Sims Learning Connections

I like how Bertrand Duperrin used the analogy of a human brain with the right hemisphere being “enterprise 2.0″ and the left being the traditional enterprise. He then advocates fully utilizing both with:

I like to compare the need for enterprise [to use] both structurated / formal and informal to the need for any individual to use both his left and right brain. With the conclusion that there’s no need to have two oversized hemisphere but to make the [one] interact the one with the other. (emphasis added)

The fit for this analogy is amplified with this description from Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind: (p. 18-22)

• The left hemisphere is sequential; the right hemisphere is simultaneous.
• The left hemisphere specializes in text; the right hemisphere specializes in context.
• The left hemisphere analyzes the details; the right hemisphere synthesizes the big picture.

That said, enterprise 2.0 will not mark the death of enterprise databases and applications just as “the right hemisphere will neither save us or sabotage us” (A Whole New Mind, p.17) — as Bertrand writes, “the debate is neither vertical vs horizontal nor 1.0 vs 2.0 or tacit vs formal but how (and when) to switch from one to the other, and back.” Both-And, not Either-Or.

(side-note: Betrand’s link to his earlier writing is worth following and reminds me of Harold Leavitt’s Top Down: Why Hierarchies Are Here to Stay and How to Manage Them More Effectively.)

The last bullet in Daniel Pink’s description takes me back to Niraj Juneja’s Collective Business Intelligence and Enterprise 2.0:

Up till now most of the discussion of Enterprise 2.0…revolves around two things:

1. Harnessing Collective Intelligence of workforce to collaborate and share via tools like Wiki’s, blogs…
2. Conversion of traditional office tools to Office 2.0 style platforms…

A third part perspective of Enterprise 2.0 that should probably be included in the mix is the Business Intelligence gathered as a result of the network effect of taking place as a result of Employee and Customer generated data and having an even broader data set as a result of SaaS application serving more than one Customer.

Niraj continues by illustrating with a salesforce.com example. An even stronger example for what Niraj describes is athenahealth.

Closing note: In his more recent post, Bertrand includes a full-body analogy from Teemu Arina’s Organization 2.0 is organism 2.0 that I found interesting, however not as impactful or memorable as the simpler left and right hemisphere analogy.