Why are people peddling this drivel?

by admin on June 2, 2009

in Innovation

I thought the days of FUD were largely over. My naivety – obviously. But when I read this piece on mycustomer.com, written by folks out of INSEAD I had to do a double take. It says:

The loudly trumpeted Web 2.0 business revolution has been frustrated by a powerful paradox. Advocates claim that Web 2.0 platforms, such as wikis, boost staff productivity by harnessing collective intelligence and fostering innovation, which in turn can improve the customer experience. The hard reality, however, is that many corporate managers fear that these same tools will actually undermine productivity at the office. So how can the productivity paradox be reconciled?

It’s important to grasp the basic dynamics of Web 2.0 platforms. Wikis, blogs and online social networks are essentially horizontal and open. This explains why they are frequently regarded as threatening inside corporate hierarchies, whose architecture is vertical and closed. The social architecture of Web 2.0 tools is thus considered incompatible with organisational environments.

We’ve heard all this before…ad nauseum. What’s worse is that the authors cite ‘hard facts’ with no reference to the sources and no indication of their vintage. One of their key claims:

Some estimates have put the negative impact on the UK economy at £132 million a day……

comes from ‘research’ that is TWO years old.

Bear in mind these are INSEAD people, supposedly one of the world’s top management schools. If I’d used research of this age as a principle leg upon which to develop an argument without reference to more recent research when I was doing undergraduate studies I’d have earned a fail. Perhaps there isn’t any. I’ve certainly not seen any. If anything, I’d argue that the pages of digital verbiage devoted to Facebook and Twitter suggest that business does recognize the value these services can deliver. Even if it is in a fromative manner.

A worrying feature of the article is the logical inconsistency between internal and external arguments they use in setting up this ‘leg’ of the productivity paradox to which they refer. They use the fear of time wasting while people access external social networks as a way of setting up a strawman argument that somehow gets parsed to internal power issues.

The fact that power domains are under threat – if that’s the correct term – is certainly something I have seen but experience suggests the benefits outweigh any perceived disadvantages. Take possibly the most buttoned up organization you can imagine: the US intelligence community. Now check out what Andrew McAfee says about Intellipedia. Are these INSEAD folk really trying to tell me that business can’t get the sort of value this case study describes?

In fairness, the authors go on to establish counter arguments, but again without referencing success stories. It’s doubly frustrating because while case studies unquestionably remain thin on the ground and arguments often appear shallow, the authors don’t offer any real insights into how objections may be overcome. Perhaps they could call up Euan Semple or take a cue from this simple statement:

Social networks are about finding stuff. Finding documents, finding people, even finding human contact.

It will surprise no-one who has read this blog to know this statement makes so much sense to me. It is the essence of professional life where answers need review, input and constant refreshment. I’d prefer to stick to that reality.

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Tagged as: Andrew McAfee, Euan Semple, Web 2.0

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