Unsophisticated digital glue

Harvard Business School Professor Andrew McAfee, who originally popularized the "Enterprise 2.0" label (see "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration") recently blogged about the role of simplicity in enterprise knowledge management and collaboration efforts.

In a post titled "Warning: This Post is Not About the Interesting Stuff," McAfee juxtaposes two different kinds of technology deployments: those that are advanved and those that are powerful.

While it might seem that the two align, in the sense that it is the advanced technology which makes deployments power, McAfee argues that this does not generally hold true:

Put another way, how many pressing business problems can only be solved by the application of cutting edge computing? There are some such problems, to be sure, but my guess is that they’re confined to small parts of relatively few companies in a small number of industries. Most of the jobs, business processes, and organizations I know well wouldn’t benefit tremendously if all their computers suddenly became twice as fast. They’d gain a lot more from basic data standardization, systems integration, workflow, or social networking.

The context McAfee uses is a Facebook application called Workbook: relatively simple technology which leverages Facebook's API to create essentially "private" social networks within Facebook:

From which technology deployment would Merck benefit more: Facebook and WorkBook to all employees, or the most sophisticated hardware and software for drug discovery across all its labs?

McAfee's conclusion? "my money’s on the unsophisticated digital social glue."

Making data available across systems, connecting silos, enabling basic collaboration and connection-making for your employees and partners: this is the real revolution of Enterprise 2.0.