The Business Impact of IP (part 2) : Enterprise 2.0 management issues

On January 16. 2010, The New York Times "Corner Office" published under the title "Structure? The Flatter, the Better", an interview with Cristóbal Conde, president and C.E.O. of SunGard conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Two days later, Pr. Andrew McAfee posted on his blog some extracts which were organised around some management issues and asked his readers to feedback on "what they like and what they don’t like" [1].


In a virtual space enabled by web 2.0, we might imagine the following exchanges taking place between Pr. Andrew Mc Afee, (inventor of Enterprise 2.0), Cristobal Conde and Tru Dô-Khac avatars.

[Organisational structure]

• Andrew McAfee avatar: [Let’s address] organisational structure [of Enterprise 2.0].
• Cristobal Conde avatar: Everybody has access to the same amounts of information.
• Tru Dô-Khac avatar: amounts? Maybe…but qualified and relevant? 
• (...)
• Tru Dô-Khac avatar : on second thoughts, Cristobal, you are right, every one has the same amount of information to create/innovate.

[peer effects]

• AMA : [Enterprise 2.0 generates ] peer effects [aside the traditional hierarchy lines of force]
• CC : The answer is to allow employees to develop a name for themselves that is irrespective of their organizational ranking or where they sit in the org chart. Recognition from their peers is, I think, an extremely strong motivating factor.
• TDK : That's fine within a company where the (physical) employees have waived all their intellectual property (IP) rights to the employer.

[Fostering collaboration]

• AMA : [A renewed structure should be put in place in Enterprise 2.0 to] fostering collaboration
• CC : How do people get recognized? How do you establish a meritocracy in a highly dispersed environment? And it actually is not a question about monetary incentives.
• TDK : Any idea for a type of recognition within a community of which (physical) members are not bound together by a contract to a unique legal entity (the enterprise) that governs their collaboration ?

These “imaginative” exchanges suggest that introduction of intellectual property governance might change enterprise organisation.

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[1] Pr. Andrew McAfee's Blog : "Signs of Intelligent Life in the Corner Office" January 18. 2010  

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 The Business Impact of IP (part 3) : "Enterprise 2.0" versus "Institute 2.0"


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