ebook - Enterprise 2.0 - VOSS

28 Dion Hinchcliffe
Again, it is an evolution. We are talking about cheaper, better, more innovative ways
of working together. And we have a great deal of challenges. The cultural
interorganization in particular are going to stand in a way of doing this. We like as
business people, I am a business person. I have worked in very large companies most
of my life. We like control and hierarchy. We have to give some of that to make this
work. That is going to be a big shift for us. It may cause disruption. We will have to
spend money, probably not very much. These are not very large projects like CRM
or ERP but we have to make an investement in time which is probably the hardest
thing to do. That is the biggest cost.
We see a lot of people concerned about risk, especially people who don’t participate
in social media today. If you don’t personally participate you get very worried about
what might happen. And even if you do particpate you might still worry. But there
is this concern about risk. I see this now as this gets more real in more companies.
It is suddenly becoming a bigger issue.
Difficulty and repeatability. Can most companies make this transition without
disruption? I don’t know. We don’t know that yet. The evidence is no, the evidence
is not that disruption. In the end like almost all technology adoption it is a people
problem. And it is a people problem for the following reason: technology improves
exponentially but we, our societies and our cultures and our legal systems improve
linearly. So, we have technology improving much faster than we do. This is one of
the big challenges that we have today. It is very hard for all of us to keep up with what
is happening out there. I do it full-time for a living and it is hard for me.