Fusion ECM

In Part 1 this short Tangible Benefits of E2.0 series, we covered the bad news around E2.0 and ROI and Adoption. Now in Part 2, we cover the good news from the research angle.

In Part 3 will will cover the good news from the anecdotal (case study) angle.

Good news comes in two flavors, research (proof/support) and anecdotes. Research is important because it seeks to remove extraneous factors to get to the heart of the matter. Where E20 is concerned, such research is important because it removes contributing factors that may skew reports of success. Working with your 2 best friends on an E20 project that you are all passionate about may yield success but it may not be reproducable for others. That ability to assure or reasonably predict success (or failure) is what research is designed to show.

So is there any scholarly, quantitative and qualitative (both are important) research that helps bolster the case for Enterprise 2.0? Yes. And more is coming in every month (with the academic publishing cycles). I will point out several such studies.

The Journal of Product Innovation Management (issue 26) from March of this year has 3 scholarly articles that all directly consider or indirectly touch upon the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 technology and approaches to collaboration. These are quantitative and qualitative scholarly research papers, peer reviewed and with all the trappings of academe.

One article presents evidence that frequent and open communication enhances team collaboration.

Another finds that technologically enhanced synchronous and asynchronous communications (think chat, team spaces, discussion boards, shared calendars, web conferences and file sharing all on a common platform) creates a deeper sense of shared identity among cross functional team members (think people with different managers). This shared sense of identity is critical to achieving common purpose and being able to have super-speed collaboration and innovation.

The third article goes another step further in exploring how everything from social networks to water cooler talk to going out to the pub together facilitates knowledge sharing. Such knowledge sharing is key to discovering novel ideas and innovative solutions.