! Find out why…

5. Web 2.0 for the Rest of Us – Another Directory of Wonderful Things: Here is another weblog post where I get to comment on another Web 2.0 directory of useful social software applications that folks can go and check out. In the past I have talked several times about different options available out there and this one, GO2WEB20, is just another one worth while having a look and investigating further. Why not? After all don’t we all making lists of everything ?

Well, that was it again, folks. As you may have noticed once of the things that I have been doing with this type of weblog posts is to basically grab the syndicated summary of the weblog posts and added them as a short description of what the weblog entries are all about and those where the article may be about a subject we may have seen in previous weeks I would just a short commentary about it indicating my thoughts on the actual post a week later. Hopefully, you would be able to find those entries just as interesting as I have. And if you would want to dive into the conversations feel free to do so over here or rather over at elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog. Both ways would work for me. Till next week! And time now for the next weblog post…

Tags: elsua, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Trust, Social Software, Web 2.0, Social Networking, Newzie, E-mail, Etiquette, KMWorld, KM2006, GO2WEB20