Cooperation | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

What perimeter for and enterprise social network

February 23, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Maybe you remember of my posts about external networks and the relevance of enterprise 2.0 logics for SMBs. In both case the underlying issue whas about the perimeter of those networks.

As a matter if fact, in small of medium businesses, assuming that contacts are more simple (or are supposed to be…), the benefits of interconnecting people in order to build stronger synergies seems to be less obvious than in large ones.

This takes us to the point I raised for all kind of businesses : why do tools that favor collaboration and synergies must share companies’ borders while value is created, specifically in B2B, not inside the company but on the contact zone where internal and client’s teams work together.

Experience taught me two things : the size of a company of team isn’t a relevant indicator to estimate how easy of difficult it is for its members to work efficiently togehter and the weak point of many processes is interconnection between businesses.

Survey on the use of IT in french companies

February 20, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Two weeks ago I was invited by Microsoft to attend the presentation of a survey on the use of IT in fench companies. Two things made it really interesting

• Although the fact new generations were transforming the use of IT, there was no global study to quantify and qualify it.

• The methodology was neutral and exhaustive : they started with general considerations and focused step by step to get to business cases. So the survey provides sociological elements, that were qualified, assessed, turned into busines practices etc… Each step was managed by a specialized partner (Eranos, Added Value, Ifop andt BearingPoint ).

Let’s see what’s in.

Managing in a downturn

December 22, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

The Alumni Network of the famous french “Ecole Polytechnique” issued a report on “how to manage in a downturn’. Here are a few excerpts :

• Urgency does not mean lack of vigilance : state of urgency makes people focus on short term which bad effects are know…on long term. Moreover, enterprise compartmentalization and a hard context lead to a strong deterioration of communiation. At last, blind faith in systems disconnects managers from reality.

• short term and lack of markers. The contractual short term logic destroys people’s markers and confidence disappears.

• Innovation is key to survive a downturn. But it will have to be cooperative and operated inside alliances, with partners.

• Intangible assets are a source of differencitation and development. Companies must identify therm and build their new strategies upon them, using new appropriate dashboards and indicators for this paradigm.

• Digital as a tranformation lever : companies underuse the capabilities new technologies offer and don’t reinvent themselves because of overcautiousness and fear of changing era.

• Maintening the links with the ecosystem in crisis time is very important, knowing that it’s a time of high customers volatilty and that the public opinion will try to analyze even the weakest signal. Mastering one’s communication and information will imply to use tools that allow this new form of transparent communication.

Filed Under: Innovation, Management & HR Tagged With: Communication, cooperation, ecole polytechnique, Innovation, intagible asses, transformation

Switching from work to partnership

March 14, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Many people try to guess how enterprises will look like in the future. I’m afraid no one can answer thins question. In the other hand there are trends we can’t ignore : in the same way baby boomers dramatically transformed the companies they joined, digital natives will dot the same with our companies.

But prudence is required : everything we can read is sometimes “overplayed”, and I have no doubt our digital natives will have to climb down when they’ll realize some of their expectations are not viable on a long term track within an enterprise. And they won’t all be the mutants that are often described. But one thing is sure, an heavy trend is emerging.

I’ll also consider this evolution in relation to a phenomen I wrote about some times ago : the risk (or opportunity) to see , for economic reasons (information acquisition cost) or sociological (better personal standing), people positioning themselves outside the enterprise, as partners, service providers, instead of being salaried. French speaking people can also read this note about the end of defined work time, as new generations think of goals to achieve and no more about time you owe your employer. So we can draw some conclusions. [Read more...]