Liveblogging Enterprise 2.0 – Jeffrey Stamps and Jessica Lipnack – Decide to Network

10:45 am–11:00 am General Session – Collaborating in the Transparent Enterprise
Jeffrey Stamps, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder, NetAge
Jessica Lipnack, NetAge, Inc., CEO and Co-Founder

It is important to remember the people stuff, not just the technology stuff.

Flashback to 40 years ago – networks forming (a time of another war) around common purpose and new communications technologies – mimeograph, for example.

Flashforward to 2007 – what happened to the spirit of the 60s? Networks as organizations.

In 1979, We wrote to one well networked person – by letter – with a stamp and an envelope. We got a 40% response rate because people wanted to talk about networking. _Networking_ came out in 1982. It was all about grass roots nonprofit work.

Business were anxious, hungry, desparate for a new way of organizing – they took to the notion of networking.

A brief history of ogranizations. Ages: Nomads -> Agriculture -> Industry -> Information.

We can’t solve 21st century problems with 19th century organizations.

Networks aren’t just technology, but nodes linked for a common purpose – our organizations are networks, even cross national groups are networks.

What we’ve come to understand after all these years is that all organizations are in fact forms of networks – they can be understood and connected as networks.

The word network in many languages is network – transliterates, but still uses that word.

Everything is a network.

Four networks make up the enterprise:
- Organizational network and working network (public)
- Knowledge networks and social networks (private)

Whenever things are not working well, use these common network principles: Purpose (Why), Nodes (Who) , Links (How) , Time (When)

Key virtual team behaviors, based on the common network principals.

We have to learn together how to work in the new virtual teams.

We have worked on a number of different team spaces – the technology can be anything, but the principles stay the same.

What’s new is not so much the real time technologies but the asynchronous technologies which bring new capabilities – it isn’t just about replicating the face to face experience (as real time tools often try to do) but what we can do to get beyond that.

As you move into the collaborative world, look for consistency – it is important that we start to learn patterns (example- we all put the light switch in the same place next to the door – we need those affordances for online collaboration).

We’re getting really good on the tight focus on specific teams, but we risk losing site of the whole – the bigger picture of all the larger networks in which we take part.

Enterprise 2.0 example – Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and blogger at Running a Hospital – transparency.

Robert Muller – Decide to Network. “Networking is the new freedom / the new democracy / a new form of happiness”