Olivier Amprimo, an Enterprise 2.0 practitioner living in Paris, sent me the book review excerpted below a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been trying to decide what to do with it since, as much of what is recounted in the brief (and superficial, IMO) review is old news to many who have been paying attention to the evolution of things Web.
That said, I found it interesting that they zeroed in on "horizontal status … based largely on performance and expertise, and what you actually do, which we call a democratisation of status". I think I’ve written about that before .. the post "Our Agreements Are Our Structures" comes to mind.
As I’ve written too many times now, I wonder what will happen to the methods of job evaluation, which still inform the structures of a large majority of organisations. Actually, I do have a sense of where the practice may go … if we start with the purpose of a work project (and most work is now a project, in one form or another) and use "contribution" as a means of organizing skills, competencies, and task allocation and load, we’d have the start of a new methodology .. but that’s something for another post.
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[ Snip … ]
Web 2.0, Fraser elaborates, is a ‘networked’ web, as opposed to Web 1.0, the web of the 1990s, predominantly a ‘push’ web where you found information. So being a networked web, Web 2.0 is a platform which Dutta and Fraser have termed “horizontal” – horizontality being key to their book, as organisations tend to be structured along a vertical logic or network.
Therefore with the two networks converging because of current market conditions, the untold virtues of Web 2.0 are surfacing. “The Web 2.0 world allows (senior executives), for example, a wonderful chance to connect directly with people across the organisation at much lower levels. It allows them to connect with some of their customers and stakeholders across the world. It allows them to get more direct feedback. It allows them to also participate in this process of creating the world we’re living in today,” says Dutta.
“In the Web 2.0 world, those traditional notions are shattered by a horizontal notion of status which is based largely on performance and expertise, and what you actually do, which we call democratisation of status. In other words, status is sort of flattened. It’s not based on what your title is. It’s based on what you can contribute to a dialogue or to a project or, if in a corporation, to some kind of corporate challenge,” adds Fraser.
Beyond the boardroom
Web 2.0 has even gone beyond the boardroom. According to Fraser, many corporations are now using Web 2.0 tools for Research and Development (R&D), which was virtually unheard of in the traditional, vertical and silo-based structure of most corporations. Big companies, he says, even Fortune 500 firms such as Proctor & Gamble and General Motors are now inventing new products horizontally by collaborating outside the boundaries of their companies and networking with their customers.
“So the notion is that when you have horizontal networks it’s a much more efficient way to find true expertise because the reality is that it’s not necessarily true that the smartest and most innovative guys are the guys in the white frocks who are working for your company. There are all kinds of expertise outside and in all kinds of unlikely, unexpected places. So Web 2.0 harnesses what is often called collective intelligence and the way you harness that is by going horizontally,” he adds.
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