McKinsey: "Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work"

Earlier this month, McKinsey & Company released a story called "Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work."  Since NewsGator has been fortunate to work with many leading-edge companies and thinkers on enterprise social computing and Web 2.0 features for the enterprise, we believe we have a great understanding of this space, and we also totally agree with McKinsey & Company's positive assessment of the importance of Web 2.0 tools for the enterprise.

For one, we concur with McKinsey's assessment that "Web 2.0, the latest wave in corporate technology adoptions, could have a more far-reaching organizational impact than technologies adopted in the 1990s -- such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management." (Note: see clickable image at above.)  They rightly suggest that the latest Web 2.0 tools for enterprise "have a strong bottom-up element and engage a broad base of workers."

We believe that they're also correct to opine that "earlier technologies often required expensive and lengthy technical implementations, as well as the realignment of formal business processes."  And their suggestion that -- "the new tools are different.  While they are inherently disruptive and often challenge an organization and its culture, they are not technically complex [and I might add, or expensive] to implement.  Rather, they are a relatively lightweight overlay to the existing infrastructure"  -- is spot on.

Through their polling of global executives, McKinsey believes that though the spending on Web 2.0 tools for enterprise "is a relatively modest $1 billion," they predict that the level of investment, despite the current recession, should grow by more than 15% annually over the coming 5 years -- a certainly non-insignificant amount.

In this report, McKinsey identifies six key factors that they believe are critical to the success of efforts to implement Web 2.0 tools in the enterprise.  They are:

1. The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top
2. The best uses come from users, but they require help to scale
3. What's in the work flow is what gets used. (They rightly say that "participatory technologies have the highest chance of success when incorporated into a user's daily workflow."  We at NewsGator have definitely seen this trend.)
4. Appeal to the participants' egos and needs, not just their wallets.  (A more effective approach, they say, actually "plays to the Web's ethos and the participants desire for recognition.")
5. The right solution comes from the right participants. 
6. Balance the top-down and self-management of risk.  (Prudent managers, they say, should work with the entire complement of "legal, HR, and IT security functions to establish reasonable policies.")

McKinsey closes by saying that the "acceptance of Web 2.0 technologies in business is growing.  Encouraging participation calls for new approaches that break with the methods used to deploy IT in the past."  We here at NewsGator could not agree more!

You can view the full report here.