Business Intelligence Vol. 7, No. 5 Web and Enterprise 2.0 › Kellen_2007_Web20.pdf · About Cutter Consortium Cutter Consortium is a unique IT advisory firm, comprising a group

Web and Enterprise 2.0:A Reasoned Perspective

by Vince Kellen

Has the hype around Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 gone too far?

Is Web 2.0 revolutionary or evolutionary? Should businesses

boldly move forward with Web 2.0 initiatives, or is pausing a

sign of healthy skepticism? The economics of information is

often counterintuitive. Blindly adopting Web 2.0 techniques

without understanding how your organization profits from

information may be foolish. This Executive Report examines the

slippery and paradoxical nature of the information fueling Web

2.0 and takes a harsh look at some of the claims Web 2.0

proponents have made by shedding new light on this debate.

Business Intelligence

Vol. 7, No. 5

http://www.cutter.com



About Cutter ConsortiumCutter Consortium is a unique IT advisory firm, comprising a group of more than 150 internationally recognized experts who have come together to offer content,consulting and training to our clients. These experts are committed to delivering top-level, critical, and objective advice. They have done, and are doing, ground-breaking work in organizations worldwide, helping companies deal with issues inthe core areas of software development and agile project management, enterprisearchitecture, business technology trends and strategies, enterprise risk management,business intelligence, metrics, and sourcing.

Cutter delivers what no other IT research firm can: We give you Access to theExperts. You get practitioners’ points of view, derived from hands-on experience withthe same critical issues you are facing, not the perspective of a desk-bound analystwho can only make predictions and observations on what’s happening in themarketplace. With Cutter Consortium, you get the best practices and lessons learnedfrom the world’s leading experts, experts who are implementing these techniques at companies like yours right now.

Cutter’s clients are able to tap into its expertise in a variety of formats includingprint and online advisory services and journals, mentoring, workshops, training,and consulting. And by customizing our information products and training/consultingservices, you get the solutions you need, while staying within your budget.

Cutter Consortium’s philosophy is that there is no single right solution for allenterprises, or all departments within one enterprise, or even all projects within adepartment. Cutter believes that the complexity of the business technology issuesconfronting corporations today demands multiple detailed perspectives from which acompany can view its opportunities and risks in order to make the right strategic andtactical decisions. The simplistic pronouncements other analyst firms make do nottake into account the unique situation of each organization. This is another reason topresent the several sides to each issue: to enable clients to determine the course ofaction that best fits their unique situation.

For more information, contact Cutter Consortium at +1 781 648 8700 [email protected].

Cutter Business Technology Council

Access to the

Experts

Rob Austin Ron Blitstein Tom DeMarco Christine Davis Lynne Ellyn Jim Highsmith Tim Lister Lou Mazzucchelli Ken Orr Ed Yourdon

mailto:[email protected]

Warfare is often merelyontological.

Rightly or wrongly, Web 2.0 repre-sents one of those paradigm shiftsthat is predictably precipitating abit of warfare. People are arguingover how we ought to describethe world. And in every struggle,there are three main participants:protagonists who optimisticallypush forward, antagonists whoskeptically critique the protago-nists, and idle bystanders whoeither dismiss the significanceof the entire scuffle or revel inthe ensuing mud bath.

Much is at stake in these shifts.The old guard jealously protectsthe entrenched perspective, weak-ened as it may be. The vanguardoverstates its case, often rewritinghistory while offering new ideas

filled with faults. Both sides seekto protect personal and economicsuccess. As in all warfare, truth isusually the first casualty.

I believe that most of the currentdiscussions regarding Web 2.0are in need of reform. The discus-sions are a bit too simplistic, withauthors relying on their personalexperience and intuition ratherthan on a disciplined applicationof reason. I also believe this iswhy most firms’ reactions to Web2.0 have been, so far, more likethat of uncertain bystanders. Weneed to clear our minds of jargon.The time is right to begin applyinga more reasoned perspective thatcan guide our efforts.

In the middle of 2007, it appearsmost corporate enterprises arelooking at Web 2.0 with a bit of

bewilderment, if not some detach-ment. After all, the main partici-pants in Web 2.0 are considerablyyounger than the executives whomust make decisions regarding it.Many CIOs simply don’t use tech-nology in quite the same way asteenagers and young adults doand hence are not immersed in theWeb 2.0 culture. Thus it followsthat the use of Web 2.0 technol-ogy within the enterprise (akaEnterprise 2.0) is moving wellbehind the consumer rush.

Some of this slowness, if notresistance, on behalf of executivesmay be chalked up to healthyskepticism. Some of the moreelaborate and amorphous claimsthat Web 2.0 will redraw powerlines between the center and theedge or that Web 2.0 is some newera of massive democratization

by Vince Kellen

Web and Enterprise 2.0: A Reasoned Perspective

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCEADVISORY SERVICEExecutive Report, Vol. 7, No. 5



certainly will cause the older andentrenched generation to raise aneyebrow and dismiss the wholeaffair as the ignorance of youth.This reaction may be, in its ownway, wise. But those who “get”Web 2.0 look equally askanceat those old fogie naysayers andstate, “They just don’t get it.”It’s amazing how powerful, yetvacant, the phrase “they justdon’t get it” is.

I look at both groups and say thatneither side “gets it.”

For the sake of clarity and forsheer enjoyment, I have conve-niently placed the partisans inthe Web 2.0 debate into one oftwo camps: the Panglossians andthe Meliorists. Panglossians haveunbridled enthusiasm for Web 2.0and consider it a significant andbetter step forward. Meliorists dis-pute these claims and seek intel-lectual reform. In the Panglossiancamp, it is fair to place ChrisAnderson, Tim O’Reilly, and StoweBoyd. In the Meliorist camp, wecan count at least Nicholas Carrand Christopher Koch, if not someof the other Cutter authors whohave written on the topic. If you’requick, you will notice the biasedasymmetry in this distinction.

As for me, count me more aMeliorist than a Panglossian.Web 2.0 has many things to offer

us, but not all of them are posi-tive. For firms that wish to profitfrom the changes Web 2.0 brings,blindly following Panglossianprescriptions can be downrightfoolish. But even some Melioristsare not without stain. Somethingelse is afoot.

I considered titling this work “Web2.0 Gobbledygook” at first, but,out of respect for my fellow tech-nology enthusiasts, I resisted. Asone who personally lived through,profited from, and occasionallytried to restrain the unbridledenthusiasm of Web 1.0, I can’thelp but feel a strong sense ofdeja vu. So much irrational exu-berance from the first go-aroundhas found new life in this secondlife.

For those readers who arebemused, skeptical, or inquiring,read on. The purpose of this workis to apply some basic conceptsregarding the paradoxical natureof information to reveal whatWeb 2.0 really is, how it behaves,what its boundaries are, andwhere I believe Web 2.0 is head-ing. Hopefully, you will find some-thing that will be more helpful indeciding what your enterprise cando with Web 2.0 than the typicalstring of platitudes and elidedthought found in numerous way-points along the Internet’s long tailof endless Web sites. For those

readers already “enlightened”and just reading to see whereI may trip up, read on as well.Maybe I will delight you in that.But, being a confident realist, Ijust may convince you of the errorof your ways. In any case, at thevery least, I humbly hope that wecan improve the signal-to-noiseratio here.

This Executive Report takes a lookat Web 2.0 from a new perspec-tive, specifically regarding the roleof information in this new world.The report begins by introducingfive dimensions of informationand examines how these charac-teristics affect Web 2.0. It thenwalks you through the concept ofthe long tail, also evaluating therole this idea plays in this newarena. The report next broachesthe subject of why more informa-tion, as Web 2.0 encourages, maynot always be a good thing. It con-cludes with some predictions forthe Web 2.0 future.

UNDERSTANDINGINFORMATION

To understand Web 2.0, one mustunderstand the shape of informa-tion. Information is paradoxicaland slippery. It simply doesn’tbehave exactly the way we alwaysthink it should. Yet because of thepeculiar shape of information,some rather persistent patterns

VOL. 7, NO. 5 www.cutter.com

22 BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE ADVISORY SERVICE

The Business Intelligence Advisory Service Executive Report is published by Cutter Consortium, 37 Broadway, Suite 1, Arlington, MA 02474-5552,USA. Client Services: Tel: +1 781 641 9876 or, within North America, +1 800 492 1650; Fax: +1 781 648 1950 or, within North America, +1 800 8881816; E-mail: [email protected]; Web site: www.cutter.com. Group Publisher: Chris Generali, E-mail: [email protected]. Managing Editor:Cindy Swain, E-mail: [email protected]. ISSN: 1540-7403. ©2007 by Cutter Consortium. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction in any form,including photocopying, faxing, and image scanning, is against the law. Reprints make an excellent training tool. For information about reprintsand/or back issues, call +1 781 648 8700 or e-mail [email protected].





of human behavior regardinginformation continually reappear.We’ll see more on this later.

To cut to the chase, this ExecutiveReport decomposes informationinto five dimensions:

1. Abstraction — how generic,removed from concrete reality,or high-level the information is

2. Codification — how much ofthe information is assignedknown categories or alignedwith structured metadata

3. Diffusion — how many peoplepossess the information

4. Affect valence — the type ofemotion (positive or negative)the information carries

5. Affect intensity — the intensityof the emotion the informationcarries

These five components, drawnfrom peculiar sources in knowl-edge management and psychol-ogy as discussed below, help giveinformation some shape and con-tour. By understanding the shapeof information along these fivedimensions, it becomes easier tocomprehend what Web 2.0 meansand what specifically firms canand can’t do to take advantageof Web 2.0.

I am confining my comments toa specific set of authors, includingChris Anderson (author of TheLong Tail [1], who made the Time100 list of most influential peoplein 2007); Tim O’Reilly (author[21], book publisher, and host of

the well-known Web 2.0 confer-ence); Nicholas Carr (author ofthe famous or infamous article“IT Doesn’t Matter” [11] and of theRough Type blog [8-10, 12-14]);Andrew McAfee (associate pro-fessor at Harvard University andauthor of various articles onEnterprise 2.0 [7, 19]); StoweBoyd (author [6], well-knownconsultant, and Cutter ConsortiumSenior Consultant); Chris Koch(blogger [18] and executive editorof CIO magazine); along with afew other Cutter Consortiumreports on Web 2.0 [16, 20, 24].

To tackle the issues of Web2.0 raised by this collection ofauthors, I will be relying on twomain sources: Max Boisot andJoseph P. Forgas. Boisot, a consul-tant and university professor atOxford, Cambridge, and Wharton,wrote Knowledge Assets: SecuringCompetitive Advantage in theInformation Economy, publishedin 1998 [5]. From this and otherBoisot papers [4], I have bor-rowed the useful concepts ofabstraction, codification, anddiffusion introduced above. Forthe purposes of this work, theseprimary concepts offer the mostexplanation.

Forgas’s edited collection ofwritings on affect and cognition istitled Feeling and Thinking: TheRole of Affect in Social Cognition[17]. The collection of workswithin Forgas’s book providesmany concepts of value, but twothat I find most compelling areaffect valence and affect intensity,

the final two dimensions men-tioned above. While this bookcontains several frameworks thatappeal more to the student of psy-chology, the notion that informa-tion contains emotional contentthat can affect how we processinformation in predictable wayshas practicality for us IT folk. Web2.0 represents a massive blenderof information whirling aroundwith a diversity of emotional tex-tures, ranging from positive tonegative and from strong to weak.Unsurprisingly, human beingsoften react differently and pre-dictably to strong negative infor-mation and strong positiveinformation. How firms canexploit Web 2.0 may very welldepend on the affect valenceand affect intensity of the primaryinformation they manage.

Many of the sources discussedabove give good definitions of theWeb 2.0–related terms. For thisreport, I focus on the pieces ofWeb 2.0 shown in Table 1 (thedefinitions are summarized fromWikipedia). I will leave it to thereader to explore these definitionsand examples in more detail.

I will not spend time discussingwhether these terms fully or par-tially define Web 2.0. The workscited above do much better jus-tice to that rather lengthy discus-sion. For the purposes of thisreport, I am considering theseconcepts as the relevant aspectsof Web 2.0. My perspective is thatWeb 2.0 is defined well enough asboth a collection of technologies

©2007 CUTTER CONSORTIUM VOL. 7, NO. 5

EXECUTIVE REPORT 33

and how those technologies areused by and shape social settings.

The first section looks at the firstthree dimensions introduced ear-lier: abstraction, codification, anddiffusion. The section that followstackles the remaining two: affectvalence and affect intensity.

I-Space Framework

The I-Space framework is a three-dimensional construct for examin-ing the nature of information andhow information flows withinfirms and markets. In Boisot’sframework [4, 5], information

has three dimensions: abstraction,codification, and diffusion. Boisotis quite specific in his definitionfor these three terms.

For abstraction, he says:

Abstraction establishes theminimum number of cate-gories required to make suchassignments meaningful.Where few categories arerequired, the more abstractour treatment of the phe-nomenon can be and thelarger become the dataprocessing economies onoffer. By contrast, the largerthe number of categories

required to perform a mean-ingful assignment, the closerwe are to the concrete reali-ties of the natural world.

Codification, on the other hand:

… can be thought of as thecreation of categories towhich phenomena can beassigned, together with rulesof assignment. Well-codifiedcategories are clear cate-gories, and well-codifiedassignment rules are clearrules. If assignment rulesare fuzzy and categories areambiguous, it will be costlyto assign phenomena tocategories.



File sharing

Blog

Wiki

Rich Internet applications (RIAs)

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Social networking

Social bookmarking, collaborative tagging, folksonomies

Mashups

Democratization

The long tail

A Web site where entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order. Blogs combine text, images, and links to other blogs and to other Web pages, and visitors can leave comments. I have a blog at http://advice.cio.com/user/vince-kellen.

A Web site that allows visitors to add, remove, and edit content. The ease of inter-action and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. Wikipedia is the most popular example of a wiki.

Web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop app-lications. RIAs transfer user interface processing to the Web client but keep the bulk of the data processing on the server. Google’s AJAX technology is a popular RIA technology.

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital con-tent, such as blogs, news, and podcasts. RSS is analogous to a table of contents.

A social network is a social structure made up of nodes (individuals or organizations) that are tied together by one or more specific types of relations. MySpace, FaceBook,and LinkedIn are examples of social networking sites.

Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, classify, share, and searchInternet bookmarks. Collaborative tagging is a way for both the creator and the users of content to create metadata about that content. This metadata can be shared and searched. Del.icio.us is an example of a social bookmarking site.

A mashup is a Web site or application that combines content from many sources into an integrated experience. Netvibes is an example of a mashup.

A term used to describe the ability for anyone to freely publish content on the Web.

Coined by Chris Anderson [1], the long tail describes certain business models that deliver small quantities of many products to small groups of customers.

Sites that let users share photos, videos, documents, and other digital information.

Table 1 — Definition of Terms


And diffusion is:

... the percentage of dataprocessing agents within agiven population of thesethat can be reached by anitem of data per unit of time.Agents may, but need not,be human. A population offirms, for example, could belocated along the diffusiondimension, in which caseone might well be dealingwith an industry.... When allagents can equally access anitem of data with the samespeed, the data is maximallydiffused.

Let’s use some examples to makethis clear. The term “publication”refers to many things that can beconsidered a publication, whereasthe phrase “The May 1 edition ofthe Chicago Tribune” refers to aspecific kind of publication, sospecific that it has a physicalreferent. Publication is the moreabstract concept, and the editionof the Chicago Tribune is the moreconcrete.

Codification is also fairly straight-forward. Figure 1 is a picture,taken from Wikipedia, of a caton a mat.

While our eyes can easily see thisis a cat on a mat, a computerwould not know this unless theinformation in the picture wasassigned some categories. Thisimage is an example of informa-tion that is not codified. Figure 2 isa conceptual graph that codifiesthe semantic information withinthe picture. Such a graph is easilyand unambiguously processed bya computer.

Combining these two forms ofdata is powerful. The relativelyuncodified image when pairedwith the conceptual graph meta-data lets computers more easilyclassify and search for the image.

The third dimension, diffusion,completes the Boisot I-Spaceframework. Highly diffusedinformation is available to all.Information not diffused is underlock and key. Security codes givingaccess to nuclear weapons wouldnot be, we hope, diffused. Propri-etary information that a firm relieson for success would not be dif-fused either. Google’s search algo-rithm, for example, is not highlydiffused. As many of us know,Apple’s long-term product plansare also not highly diffused. Appleprefers to keep this informationclose, for strategic reasons.

Information can transform and“flow” in this three-dimensionalspace (see Figure 3). For example,information critical to a firm oftenstarts in position A in Figure 3 asuncodified, relatively not abstract,and undiffused information. Thiskind of information is tacit andheld within the mind of the

founder(s) of the firm. Over time,that information gets writtendown, codified, and abstracted,allowing others to use the infor-mation, which is precisely whatfirms do when they get bigger. Intime, the firm may engage in theexchange of this now abstract andcodified information with strategicpartners, thus diffusing the infor-mation somewhat further. Thatinformation would now reside inposition B in Figure 3. Business-to-business information, suchas inventory, logistics, ordering,pricing, contract data, or anyinformation that coordinatesshared business processes, occu-pies this region of the I-Space.

Following Boisot closely, firmscan directly use information forprofit when the information is inthe ordered regime (see Figure 4).


EXECUTIVE REPORT 55

Figure 1 — Cat on a mat image.(Source: Wikipedia.)

CAT: ElsieCAT: Elsie SittingSitting MatMat

agentagent locationlocation

Figure 2 — Cat on a mat conceptual graph.

Information here is more highlycodified and abstract. It is morestable and more manageable.Trade secrets, documentedalgorithms, codified businessprocesses, research and analysis,and strategic contracts withkey suppliers and partners are

all forms of information in thisordered regime. This kind of infor-mation is usually tightly controlled.This information nearly alwayslives in the form of documents.

At the other end of the I-Space,the chaotic regime, firms havea harder time leveraging

information that is highly diffused,concrete, and uncodified. Why?Because the ownership of theinformation may be suspect, itmay be too diffuse and thus avail-able to competitors as well, or itsuncodified nature may defy auto-mated processing. In other words,the information is too “hot.” TheInternet and Web 2.0 is givingrise to all of these problems. Forexample, as gaming has grownonline, eBay has had to suspendthe trading of virtual points play-ers earn due to confusion as toexactly what kind of informationthe virtual points represent, whoowns them, and how copyrightlaw may or may not protect own-ership of these “virtual” points.Users can search image data,now found in Flickr, YouTube, andmany other sites, but only afterthey or someone tags the imageswith keywords. Tagging, socialbookmarks, and folksonomies areconvenient ways to codify whatwas previously uncodified. Inthis sense, Web 2.0 and the tech-nologies and social approachesto managing chaotic informa-tion are pushing the boundarybetween the complex regime andthe chaotic regime closer andcloser to the chaotic minima.

Standing back, some of thekey features of Web 2.0 —blogs, wikis, tagging and socialbookmarks, and Really SimpleSyndication (RSS) news feeds —help improve the manageabilityof chaotic information. Technol-ogy is reducing the size of thechaotic regime somewhat,



Abstract

Concrete Undiffused

Diffused

Codified

A

B

Uncodified

Figure 3 — The Boisot I-Space. (Source: [5].)

Abstract

Concrete Undiffused

Diffused

Codified

Uncodified

Ordered

Regime Complex

RegimeBureaucracies•

Markets•

Clans•Fiefs•

ChaoticRegime

Figure 4 — I-Space and organizational culture. (Source: [5].)


enlarging the range of the com-plex regime. Technology is push-ing the sustainable edge of chaoscloser to true chaos.

Paradox of Value

Information does not behavelike tangible property. It is easilycopied and diffused. When highlydiffused, competitors can gainaccess to the same information,at which point the informationthen has very little value. If Googlewere to make all the details of itssearch algorithms available onYouTube along with training mate-rials on how to apply it, Google’scompetitive advantage is lost.Once revealed, any advantagethe search algorithm would pro-vide is lost for any competitor,too. Once the genie is out of thebottle, the firm is powerless tocreate profits from that informa-tion in and of itself. Firms stillneed to hide or obscure informa-tion of some kind in order togenerate profit. Full transparencywould kill profits. Put another way,profits require some form of infor-mation ambiguity or opacity.For anyone who has competedbased on knowledge, this is uttercommon sense and reflective ofhuman nature. If I have valuableinformation my main competi-tor cannot easily get, I can gainadvantage over my competitor. Insome cases, it is beneficial for afirm to not know precisely how itmaintains an advantage. If it didknow, key employees could leavethe firm, and the information

would diffuse to the competitor orany number of competitors.

The moral of the story is simple.Information that diffuses widely is,in and of itself, valueless. Firmsneed some other informationto make a profit. The corollaryshould be equally clear. Wheninformation thought valuable issuddenly given away for free, it isbecause the competitor has founda new source of valuable andprobably closely held information.

Google’s purchase of YouTubemakes perfect sense. YouTube hasessentially valueless informationthat attracts a large number ofusers. Google has valuable algo-rithms for linking users to infor-mation and, more importantly, amarketing model that links adver-tising to users. Google has criticalproprietary information (search/indexing algorithms) within theordered regime of Figure 4, whichfeeds off the valueless YouTubecontent residing in the chaoticregime. Google was unfazed bythe specter of ongoing legal bat-tles over ownership of some ofthis chaotic content. The prospectof hooking up this much infor-mation and these many viewersto advertisers was too tempting.Google, then, requires morevalueless information that linkstogether more and more con-sumers so that its proprietaryeconomic engine can continueto surge ahead. In a way, theGoogle and YouTube merger wasa match made in I-Space heaven.

The rise of social bookmarks,tagging, and folksonomies alsomakes perfect sense. Web 2.0has generated an unprecedentedamount of unstructured, poorlycodified, and nearly valuelessinformation, residing chiefly inor near the chaotic regime of theI-Space. To borrow an overusedphrase, here is where Web 2.0“harnesses the power of collec-tive intelligence.” Web 2.0 sitesget Internet users to increase thelevel of codification and perhapsabstraction in this data. How? Bytagging it and bookmarking it.While this metadata isn’t perfect,it is good enough to help link con-tent to people. The main purposeof this increase in codification andabstraction in the data is equallyclear. The linkage between peopleand tags is of vital interest toadvertisers.

In this regard, Google is a niceexample of a firm managing thediversity of information. Googlerelies on the chaotic nature ofinformation in the chaotic regimeof the I-Space, but, along withmany other sites in Web 2.0,Google has ways of addingenough structure to this data tomake it valuable to its true cus-tomer: the advertiser. Melioristslook at Web 2.0 and see not muchmore than a bigger party, withmore and more smaller cliques ofpeople, chatting mindlessly about,while more and more insurancesalespeople lurk, looking forsomeone to buy a policy. Here,mindless chatter equals chaoticinformation, more small cliques


EXECUTIVE REPORT 77

equal smaller groups of Internetusers linked through commontags or shared interest in obscureproducts, and more insurancesalespeople equal more advertis-ers tempting the crowd withoffers. Woo hoo! I’m pumped.Are you?

Information and OrganizationalCulture

Boisot characterizes four kindsof organizational cultures in termsof how the organization managesinformation. These archetypesare: the fief, the clan, the bureau-cracy, and the market. Each ofthese culture types sits in a differ-ent location in the I-Space (seeFigure 4). Fiefs revolve aroundone or a few individuals whoshare uncodified and concreteinformation whose diffusion islimited by a preference for and areliance on face-to-face communi-cation. Human relationships arepersonal and hierarchical, oftendriven by a charismatic leader.The startup is often an exampleof a fief. Clans are more egalitar-ian. Information is still uncodifiedand concrete and is shared mostlythrough face-to-face interactions.Information is spread horizontallythrough negotiation. Relationshipsare personal but nonhierarchical.Bureaucracies begin to codifyand abstract the informationshared. Diffusion, now chieflythrough documents, is still limitedand controlled. Relationshipsare impersonal and hierarchical.Markets are similar to bureaucra-cies in that information is codi-fied and abstracted but now

the information is widely dif-fused and nearly always digital.Relationships between agents(people or organizations) arenonhierarchical and competitive.

Firms evolve organizations inresponse to the nature of the keyknowledge that part of the firmmanages. Small firms probablyhave one dominant culture type.Large firms may have differentculture types depending on thebusiness unit and the nature ofthe information within that unit.To glean new knowledge, firmsneed to ensure relevant informa-tion flows throughout the enter-prise. This requires informationto flow between these variousbusiness units and their atten-dant cultures with some fidelity.Boisot calls this flow of informa-tion between the various regionsand cultures in the I-Space thesocial learning cycle (SLC). TheSLC does not need to resideentirely within a firm. In fact,most firms need to share informa-tion with suppliers, partners, andeven competitors, so an entiremarket can be engaged in a ratherlarge SLC. The speed at whichthis information flows needs tomatch the competitive environ-ment. Slow-moving markets donot need fast-moving, firm-specific (or industry-level) SLCs. Fast-moving markets usuallyrequire fast-moving, firm-specific,if not industry-level, SLCs.

As you can now see, getting infor-mation to flow across an SLC hassome challenges. Different culture

types can impede or distort infor-mation flow. As the level of codifi-cation and abstraction raises orlowers, the fidelity of the informa-tion may vary. While specific cul-tures evolve to more effectivelymanage the information in thatregion of the I-Space, communica-tion between those cultures canbecome more difficult.

Perhaps the most significantfeature of Web 2.0 is that it hascreated, through blogs, social net-works, and file sharing, an enor-mous amount of data in or nearthe chaotic regime. Bureaucraticor even market cultures are ill-equipped to deal with this kind ofdata en masse. In fact, with regardto its key revenue model, Googleitself only manages this chaoticdata by applying information inthe bureaucratic region of the I-Space (its proprietary algo-rithms) and by leveraging socialtagging to help codify and abstractthe information. The end result isthat, by design or by accident,Google has an effective SLC inwhich relevant information flowsfrom the lower, chaotic regionof the I-Space (the nearly profit-less region) to the upper, moreordered region (where profitscan be extracted). Again, as youcan see, the YouTube acquisitionmakes great sense. Google getsto apply core knowledge in itsordered regime of the I-Space,easily absorbing new informationfrom the chaotic regime of the I-Space, thus delivering morediverse information products tomore customers.




For firms wishing to take advan-tage of Web 2.0, simply firing upblogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and othertools that can manage the morechaotic information will proba-bly do little unless the firm firstmaps out how information flowsthrough the firm. Through whatsubcultures does the informationflow? How does the firm extractprofit from the information? Doesthe firm have the right culture orsubcultures to manage the infor-mation at the various points inthe SLC? We have all witnessedthe mangling of information as itpasses through various units andsubcultures in the firm. Units thatdo well with concrete, uncodifieddata may not be in a position toincorporate the more formal andabstract analysis produced else-where in the firm and vice versa.The technical tools applied needto match the shape of informationat that point in the SLC.

Since mapping this out can be dif-ficult, I expect that firms applyingWeb 2.0 in any capacity, with itscustomers or inside its four walls(Enterprise 2.0), will run into lowprobabilities of convincing suc-cess. As is usually the case, earlyadopters will run into failures, andit will take time for firms to learnhow to correctly manipulate threekey variables for a good fit: thetechnology itself, the firm’s infor-mation value chain (its SLC), andthe firm’s cultures.

Panglossians, so far, have glossedover all these messy details andinconvenient truths, which I

believe are not only essentialto manage for success, but mayactually be key factors predictingfailure. What firms will find out isthat the actual situations whereWeb 2.0 technologies may trulymake business sense may befar less in number than thePanglossians seem to claim.

Emotion and Information

Mainstream media and Web 2.0media are two ships passing in thenight. Earlier this year, USA Todaylaunched a new version of its sitethat lets readers post comments,make recommendations, andview the most popular newsitems. MySpace has also launcheda news service with Web 2.0 inter-activity. Looking a little deeper, Isuspect that USA Today and proba-bly more so MySpace are havingdifficulties encouraging participa-tion in news. MySpace’s news pageappears to be a ghost town [3].USA Today seems to be faring bet-ter. A review of the site in May 2007showed the top eight stories on itshome page with 5, 0, 7, 36, 25, 61,178, and 82 comments.

Based on this level of feedback,someone from another planetwould quickly conclude that USAToday is a small town newspaper.Granted, it is not clear how muchediting USA Today has done onthe comments. The editors maybe deliberately trying to maketheir front page look like it servesa small community of readers.Whatever the strategy, relative tomost firms and even other mediacompanies, USA Today represents

a high-water mark for the type ofparticipation it can garner.

Is something else going on here?I believe so. How people processinformation also depends on theirmood and emotions. Their moodcan be set in many different ways,but one way is that informationitself carries emotional context.From a mood perspective, there isa big difference between readingnews and sharing family photos.

Researchers have been studyingthe relationship between feelingand thinking for some time [17].Affect can refer to mood, whichis a diffuse, low-intensity, andrelatively enduring emotionalstate with no salient cause, andto emotions, which are short-livedand intense states that typicallyhave a clear cause. Affect is alsoprocessed independent of cogni-tion or thinking. We usually exhibitphysiological and neurologicalsigns of emotional engagementbefore we are consciously awareof the information or the emo-tional state. Affect is intertwinedwith cognition in that we dobecome aware of our emotionalstates and can alter the way weprocess information based on theknowledge of our emotional state.

Affect (mood and emotions) canbe spread along a continuumfrom “good” to “bad” (affectvalence). Positive affect signifiesthat “all is well with the world,”and negative affect signifies thatsomething is wrong. Affect canhave varying levels of intensity


EXECUTIVE REPORT 99

from low to high (see Figure 5).Our information-processing strate-gies vary considerably dependingon the affective context. Theinformation in Web 2.0 containsaffective content, thus potentiallytriggering affective responses inusers. The differences in our proc-essing strategies may explain whycertain sites and content triggercomments and others do not.

Different Emotions, Different Site Usage

Positive affect facilitates users’cognitive involvement with theinformation. Negative affect tendsto produce a more inductive andexternally focused approach. Inother words, when we feel “all isright with the world” we are morelikely to use our own knowledgeto process information, to trustour own instincts and use fasterheuristics to process informa-tion, and to engage in unusual,

unorthodox, or creative thinking.Negative affect suggests that thesituation is difficult or problem-atic, resulting in us being morelikely to focus externally, in amore piecemeal manner, usingcognitive strategies that are lesscreative or unusual.

Both the affect valence (its good-ness or badness) and the affectintensity are triggered by informa-tion itself as well as by factors notcontained within the information,such as the person’s currentaffective state and other contex-tual factors (physical location,time of day, and so on). Despitethis complexity, information doesconvey a range of affect, frompositive to negative and from lowto high intensity. With Web 2.0,we have more information of allaffective stripes.

News content is a curious kind ofinformation. Most news content,

especially the most sensationaland widely read news, containsstrong negative affect. The closerto home the information is, thegreater the emotional intensity.The most intense form of nega-tive news (nearby murder, war,crimes, disasters) will tend togenerate piecemeal, externallyfocused processing strategies.MySpace as a social networkingsite has the opposite affectivecontent. For many users, theirspaces are positive reflections ofwho they are. Their sites demon-strate the user-generated, creative,and unorthodox approaches toinformation processing theyemploy.

The I-Space framework mayintersect with these two affectdimensions (valence and inten-sity). I will suggest that whencomplex information containscertain affective qualities, interac-tivity increases and differentiates.Complex information is informa-tion that contains both higher lev-els of abstraction and codification,either directly in the informationitself or as such that it can be con-structed by people through inter-action with the information. Forexample, a photo on a file sharingsite is uncodified and concrete,but as users begin to tag thephoto, the new bundle of informa-tion increases its level of codifi-cation a bit. Many forms of morecomplex tacit knowledge workin a similar manner. We start theconversation simply and elaborateover time, adding codification andelevating abstraction. If I am a golf



Affect Intensity

High

Low

Affect

Valence

PositiveNegative

Figure 5 — Affect valence and intensity.


professional with deep expertiseon how to swing a golf club, Imay have within my knowledgemany levels of codification andabstraction of a golf swing. WhenI choose to communicate withnovices about the golf swing, Iwill need to start with simpler —more concrete and less abstract— terms until the golfer can beginto absorb more complex informa-tion. Over time, our communica-tion becomes more efficient butalso more abstract and highlycodified. Computer expertswho speak in a fast stream ofacronyms are communicatinghighly codified and abstractinformation.

It may be that deeper interactivityincreases when information iscomplex and affect intensity ismoderate to high. Web sites thatwill experience this kind of deepinteractivity would include med-ical sites where users may have adeeper emotional trigger such asexperience with a disease; sitesfor those who play sports andwho want to improve their perfor-mance; or any site where usersfeel a need to engage in deeperlearning due to stronger emo-tional triggers regarding the sub-ject matter. If the information’saffective content is negative(meaning “something isn’t right”),the user’s information processingwould be more sensitive to exter-nal information — more rigid andless creative. Users would beseeking the most expedientmeans to collect the informationto satisfy their needs. Users would

also be less prone to superficial,heuristic, and biased processingsince they would invest moreenergy in verifying the informa-tion. If the information’s affectivecontent is positive (meaning “allis well with the world”), the user’sinformation processing strategywill be more sensitive to his or herown internal ideas and thoughtprocesses — more creative, faster,and more heuristic in nature andthus subject to bias. In this affec-tive state, users don’t feel theneed to engage the data furtherbecause “all is right with theworld” and their own heuristicprocessing looks sufficient. Ifnothing seems wrong, why spendthe time proving it isn’t?

I will propose that perhaps super-ficial interactivity increases whenthe information is less complexand affect intensity is moderate tohigh. Simple content with strongnegative affective qualities (“Gasprices double!”) would generatesimpler comments. Simple con-tent with strong positive affectivequalities might also generate sim-pler comments. Information withmoderate to low levels of affectivequality will likely generate theleast number of responses.

Emotional Conclusions

This leads to some commonsense conclusions. Firms wishingto engage audiences in deeperinteractivity have to get a handleon the affective qualities of theirinformation. Complex information(information that is capable of

high levels of codification andabstraction) that has higher affec-tive intensity will generate thedeepest interactions. Strong nega-tive affect will encourage peopleto search the data in front of themdeeply (bottom-up processing).Positive affect will encouragepeople to creatively apply theirinsights (top-down processing).

MySpace and news contentmay be a match made in affecthell. Typical MySpace content ismoderately positive in affectand is produced as a result ofthe creative, unorthodox, and user-generated processing dis-cussed above. Most news con-tent, being negative in nature,simply won’t be responded to byMySpace users. They have differ-ent things on their mind and dif-ferent information processingstrategies at work. News contentworks best when the overallcontext encourages bottom-upstrategies. Perhaps USA Todaystands a better chance of generat-ing user feedback than MySpacebecause users don’t need toswitch between bottom-up andtop-down processing strategies.A dominant processing style isalready in play. And as I am hypo-thetically predicting, since USAToday presents information inrelatively simpler forms, it willtend to generate simple responsesto highly negative information. Amedical site on a specific disease,due to the very complex nature ofthe information, will generatedeeper interactivity, again fueledby mostly strong but negative —


EXECUTIVE REPORT 1111

but in some cases positive —affect.

Applying this inside a firm is tricky,usually because affect (emotionand mood) is simply not exam-ined as part of the knowledgemanagement discipline. I predictfirms will not make much head-way on applying deeper formsof interactivity unless the firmengages affect appropriately.Organizationally, there are manyways to go about this, which aretoo numerous to discuss here.A short list includes looking atcompensation and motivationalsystems, having organizationalstructures that support the flowof affective information, andunderstanding employees’ per-sonal goals and life plans, as wellas sources of deeper emotionalinvolvement.

Implications of the Long Tail

According to Wikipedia, the longtail is the colloquial name for along-known feature of statisticaldistributions (for example, Paretodistributions, named for Italianeconomist Vilfredo Pareto whooriginally used this distributionto describe the allocation ofwealth among individuals sinceit seemed to show rather well theway that a larger portion of thewealth of any society is owned bya smaller percentage of the peo-ple in that society). Researchers invarious disciplines have discov-ered many phenomena that arereasonably expressed as Paretodistributions such as the size ofcities, frequency of word distribu-tions, and file sizes.

As used by Anderson [1], the longtail refers to a long tail of prod-ucts. The meaning behind thelong tail is quite simple: Many

companies have an uneven distri-bution of profits or sales fromtheir products. The sales or profitsfollow a Pareto distribution (seeFigure 6) in which a few productscommand the largest share of theoverall revenue or profits. Whilethis, by itself, is hardly a newidea, Anderson pointed out thatnew forms of product distribu-tion, especially digital distribution,allow firms to efficiently sell smallvolumes of more products. Thisgenerates a reasonable amount ofoverall profit from niche products.For some firms, the long tail nowbecomes an interesting economicproposition.

Interestingly, for many firms, thedistribution of customer profitsis also a Pareto distribution andmimics the long tail of productionin many regards. In 2002, I ana-lyzed customer profitability for adiscrete manufacturer across sev-eral different product lines to dis-cover a persistent pattern (seeFigure 7). A few customers repre-sented the lion’s share of the over-all firm profits. The vast majorityof customers produced few orno profits.

In the distribution of profits, how-ever, some customers (and prod-ucts) produce a loss, causing theend of the tail to “drag.” The logicof the long tail suggests that firmsshould use technology to lowerdistribution and/or customerservicing costs so that more cus-tomers can be effectively servedand more products can be pro-duced, thus increasing the total



y

x

Sa

les

Products

The Long Tail

Figure 6 — The long tail.


profits generated. Web 2.0 andinformation technology may pro-vide a way to effectively lower thecosts of production and consump-tion (see Figure 8).

If firms can lengthen the tail bytaking on more customers (ormore products), the result is acollection of smaller customer/product niches. The flexible man-ufacturing push in the 1980s andthe customer relationship man-agement (CRM) focus in the late1990s stressed the need for firmsto be able to mass-customizeproducts and services, whichmany firms did in fact do. Thelong tail extends this notion evenfurther. Through digital or moreefficient forms of product distribu-tion, firms can lengthen the tail.

In theory, this sounds nice. But thelong tail has some problems asso-ciated with it. As stated above,to profitably service a longer tail,firms need to reduce costs some-how, and there are a couple ofways to do this. One way is touse economies of scale; firms canbecome bigger to apportion over-all costs across a larger customerbase. Another way is to drasticallylower the unit cost of the productto be produced. We are seeinglong-tail Web 2.0 companies doboth. For example, YouTube getscustomers to “give away” the“product,” ensuring the videoconsumed has no production costfor which YouTube must foot thebill. Google then buys YouTube toleverage its technology across alarger population of consumers.

However, as the “product” lowersin cost, so do the barriers to entryfor competitors, which is perhapsone of the reasons Google pur-chased YouTube. By increasingits scale, Google is erecting a sig-nificant barrier to entry for otherfirms. Competitors will need alarge checkbook to buy the long-tail customers away from Google.Any way you slice it, the logic ofthe long tail suggests that firmswill require scale to ensure theirtail can remain long.

A deep feature of the long tail ofboth production (products) andconsumption (customers) is thenotion of fragmentation. The rightend of the long tail containscollections of small product/customer niches that might notknow much about each other.Those few people who buyunpopular products do not repre-sent, except in aggregate, muchpower. In many firms, the topcustomers carry power with theirsupplier. For an oligarchic or tyran-nical power, fragmentation is a



Pro

fit

$0

Distribution of Customers

Figure 7 — The long tail of customer profits.

Pro

fit

$0

Distribution of Customers

Figure 8 — Lowering costs in the long tail.

good thing. It helps them controlthe people. If the right end of thetail can’t effectively organize organg up together, the controllingfirm can ensure a stable sourceof profits. Those customers at theedge (the right end of the tail)do not have the same power thatthose at the center (the left side ofthe tail) have. Should a collectionof customers, aggregated by anyother firm arise, Google or othercompetitors will feel the need toacquire them to prevent relativediminishment of their own tail. Infact, we are seeing this in 2007.Various media companies arebuying potential competitors in arace to get big.

It is true that those customers atthe edge or the tail can easilyswitch. Since their loyalty is eco-nomically small, competitors canand probably will find ways ofattracting them. While the long tailof production and consumptionmight be desirable from a profitperspective, are these defensibleprofits? What barriers can firmserect to prevent competitors frompicking off customers at the edge?I see few barriers except for scaleand proprietary technology, whichgo hand in hand.

Where Panglossians see a cornu-copia of plenty, Meliorists see theneed for scale and cost barriers toprotect the long tail. Following theresearch of Erik Brynjolfsson et al[7] on turbulence in IT-intensiveindustries, I see increased fightingfor pieces of the long tail by fewerand fewer competitors who will

leapfrog each other quickly untila near-monopolistic threshold isreached. While the Panglossiansmay cringe and cry foul, I believethe long tail may be sowing theseeds for the next monopoly or,worse still, duopoly.

For firms seeking to create theirown long tail of customers orproducts, a competitive analysis isin order. How defensible are thesecustomers? Or, what competitor(aka a potential mergers-and-acquisitions suitor) would findvalue in purchasing these cus-tomers? Can Web 2.0 principlesand technologies effectively lowercosts? Or is the physical natureof your core offering unsuitablefor long-tail economics? Existingforms of competitive analysis willsuffice. Web 2.0 does not funda-mentally alter the strategic analy-sis requiring a paradigm shift inthinking about strategy.

Democratization and the Long Tail

Perhaps the buzzword of the year,democratization is the biggestcasualty of this war. Andersonis quite optimistic on the powerof the long tail to democratizethe tools of production. ThePanglossian perspective suggeststhat people can now producetheir own content, unfilteredand free from the control ofinformation gatekeepers suchas the mainstream media. Sincethe world is connected and candiscuss things via the Web unfet-tered, the world will become asmarter place. Because of the

long tail and its democratizationof the tools of production, Web2.0, unlike Web 1.0, is participa-tory. Since Web 2.0 supports indi-viduals who can freely write theirwords and place them in venueswhere others can find them, Web2.0, like American capitalism, isindividualistic and beneficial.

I have not yet found a com-plete Meliorist comment on this,although Carr’s blog posts [8-10,12-14] touch on this idea. Perhapswhat follows may suffice.

I remember a promotional posterfor the science fiction movie Alienthat stated, “In space, no one canhear you scream.” I wonder if itmatters at all, statistically speak-ing, if one empties a small cupof words in an infinite ocean ofthem. Put another way, addingmore information without increas-ing the available amount of timefor human beings to absorb thisinformation reduces the chancethe information may have anyeffect. In economic terms, therapid growth of the supply ofinformation ought to drasticallyreduce its value, since substitutesand competitors abound. Whilepeople may feel good that theyhave the power of the pen, eco-nomically speaking, their fate inaggregate is no better due to Web2.0. Just because everyone canspeak does not mean people canhear. Quite the contrary, as thelouder the party, the less anyonehears. The problem with informa-tion is not in producing it, sincewe can do that abundantly, but in




getting it consumed. One can leada horse to water, but one has tocompel the water to leap downthe horse’s throat.

Ironically, I contend that whatAnderson calls the “democratiza-tion” of production would bemore accurately labeled as theencouragement of still moreconsumption. Why? Considerthe typical economic transactionbetween two people. One personis the seller, and one person is thebuyer. The seller offers the buyersomething of value, and the buyergives the seller something equal invalue, usually cash. Let’s examinethe typical Web 2.0 exchange inYouTube. I have a video of my caton a mat that I think is neat, and itwould give me great satisfactionto have the world see it. YouTubehas something to offer me. Ithas the disk space and the con-nection to a network of Internetusers who might wish to viewmy video. I surrender my file toYouTube without compensation.In exchange, YouTube uses mycontent as part of its advertisingmodel. What have I produced?What have I consumed?

When Production BecomesConsumption

In this economic exchange, Ihave consumed the satisfactionof publishing a video. What have Ipaid in return? I have purchased avideo camera, a computer, andan Internet connection and haveagreed (mostly) to watch adver-tisements and occasionally buysomething as a result of seeing

the advertisement. Not a bad deal,especially for the camera manu-facturer, the computer maker,and the Internet service provider.And a good deal for YouTube.Incidentally, so long as my videodoesn’t become too famous, Iwon’t complain either. The dealis pretty good for me. WhatPanglossians call “production,”Meliorists can call “consumption.”When one analyzes the transac-tion as one of consumption, theterm “democratization” loses itsrelevancy.

While Panglossians tout thedemocratic nature of Web 2.0,the production of Web contentis acutely Pareto-distributed.Suprisingly few people produceand astonishingly large amount ofcontent [13]. If Web 2.0 is partici-patory, it is a Pareto distribution ofparticipation. Voting, despite itslow turnouts in various parts ofthe world, is far more participa-tory than the participatory Web2.0.

The Meliorist tree may bear morefruit here. Firms can mostly ignoreWeb 2.0’s so-called democratiza-tion effect as treacle. Smart firmswill recognize that the need toproduce content, while espousedby many, is acted on by few.Firms with a very large base ofcustomers may be able to induceenough customers to producecontent for free (essentiallyvalueless content) for which thatcontent can be mined for residualand indirect value assuming, ofcourse, that they will be able to

construct an SLC to extract profit.But because of the Pareto distribu-tion of content production, manyfirms may have an insufficientsupply of customers. This isanother way of saying that Web2.0 requires intermediaries withthe scale to access a rather largenumber of customers. In Web 2.0,it pays better to be bigger.

For Enterprise 2.0, firms may haveserious difficulty in getting enoughemployees to participate in con-tent production to achieve a criti-cal mass of participation. The typeof culture and the nature of theinformation in the I-Space matter.Knowledge effectively managed intacit form via face-to-face conver-sations may never find its way todigital form simply because it isinefficient to do so. The most valu-able knowledge is often lockedup in the busiest of people [9].Other barriers, such as individualand organizational defensiveness,which are endemic to the humancondition [2], may prevent the useor diffusion of information no mat-ter how codified, abstract, andpertinent. Blogs, wikis, and otherauthoring tools could wind up asshelfware unless firms addressthose organizational barriers toinformation flow.

The cautionary note is that firmsdo have to pay attention to whatcustomers say in Web 2.0. Whilethe long tail is mostly fragmented,bad (and good) information canspread rapidly. Emotion and biascan create situations whereinformation spreads more quickly



than ever before. While firmsmay not directly engage Web 2.0approaches with their customersand within their enterprise, theymust attend to those entities thatdo engage Web 2.0 technolo-gies to talk about the firm and itsproducts. Due to the rise of socialnetworking sites and the blogos-phere, perhaps we will see theseapproaches for communicationbecome the new mainstreammedia [23]. If so, all firms will beparticipating in these aspects ofWeb 2.0.

MORE INFORMATION ISNOT ALWAYS BETTER

There is little doubt that Web 2.0has given rise to a greater quan-tity of information, mostly of theuncodified, concrete, and highlydiffuse kind (in the chaoticregime). There is also littledoubt that effectively managingthis information requires somecodification and abstraction.Web 2.0 has advanced due totagging, social bookmarks, RSSfeeds, and other approaches,which add codification andabstraction to the information.

Even with increased levels ofcodification and abstraction,information is growing at a muchfaster rate than human beingscan possibly absorb. We can onlyread during waking hours, whichare not increasing dramatically.Even if smarter systems could fil-ter or abstract the information sothat there is less of it to process, Idoubt this would make a dent inthe overall gap between available

information and decision-makingability.

What this leads to is the need forpeople (and firms) to economizeand incorporate a tiny subset ofthe available information into theirdecisions. Thus, a greater supplyof information actually increasesthe probability that any two indi-viduals (or firms) will be makingdecisions from different subsets ofdata. In most cases, due to com-petition, maintaining differencesin models incorporated is highlydesirable (“the competitor justdoesn’t get it!”). While increasedtransparency creates increasedinformation, the need for competi-tive advantage and the need toeconomize and select a tinysubset of information suggestthat more information is actuallydestabilizing. Despite easy accessto the same highly diffused infor-mation, with Web 2.0, individuals,firms, and cultures are more likelyto have very different modelsthat guide their actions, not moresimilar models. And this has thepotential to create not only com-petitive opportunity but unneces-sary conflict.

Panglossians again see a cornu-copia of plenty where more infor-mation is beneficial. Because oftheir self-generated, top-down,positive affective context, perhapsPanglossians are likely to engagemore superficial heuristic proc-essing that overlooks some ofthese negative details. Or perhapsdue to Meliorists’ general foulmood, they tend to look for these

details. I’ll leave it to the readerto decide.

Since Web 2.0 increases thespeed at which informationdiffuses, and because differentmodels of action will create morevariance or “noise” in the market,I contend that Web 2.0 is doingtwo things: it is expanding theoverall size of the complex regime(shrinking the size of the chaoticregime), and it is accelerating thepace of learning (SLCs). This hasthe effect of allowing markets tolive with increased speed or tur-bulence. Figure 9 depicts this rela-tionship between ordered andchaotic environments. It is as ifinformation desires complexityand shuns order or chaos.

Environments that have completeorder have information that is sim-ple, can be easily incorporatedinto decisions, and is available toall instantly. In this environment,information has little competitiveadvantage. Since all parties caneasily incorporate it simultane-ously, no party has the edge. Intoday’s world, these kinds ofenvironments do not exist, or ifthey do, they are rare. As soonas any information advantage isfound, competitors begin to use it,adding complexity and variety totheir models for action, matchingthe variety in the market. At theother end of the extreme areenvironments that have toomuch information that is utterlyambiguous, that if any agent didincorporate the information intoa decision, the probability of




success would be no differentthan pure chance. In these envi-ronments, information has littleadvantage as well. In fact, peoplecaught in these environmentscollectively begin to do things tostabilize the information by simpli-fying their strategies. In a sense,the market cools down and morepredictable patterns begin toemerge.

Competing for Gold

A thought experiment may help.Imagine a perfectly square largeroom, well lit with a pile of goldbars in the center. Imagine thatyou are in one corner of the roomand another person, a competitor,is in the opposite corner of theroom. The gold is exactly equidis-tant between you and the com-petitor. The goal of the game is toget the gold before the competitordoes. The rules are simple. A bellwill chime every other second,and you and the competitor areallowed to take a step of exactlyone meter (no more, no less) inany direction. There is no hiddeninformation. Both you and thecompetitor are equally awareof the rules and conditions andequally aware of what the beststrategy will be.

This is the land of full trans-parency. The relevant informationin the environment is simple andstable. If any new informationwere added (such as, “OK, bothcompetitors can now take stridelengths of 1.5 meters”), that infor-mation would be available to youand the competitor at the same

time. Neither of you would havean advantage, and both of youwould know that. Extra informa-tion does not yield any competi-tive advantage.

Now consider the opposite.It’s the same room, the samecompetitors, and the same gold,except that the room is dark andyou cannot see or hear anything.The gold is moving randomlyabout the room. There are norules about stride length. Whatdo you do? What happens whenmore information is added tothis game, such as “OK, bothcompetitors must not run about,”or the people controlling thegame whispered in your ear,“Your opponent can’t walk fast.”What do you do with the extrainformation? Since everything ismoving about, any additional

information won’t help. Anyplanned action is as good asrandom action.

Information then works bestsomewhere between the landof pure order and pure chaos.Because Web 2.0 tames chaoticdata through user-generated andmachine-generated codification,it “shortens” the distance betweenthese two zones (by making thebell curve in Figure 9 steeper),or as I have previously stated,increases the size of the complexregime relative to the chaotic (andordered) regime. What does thismean? Web 2.0 may very wellcontribute to faster oscillationsbetween nearly chaotic andmostly ordered states. Web 2.0enables a faster and more desta-bilizing flow of information.



Level of Entropy0

Probability of Occurrence

0

1

ChaosOrder

Zone of optimal information advantage

(edge of chaos)

Agent models increasing in complexity

Agent models decreasing in complexity

1

Figure 9 — Edge of chaos and optimal information advantage.

Figures 10 and 11 depict this“turbulence.”

Web 2.0 is not solely responsiblefor this. Information technologyhas been contributing to thesefaster transients between statesfor some time. Web 2.0 merelycontinues and accelerates thepotential rate of change.

The conclusion is stark.Companies need to figure outways of more rapidly absorbing

information, not shunning it.Companies probably need to fig-ure out more quickly what newknowledge will generate the nextstream of profits. Profit streamsmay have shorter life spans. Web2.0 approaches can be great toolsfor absorbing new information, orat the very least getting informa-tion captured in computer form,provided all the challenges (whichare by no means small) that Ihave discussed so far and more

that I have not are addressed.If corporate cultures can bedesigned to increase use of infor-mation, Web 2.0 technology suchas blogs and wikis seem to holdthe most promise. They mightmake it easier for firms to moti-vate customers and employees toparticipate and for firms to meas-ure effectiveness. Regardless, thegenie is out of the bottle. We mustfind ways of surfing bigger waves.Web 2.0 is likely to increase turbu-lence in markets, not decrease it.As many competing firms makesimultaneous IT investments inWeb 2.0 approaches, competitionbetween firms may heat up [7].Not entering the Web 2.0 game,despite its difficulties, may beworse than cleverly using a lim-ited subset of Web 2.0 techniques.

I suspect that both Panglossiansand Meliorists are sympatheticto the view that Web 2.0 IT haspotential here. Meliorists, how-ever, would be prone to exploringthe limits of the approach. Since



Ra

te o

f C

ha

ng

e

Time

Figure 10 — Rate of change over time.

Entropy

0

1

Time

Figure 11 — Faster transients over time.


human technology has changedso drastically in 2,000-plus yearsand human culture has changedso little, I find myself sympatheticto the Meliorist view. We mayhave reached the point wheretechnology is seriously challengingcultures to change. Time will tell.

Psychological Concerns

Exploiting information for advan-tage requires high levels of humanexpertise. Expertise takes timeand a sustained effort to develop.In studies of what differentiatesexperts from nonexperts, onething is clear. Experts sustainlonger and harder hours of prac-tice in which they continuallylearn and relearn their domainarea. They do so far more fre-quently, expending more effort.A study that observed ice skatersaids in understanding this idea.Researchers noted that the eliteice skaters fell as frequently asthe next tier of ice skaters. Thedifference is that the elite skaterscontinually attempted hardertechniques. Continued involve-ment in a field, even for 20 years,does not an expert make. Causalor even not-so-casual involvementin a field does not ensure thatexpertise will follow. Sustainedeffort, often for 10 to 20 years, isrequired [15].

In this regard, the differencebetween excellence and obses-sion is rather thin. But what cre-ates high levels of expertise is thewillingness to engage in longhours of sustained mental (orphysical) effort. How do you get

people motivated in pursuing along-term and often abstract goal?How do we create more of thisdeep psychological motivation sothat we can continue to developthe experts of tomorrow? In the21st century, these answers stillelude us.

Experts also possess superiorheuristic processing. They canmake fast, intuitive, “blink-like”judgments that are superior tononexpert judgments. To absorbinformation quickly and apply itaccurately, firms need more ofthese experts. Unfortunately, Web2.0, with its high interrupt-driven,instant gratification, rich Internetapplication (RIA)-powered userinterfaces, may be creating a con-text that destroys expertise beforeit can develop. Expertise develop-ment requires dedicated, uninter-rupted time on a complex taskso that a human mind can learnhow to codify, abstract, and thenrelate disparate pieces of complexinformation. It frequently requiresother human mentors.

We will not “media munch” ourway to expertise. We will not blinkour way to expertise. Web 2.0, as itis constructed now, will not help.

Panglossians may claim thatexpertise development can occurin machines, relieving humansof the burden. The cynical sideof me often wonders if all of Web2.0 isn’t some beautiful but evildesign by some mythical powerswho wish to dominant marketsand cultures. The pieces of thedesign are to:

Exploit human vanity toencourage the productionof valueless information toget more users to consumemore products.

Exploit the Pareto distributionof content value and pay a fewpeople millions for producingthe most widely consumedcontent (sort of like the TVshow American Idol or a statelottery). This will encouragemore generation of pulp non-fiction, thus enlarging the sizeof the long tail.

Keep extending the long tailto ensure fragmentation of thepopulace. If a new intermedi-ary tries to take the consumersaway from you, buy them out.Accumulate enough cash soyou can repeat at will.

Develop RIA so that expertisedevelopment is stunted, thusaiding fragmentation andreducing challenges to yourcontrol.

Use technology that can keeptabs on everyone at all times.

Use Time magazine to sprinklefairy dust on the entire schemeby calling all your loyal subjectsthe “person of the year.” Letthem eat cake. Continue toextract profits.

I do not seriously believe such evilintention was ever at play or isnow. Moreover, increased frag-mentation, while good for somecontrol, is not good for changingthe status quo and making marketor societal improvements that will



require the coordination of many.But, being part Meliorist, it is hardto resist the temptation to viewthe entire scheme this way.

WEB 2.0 PREDICTIONS

The report concludes by offeringsome of my predictions regardingWeb 2.0.

Enterprise Predictions

For enterprises wishing to exploitWeb 2.0, a number of predictionsemerge from this perspective:

Web 2.0 approaches willremain entrenched in humansociety.

Web 2.0 intermediaries willleapfrog each other until anear monopolistic threshold isreached. A few intermediarieswill remain and will inherit thetitle of “mainstream media.”

The Internet advertising modelwill, over time, continue tothreaten traditional softwaremanufacturers, especially inthe consumer software space.Using software as a loss leaderfor other paid services will con-tinue to grow. Due to the verydifferent shape of enterpriseinformation, it is unlikely thatthe Internet advertising modelwill affect enterprise softwarevendors like SAP and Oracle.

More industries will experiencemore turbulence, not less.Firms within those industrieswill take differential advantageof the increased quantity ofinformation that Web 2.0

creates, leading to imperfectcompetitor reaction. Whilemany firms will have a limitedrepertoire of Web 2.0 tech-niques, consumer marketsestablish the overall economicpatterns. Web 2.0 will increaseturbulence in many consumerindustries, as it is doing now.It is a matter of time beforeupstream suppliers to the con-sumer markets feel the heat.

Firms and individuals at theedge will have no more eco-nomic power relative to thecenter. The same tools that givethe edge more power are avail-able to the center to increaseits scale and control.

Intellectual ownership issuesin or near the chaotic regionof the I-Space that can causefirms some trouble are likely toincrease. At stake are controlover Web 2.0 APIs and Webservices that diffuse data andthe ownership rights of previ-ously valueless informationand data that may suddenlybecome valuable. Firms shouldbe careful in examining intel-lectual ownership issues andimplications as they partnerwith firms that make their livingin this chaotic regime. Web 2.0startups are particularly at risk.

For the majority of firms,Web 2.0 technologies andapproaches will not apprecia-bly affect their ability to extractprofits from the knowledgewithin the SLCs. Due tocultural, psychological, and

organizational problems, moreinformation will not help. Thetechnology to codify, abstract,and diffuse information hasexceeded the human abilityto exploit it. The expertise toabsorb this information anduse it perhaps follows a Paretodistribution. The few that canexploit this are likely to find sig-nificant short-term advantage.

Firm size may continue todecrease, as it has been doingover the past 20 or so years.Web 2.0 technologies, espe-cially social networking and vir-tual reality tools, may be usefulmeans for developing a distrib-uted workforce. This will helpfirms achieve scale efficientlyand may continue to encour-age firms to coordinate a flotillaof partners rather than aggre-gate them into a bigger form.

Political Predictions

Perhaps the more intriguingaspects of Web 2.0 involve itseffect on governments. While thisis certainly of concern to us tech-nologists, I will leave further dis-cussions to other Meliorists andPanglossians out there. I believethe analysis presented so far leadsto the following predictions:

Web 2.0 will be disruptive forincumbents in governments.Groups of citizens opposingincumbent power will con-tinue to take advantage of Web2.0 techniques. They will beable to move faster thangovernments, thus causing




shifts in public sentimentquickly.

Governments that need to con-trol the spread of informationwill in some cases attempt tocontrol Web 2.0 but will alsofind ways of exploiting it. Thesame tools that give the edgeadditional power are availableto the center as well. Over thelong term, the informationarms race may not exclusivelyfavor the smaller party.

Free speech and anonymityissues will continue to be prob-lematic. Since those who wishto oppose governments needto use digital media, they willcontinue to exploit the limita-tions of the Internet standardsto hide themselves. If we wereto fix the problems with theInternet technology so that allparties can be unambiguouslyidentified and all forms of textcan be clearly identified asdesirable and undesirable,we will be helping controlspam and fraud while assist-ing governments that wish tooppress people.

The essentially voluntary frag-mentation of the long tail mayreduce political cohesiveness,making it harder for societiesto solve problems. Commoninformation shared by all formsthe basis of political unity. Ifthe populace is further balka-nized, group polarization mayincrease, despite the free avail-ability of information [22].

RECAPITULATION

For better or for worse, Web 2.0 ishere to stay. The main fuel power-ing Web 2.0 is the need peoplehave to feel they have publishedsomething and the need for socialinvolvement. Since traditionalsocial networks — the family, thelocal community, religious affilia-tions, and even the workplace —do not provide the stickiness theyused to, it is no wonder that theWeb is rushing to fill the void.Multiplayer games, social net-working, and virtual reality are alldigital social networks that mil-lions of people are finding enjoy-able. Relationships have gonedigital, especially with the young.

Web 2.0 has evolved to exploit themass of chaotic data Web 2.0 pro-duces. RSS, social bookmarks andtagging, and blogs and wikis areways of giving this chaotic dataa little more structure throughslightly increased levels of codifi-cation and abstraction. This letsfirms like Google more effectivelysearch that information to bettermatch users to advertisers. Theneed to economize on costs tofeed an increasingly hungry andhard-to-defend long tail meansthat Web 2.0 will require interme-diaries with enormous scale andwill require more valueless data tobe produced so it can be tagged,codified, indexed, searched, andused to match advertisers toconsumers.

Web 2.0 helps information diffusewidely and rapidly. Some firms will

find ways to increase the speedand range of their social learningcycles to take advantage of thisinitially valueless but fast-movinginformation. As more firms do this,their markets may continue toincrease in turbulence, with poten-tial technological arms races devel-oping in IT-intensive industries.

Firms will need to carefullyinspect the shape of informationand their SLCs within their mar-kets and get a sense of the affec-tive qualities of information intheir SLCs before adopting Web2.0. Due to the significant differ-ences between the Web 2.0 wehave today and the so-calledEnterprise 2.0 that some are nowcalling for, it is possible that, formany firms, little of Web 2.0 willapply in corporate enterprise set-tings. These differences include:differences in how firms use infor-mation to make profit, differencesin the affective qualities of infor-mation, differences in the scaleof the long tail, and differencesin cultural and organizationalaspects between firms and gen-eral consumer populations.Enterprise 2.0 will not look likeWeb 2.0.

While many are claiming Web2.0 is empowering, it may be ush-ering in a new age of an evenmore powerful center. BecauseWeb 2.0 intermediaries requirescale and, for now, secret propri-etary technology to maintain anadvantage, and because the longtail of consumption is highly frag-mented, firms wishing to serve as



Web 2.0 intermediaries need tothink long and hard about thecompetitive strategies they wouldemploy.

Yes, Web 2.0 does represent aparadigm shift of sorts. It has ush-ered in a new era of engaging mil-lions of people in new ways. AsPanglossians have been saying,there is opportunity and potential.But as the Meliorists rightly pointout, it isn’t that simple. The slip-pery and often paradoxical natureof information will ensure this.

REFERENCES

1. Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail:Why the Future of Business IsSelling Less of More. Hyperion,2006.

2. Argyris, Chris. “Initiating Changethat Perseveres.” AmericanBehavioral Scientist, Vol. 40, No. 3, 1997.

3. Arrington, Michael. “Things Sure Are Quiet at MySpace News.” TechCrunch, 14 May 2007(www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/14/things-sure-are-quiet-at-myspace-news).

4. Boisot, Max H. “Is There aComplexity Beyond the Reachof Strategy?” Emergence, Vol. 2,No. 1, 2000.

5. Boisot, Max H. KnowledgeAssets: Securing CompetitiveAdvantage in the InformationEconomy. Oxford University Press,1998.

6. Boyd, Stowe. “Social Media: ARevolution in the Making.” CutterBusiness Intelligence ExecutiveReport, Vol. 6, No. 10, October2006.

7. Brynjolfsson, Erik, AndrewMcAfee, Feng Zhu, and MichaelSorell. “Scale Without Mass:Business Process Replicationand Industry Dynamics,”2007 (http://ssrn.com/abstract=980568).

8. Carr, Nicholas. “The Amoralityof Web 2.0.” Rough Type blog,3 October 2005 (www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/the_amorality_o.php).

9. Carr, Nicholas. “Is Web 2.0Enterprise-Ready?” Rough Typeblog, 12 April 2006 (www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/04/is_web_20_enter.php).

10. Carr, Nicholas. “Is Web 2.0the Wrong Path?” Rough Typeblog, 25 November 2006(www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/11/is_web_20_the_w.php).

11. Carr, Nicholas G. “IT Doesn’tMatter.” Harvard Business Review,May 2003.

12. Carr, Nicholas. “Two Viewsof Web 2.0 in Business.” RoughType blog, 21 March 2007 (www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/03/american_compan.php).

13. Carr, Nicholas. “Web 2.0’sNumbskull Factor.” Rough Typeblog, 27 April 2006 (www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/04/web_20s_numbsku.php).

14. Carr, Nicholas. “Web 2.0lierThan Thou.” Rough Type blog,23 October 2006 (www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/10/web_20ier_than.php).

15. Ericsson, K. Anders, NeilCharness, Paul J. Feltovich,and Robert R. Hoffman (eds.).The Cambridge Handbook onExpertise and Expert Performance.Cambridge University Press, 2006.

16. Feller, Joseph. “Web 2.0:What, So What, Now What?”Cutter Benchmark Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, February 2007.

17. Forgas, Joseph P. (ed.). Feelingand Thinking: The Role of Affect inSocial Cognition. CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000.

18. Koch, Christopher. “Web 2.0:A Community in Denial.” Koch’s ITStrategy blog, 17 January 2007(http://blogs.cio.com/node/647).

19. McAfee, Andrew. “Enterprise2.0: The Dawn of EmergentCollaboration.” MIT SloanManagement Review, Vol. 47,No. 3, Spring 2006.

20. Murugesan, San. “BusinessUses of Web 2.0: Potential andProspects.” Cutter Business-ITStrategies Executive Report,Vol. 10, No. 1, January 2007.




21. Musser, John, and Tim O’Reilly.“Web 2.0: Principles and BestPractices.” O’Reilly Media, Inc.,2006.

22. Sunstein, Cass R. “Is theInternet Really a Blessing forDemocracy?” Boston Review,Summer 2001 (www.bostonreview.net/BR26.3/sunstein.html).

23. TNS, Teenage ResearchUnlimited and MarketingEvolution. “Never EndingFriending: A Journey intoSocial Networking.” FoxInteractive Media, Inc.,Isobar, and CaratUSA, 2007.

24. Welsh, Tom. “Web 2.0.” CutterEnterprise Architecture ExecutiveReport, Vol. 9, No. 7, July 2006.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vince Kellen is the VP ofInformation Systems (CIO) anda member of the faculty of theSchool for Computer Science,Information Systems, andTelecommunications at DePaulUniversity. Prior to joining DePaulin 2003, Mr. Kellen served as abusiness strategy and IT consul-tant for several large and mid-sized companies, including20th Century Fox, Exxon/Mobile,General Mills, SC Johnson, ArthurJ. Gallagher Insurance Co., andR.R. Donnelley. He has spokennationally and internationally onCRM, knowledge management,and information visualization.Mr. Kellen has written four bookson database technologies andnumerous articles on technology

topics, including many for CutterConsortium. He lectures onenterprise architecture, CRMtechnologies, and distributed sys-tems and is currently researchingthe impact information visualiza-tion has on decision making.He can be reached at [email protected].



Use Web services to attract smallretail partners who can leverageyour company’s products

Realize the long-sought vision ofthe “network as platform”

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Creating BusinessValue with Web 2.0

1. The Impact of Web 2.0 onEnterprise Strategy by David Roweand Cassian Drew. Learn why Web2.0 is an enterprise issue and getguidelines for integrating Web 2.0tools and technologies with yourbusiness strategy.

2. Driving Revenue Growth withWeb 2.0 by Troy Angrignon. Gain aseries of tactical applications of Web2.0 that can be used now to createshareholder value for your company.

3. Web 2.0 and Enterprise BusinessIntelligence by Langdon White. Help your company develop betterbusiness intelligence — through Webservices APIs (like the Google Mapsmashup API) and Really SimpleSyndication (RSS).

4. Forming Product Communities inWeb 2.0 by Bruce Taylor. Explore themechanisms by which product com-munities form and how this process is

Summary

What’s all the buzz about Web 2.0?How can your organization harnessWeb 2.0 tools, technologies, and con-cepts (including such things as blogs,wikis, and the Long Tail concept) tocreate business value?

The new Cutter Consortium reportWeb 2.0: Leveraging Second-Generation Web Technologiesdistills current thinking on the essenceand interpretation of Web 2.0 andprovides guidance on identifying Web 2.0 business opportunities andthreats at your organization.

You’ll discover how to use Web 2.0tools and technologies to:

Differentiate your organizationfrom your competitors

Find new customers, retain existingcustomers, and provide yourservices at a higher profit margin

Capture corporate memory, bestpractices, and relevant experiencesthroughout your company

Take advantage of the Long Tail todiscover new markets and expandexisting ones

Leverage corporate blogs as amarketing/sales tool

CUTTER CONSORTIUM

Web 2.0: Leveraging Second-Generation WebTechnologiesTitle: Web 2.0: Leveraging

Second-Generation WebTechnologies

Authors: Troy Angrignon, John Berry,Cassian Drew, Curt Hall,Leslie A. Jump, Vince Kellen,Brian Pontarelli, David Rowe,Bruce Taylor, Tom Welsh,Langdon White, Ed Yourdon.

Published: December 2006

Pages: 128

Price: $247 / US $262 outsideNorth America (Please usecode 18R*E11INS whenordering.)

BusinessTechnology

Trends & Impacts

37 Broadway, Suite 1, Arlington, MA 02474-5552 www.cutter.comCUTTER CONSORTIUM

Go to www.cutter.com/bookstore.html

http://www.cutter.com/bookstore


affected by wikis, RSS, pervasive dataindexing, and tagging.

5. Identity, Trust, and Reputation 2.0by Brian Pontarelli. Review the issuesof identity, trust, and reputation, anddiscover what improvements need tobe made before nontrivial interactionscan take place on the Web.

6. Web 2.0 and CRM: Harnessing thePower of Collective BusinessIntelligence by Leslie A. Jump andVince Kellen. Learn how to marshal theenergies and passions of customers via“consumer-generated marketing.”

7. Web 2.0 by Tom Welsh. Explore theproposition that Web 2.0 is a newer,better model than the original Weband dig into the tangled mess of technology associated with Web 2.0.

8. Enterprise 2.0: Hip or Hype? byCurt Hall. Examine the philosophyunderlying the concepts of Web 2.0and Enterprise 2.0 and how companies

seek to actively involve their employees, partners, and customers in their business operations.

9. Web 2.0 — Software as Servicesby John Berry. Discover five trends thatsupport the acceleration of software-as-a-service.

To Order/For More Info:

Go to our secure bookstore at www.cutter.com/bookstore.html. (Please enter code 18R*E11INS atcheckout.) You can also order by: E-mail: [email protected]: +1 781 648 8707Tel: +1 781 648 8700

We accept all convertible currencies.Please contact us for current exchangerates or for information on processing awire transfer. (Checks in US dollars mustbe payable at a US bank. Checks inother currencies must be payable in thecountry of origin.) Thank you.

ABOUT CUTTER ...

Cutter Consortium offers high-level advisory and publicationservices, onsite assessments,consulting, and training to helporganizations forge solutions tothe IT challenges they face.

Cutter’s clients are able to tapinto its expertise in a variety of formats, including print andonline advisory services andjournals, mentoring, consulting,workshops, and training.

For more information on Cutter Consortium, pleasevisit www.cutter.com.

YES! Please send me ___ print copies of the report Web 2.0: LeveragingSecond-Generation Web Technologies at the rate of $247, US $262 outside North America.

I prefer the PDF version. Please send the report in PDF format by e-mail for US $247.

Name Title

Organization Dept.

Address/P.O. Box Mailstop/Suite

City State/Province

ZIP/Postal Code Country

Telephone Fax

E-Mail (be sure to include for PDF delivery)

Mail to Cutter Consortium, 37 Broadway, Suite 1, Arlington, MA 02474-5552, USA; fax to +1 781 648 8707; call +1 781 648 8700;send e-mail to [email protected]; or order online at: www.cutter.com/bookstore.html. (Enter Priority Code 18R*E11INS at checkout.)

Payment or P.O. enclosed.

Charge Mastercard, Visa, AmEx, Diners Club. (Charge will appearas Cutter Consortium.)

Card #

Expiration Date

Signature Priority Code: 18R*E11INSRP18EP/pdf

Go to www.cutter.com/bookstore.html

CUTTER CONSORTIUM






Business IntelligencePracticeThe strategies and technologies of business intelligence and knowledgemanagement are critical issues enterprises must embrace if they are to remaincompetitive in the e-business economy. It’s more important than ever to makethe right strategic decisions the first time.

Cutter Consortium’s Business Intelligence Practice helps companies take all theirenterprise data, augment it if appropriate, and turn it into a powerful strategicweapon that enables them to make better business decisions. The practice is uniquein that it provides clients with the full picture: technology discussions, productreviews, insight into organizational and cultural issues, and strategic advice acrossthe full spectrum of business intelligence. Clients get the background they need tomanage technical issues like data cleansing as well as management issues such ashow to encourage employees to participate in knowledge sharing and knowledgemanagement initiatives. From tactics that will help transform your company to aculture that accepts and embraces the value of information, to surveys of the toolsavailable to implement business intelligence initiatives, the Business IntelligencePractice helps clients leverage data into revenue-generating information.

Through Cutter’s subscription-based service and consulting, mentoring, and training,clients are ensured opinionated analyses of the latest data warehousing, datamining, knowledge management, CRM, and business intelligence strategies andproducts. You’ll discover the benefits of implementing these solutions, as wellas the pitfalls companies must consider when embracing these technologies.

Products and Services Available from the Business Intelligence Practice

• The Business Intelligence Advisory Service• Consulting• Inhouse Workshops• Mentoring• Research Reports

Other Cutter Consortium PracticesCutter Consortium aligns its products and services into the nine practice areasbelow. Each of these practices includes a subscription-based periodical service,plus consulting and training services.

• Agile Project Management • Business Intelligence• Business-IT Strategies• Business Technology Trends & Impacts• Enterprise Architecture• IT Management• Measurement & Benchmarking Strategies• Enterprise Risk Management & Governance• Sourcing & Vendor Relationships

Senior ConsultantTeamThe Senior Consultants on Cutter’s BusinessIntelligence team are thought leaders in themany disciplines that make up businessintelligence. Like all Cutter ConsortiumSenior Consultants, each has gained a stellarreputation as a trailblazer in his or her field.They have written groundbreaking papers andbooks, developed methodologies that havebeen implemented by leading organizations,and continue to study the impact thatbusiness intelligence strategies and tactics arehaving on enterprises worldwide. The teamincludes:

• Verna Allee• Stowe Boyd• Ken Collier• Clive Finkelstein• Jonathan Geiger• David Gleason• Curt Hall• David C. Hay• André LeClerc• Lisa Loftis• David Loshin• Larissa T. Moss• Ken Orr• Gabriele Piccoli• Thomas C. Redman• Ricardo Rendón• Michael Schmitz• Ed Schuster• Karl M. Wiig


Documents

Business Intelligence Vol. 7, No. 5 Web and Enterprise 2.0 › Kellen_2007_Web20.pdf · About Cutter Consortium Cutter Consortium is a unique IT advisory firm, comprising a group