Key enablers for Enterprise 2.0

– some more thoughts following on from the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum.

Here is my list of the top 10 enablers for Enterprise 2.0 – this is not an exhaustive list merely my notes based on sessions at the forum and various conversations with participants.

One thing that is important to note is that many of these are not technical. These enablers are about process, decision making, and governance. The more technical enablers are things like agile methods and virtual sandpit environments.

I count these as enablers because we need to develop new mindsets about technical environments for innovation. I have worked with clients who have no production environments that can be used for innovation. In many places all production systems go through a 6 week change cycle and deploy onto expensive tier-1 environments. This kind of thing just stifles innovation and makes it almost impossible to experiment at a reasonable cost. We need to move away from that using virtualization and lite processes to support innovation.

This does not mean putting core business systems at risk, and that is why another key enabler is stage containment. Protecting business assets on a risk assessment basis is an important capability. But we need to balance that with the need to prototype, fail fast and at low cost, and to adopt perpetual beta type practices to assist innovation.