All Contents © 2007 Burton Group. All rights reserved.

All Contents © 2007 Burton Group. All rights reserved.

Harnessing Collective Intelligence: Shifting Power To The Edge Mike Gotta

Principal Analyst

mgotta@burtongroup.com

mkeg.typepad.com

www.burtongroup.comApril, 2007

Harnessing Collective Intelligence

What you should know about me…• Involved in collaboration and knowledge management

strategies since early 1990’s (Aetna)• Industry analyst since 1996, joined Burton Group in

2005, formerly with Meta Group• Principal Analyst, Collaboration & Content Strategies• Located in north-central Connecticut (home office)• Research focus: real-time collaboration, social

software, and the organizational dynamics around teaming, community-building and social networks

• Fascinated by how people connect, communicate and find/share information within group & network contexts

• Coached Little League ponytail softball for 11 years

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Agenda

What I will cover today…• Thesis

• Social computing trends are having a disruptive and transformational impact on communication, information sharing and collaboration strategies

• Socially-oriented systems create inter-connections across groups and communities that enable workers to leverage the collective intelligence of an organization

• Sense-making tools and decision-making systems are more critical than ever before but need to be re-invented for a net-centric environment

• Key Points• Social software does not mean “no structure” / “no formality”• Collective intelligence should lead to “purposeful” action

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Why Shift Power To The Edge?

Many organizations are defined by “need to know” structures

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Top-down hierarchy& command-control culture

diminishes “awareness”

Formal information policies,process rules & workflow roles

obstructs “engagement”

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Why Shift Power To The Edge?

Despite best intentions - enterprises live in a “house of pipes”

• Communication flowsare noticeably constrained

• Information sharing is pushedinto “walled gardens”

• Collaboration occurs withinactivity-focused groups

• Result: • Unreliable “sense & respond”

mechanisms impair organizational agility and resiliency • Unrevealed insight & resources hinders decision-making• Avoiding risk ends up creating risk

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The Answer: Collective Intelligence

Moving from a “need to know” to a “right to know” mindset

“The two truly transforming things, conceivably, might be in information technology and information operation and networking and connecting things in ways that they function totally differently than they had previously.

And if that's possible, what I just said, that possibly the single-most transforming thing in our force will not be a weapon system, but a set of interconnections and a substantially enhanced capability because of that awareness.

It can simply be in connectivity. It can be in interoperability. It can be in taking things that every single of which exists presently and managing them, using them, connecting them, arraying them in a way that has a result that is transformation.”

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 8/9/2001,Town Hall Meeting, Washington, D.C.

Note: Bold emphasis added

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Net-Centricity Transforms Participation Levels

Digital Life is redefining consumer awareness and engagement

• Blogs• Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, WordPress…

• Wikis• Google (JotSpot), Wetpaint, Wikispaces…

• Tagging & Social Bookmarks• del.ico.us, Flickr, Ma.gnolia, StumbledUpon…

• Social Filtering• coRank, Digg, Reddit, YouTube…

• XML Syndication (e.g., RSS)• Bloglines, Google, NewsGator, Yahoo…

• Social Networks• Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Xing, YouTube…

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del.icio.us

What Does This Mean For The Enterprise?

Management and strategists are re-discovering that people matter - talent, teaming, community, “crowd sourcing”…

• Falling communications costs, globalization,and the increasing specialization ofknowledge-based work are making collaboration within and among organizations increasingly important

• Nearly 80% of senior executives in a 2005 survey said effective coordinationacross product, functional, and geographiclines was crucial for growth, yet only 25% described their organizations as effective atsharing knowledge across boundaries

• Source: McKinsey Quarterly, 2006 Number 3, “Mapping the Value of Employee Collaboration”

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Broadcast-post communication models help inter-connect people with similar attention areas, enabling shared awareness

Social Systems Promote Collective Intelligence 10

Blogs Bookmarks

Feeds

Stream Processing Systems

Aggregation, Profiling, Pattern & Scenario

Building, Correlation, Management & Augmentation

Tags

Feeds

“Blog This”

NotificationServices

Expertise Location,

Communities& Social

Networks

Comments

Collective Intelligence Is Environmental 11

Network ecologies can be influenced but not managed

AmbientNoise

Walled Gardens

Dis-engagement

Command& Control

Low Relevancy Low Delegation

Low Transparency

Low Reciprocity

Social Network DiagramSource: http://www.networkweaving.com/blog/

Net-Centricity & formal structures are not mutually exclusive

Empowering Process With Social Software 12

People

Work & Organizational Structures

Know-how

CollectiveIntelligence

Transform

CostReduction &Avoidance

Productivity Growth& Innovation

Performance

Status-Quo

Collective Intelligence & Handling The Unexpected

Disruption: When something happens – what happens?

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Probability

Consequences

Low(Unexpected)

High(Anticipated)

Enormous

Firefighting

Triage CrisisManagement

Catastrophe

Problematic

Disruption & “The Moment Of Need”

Crisis Management: Social systems augment applications that help structure collective decision-making

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What experts do we have?

1. CXO informed ofa health crisisthat threatenslocal operations

We’ve effectivelyhandled incidents like this elsewhere

2. “People search”to identify availableresources

3. Presence-enabled expertiseapplication locates experienced peopleavailable at the moment-of-need

4. IM messagingestablishes rapidresponse team

5. Escalation to areal-time group conferencing applicationenables collective decision- making in a structured environmentto weigh options and define an action plan

Collective Intelligence & Sensing Before Knowing

Detection: What changes by “anticipating” vs. “reacting”?

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Probability

Consequences

Low(Unexpected)

High(Anticipated)

Enormous

EarlyWarning

TacticalAlternatives

StrategicPlanning

ConnectingThe Dots

Problematic

Detection & The “Aha” Moment

Connecting the dots: Social systems and group conferencing applications enable “connected decisions”

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JaneDoeBlog

JaneDoeBlog

This looksInteresting

1. Local analystupdates team wiki on quality control issuesIn Asia/Pac market

2. European salesmanager tags entry“ABC” in a social bookmark system

3. U.S. field techsubscriber to “ABC” tag ‘blogs it”, addingcorrelation to currentservice issues

4. Product manager picks upJane Doe’s post, alerts sentto all parties to attend brainstorming meeting

5. Real-time group conferencing application structures decision-making options for productionand helps prioritize next steps and define supply chain action plan

A/PWikiA/PWiki

Harness Collective Intelligence: Points To Ponder

The trends are undeniable and the opportunities compelling

• Growth and innovation demands are compelling organizations to explore new ways of leveraging talent across organizational boundaries

• Demographic trends are causing management to fundamentally rethink employee work models

• Evolution to network-oriented organizational models is forcing strategists to re-think the role of “core” institutions

• Convergence between a digital lifestyle and digital work style is causing a collision between how workers and management view socially-oriented technology

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Harness Collective Intelligence: Act Now

The trends are undeniable and the opportunities compelling

• Understand and address the organizational dynamics blocking evolution towards net-centricity

• Agree on a governance framework for information sharing, communication and collaboration

• Leverage informal groups, communities and networks – they are the building blocks for collective intelligence

• Understand that socially-oriented systems require new design criteria and a focus on adoption patterns

• Sense-making tools and decision-making systems are more critical than ever – but need to be re-invented for a net-centric environment

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