Web 2.0: Use , create and evaluate it

Yesterday Andrew McAfee wrote a excellent post on what characterizes Enterprise Web 2.0 software. Key points from the blog is that Enterprise Web 2.0 software must be:

• Freeform
• Frictionless
• Emerging

Use it
All software team members should use Enterprise Web 2.0 tools to learn about the possibilities it opens up and to improve the processes. Especially Web 2.0 software is good at capturing the messy parts legacy processes and other tools has failed to encompass. Most Agile projects has already adopted wikis, for supporting the process, to scale beyond the ideal number of project members. Today many projects are geographically distributed or members telecommute. Here the social media part of Web 2.0 will be valuable.

Create it
During the whole process of developing software the characteristics of Web 2.0 software described by McAfee must be consulted.
These abilities must be ubiquitous in the software design and architecture both when developing brand new Web 2.0 software but also when extending legacy software with modern features.

These characteristics will probably evolve so stay tuned the Web 2.0-sphere.
Most developers will not create all features of a software product in the projects they are participating in. This will certainly be true for Web 2.0 software since a lot of Web 2.0 services are present already on the internet. They will only integrate with these software to add value to the service or vice versa. Software products may even thrive on existing social software with large user bases. By authenticating with e.g. OpenId or Facebook Connect you instantly get access to a large mass of users. Facebook users will probably soon be so spoiled that they may even try new services that does not support Facebook Connect. It also useful to look for open dataformats, such as those described at Microformats.

Evaluate it

Developers and others must evaluate existing software Web 2.0 products and services that they have to integrate with. Short time to release and economical constraints forces reuse of existing software/services. Especially reuse (social media) that has large user bases can be fruitful and be a critical success factor.
The characteristics McAfee describes should be used when evaluating Web 2.0 software.

The Economy and Innovation

Nowadays a lot of things seems to happen that will influence on enterprises and individuals. The economy takes unpredictable turns, and innovation may suffer from capital starvation because more restrictive and careful financial investment policies.

Innovation inevitably comes with risk, and a lot of investors will be much more careful in respect to if and where they place their money. Careful investors may perform a much more thorough investigation of potential investments on beforehand than before.

My guess is that projects that has a solid innovation model, based on Enterprise Web 2.0, will have an advantage. This innovation model should include collaboration from all stakeholders, including its users. What this means to each and every project will vary, and Enterprise Web 2.0 must be adapted to the target organization(s) and individuals and vice versa.

Open Innovation can be seen as Enterprise Web 2.0 in an innovation context. Open Innovation recognizes that it is not affordable or rational that enterprises invents products solely from it's own research. Knowledge is distributed and must be gathered into collaboration.

I think Open Innovation can be taken one step further fully utilizing Web 2.0 software, with Social Media and Wikinomics to enable Mass Collaboration at a large scale. A popular term for this is Crowdsourcing.

Enterprise Web 2.0 connects knowledgeable people in new ways through social media, and collaboration through wikis is far more effective than email. Wikis is there for every interested person to read and contribute, and is not limited to mailing list. Further everyone is informed at the same time, at least all those subscribing to feeds from the wiki.

The community that arises around an idea or project will be a part of the backing capital, that nurtures it with capital, energy and direction. When there are several strong (economical or knowledgable) stakeholders involved, risk is spread.

So how can a software development enterprise start thriving from Open Innovation? Guess there will be no easy answer for that. In general I think it will be good to start in the small, opening up extension points that business partners can be interested in collaborating and provide value added services. Discussions and documentation must be located at a wiki, and people should be able to get acquainted with each other through some social media.

Opening up extension points in a software product, clearly puts some requirements on its architecture. To begin with, explore microformats and authentication solutions like OpenId, then consider if other formats must be invented.

I have established a Google Site, a subsite of my employer Webstep's site, for this subject. Please read more at http://sites.google.com/a/webstep.no/openinnovation/