Welcome to 2010 - the year E20 enters the state of Enterprise importance!

It’s been a while that I have been posting things on this blog. And even the new year is already quite some days old but still I am happy to see all these E20 initiatives and discussions from last year still being around and even more initiatives and discussion being on its way. The change has just begun and as from my feedback to projects in Europe the fossilized structure of organizations are breaking up – cover by cover.

The discussions around the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT in Frankfurt showed that though people are not talking very loudly about their projects there are quite a few E20 initiatives going on in European companies. As said before these projects are not always initiated at the highest C-level but they are also not running anymore totally under the radar of the C-level management. Lots of projects have gained quite some recognition within their company but still struggling to be an Enterprise-wide approach towards a new way of Enterprise organization and collaboration. There are only a few showcases that have reached this level.

But still – from my perspective 2010 will be the year that E20 enters the state of Enterprise importance more globally and recognizably. Why? Because the changes from the markets – both the economic situation as well as the customer-driven expectations – will force the management to rethink the way the enterprises are doing business, are organized and are securing their positioning within the markets. This will support projects that change enterprises to a more “outside-in” approach and help stirring up the innovation process (as this is number one competitive challenge today). As Enterprise 2.0 initiatives have demonstrated its supporting effects for these objectives in small projects within the enterprises, the c-level management will come back to these projects to be tried out in the large. This means the biggest challenge for E20 initiatives in 2010 is first to get the recognition for these effects within the organization and second to provide adoption schemes that are capable to guarantee the results for the large.

For us and our conferences we will therefore focus further on the success factors for adoption as well as how to install an effective E20 change management within the organization. First conference to discuss these next steps is the Enterprise 2.0 FORUM in Paris on March 18th with a bunch of exciting case studies – just have a look at http://e20forum.fr. To do the groundwork for this conference I will compile some more insights towards the French E20 market within the next posts (mainly summarizing the great work of Bertrand, Julien, Cecil and other French E20 afficionados). So let’s get ready to rumble!