Interesting conversation last week last week on twitter with Hutch Carpenter and Gil Yehuda about how long Enterprise 2.0 adoption takes. This question is a real concern for many enterprises and, even if there’s no mathematical formula to help them to find an answer, maybe we can gather a few elements that may explain the mechanisms that make things happen more or less quickly.

First, I think it’s important to make things clear about what we mean by “enterprise 2.0 adoption” and go into what may accelerate or inhibit adoption.

What does “enterprise” mean ?

Are you a 50 000 employees company or a 50 people business ? It changes many things. Not because it’s more easy or difficult in any case but because the time things take to spread will not be the same. As the time needed for “preparation” because such projects need to be prepared beforehand. Saying “tools are there, enjoy !” is not enough.

In the case of a large business, are we talking about global adoption or adoption within a department. Which also leads to strategic issues : global mutation or small project proliferation, hoping the dynamics will spread.

What “adoption” mean

Here again, it’s important to know what we mean. Having tools at people’s disposal takes little time once the decision is made. Having these tools used on a wide scale takes more time. Creating value using these tools takes a little more time if things were well conceived, much more if not.

According to me, what must be aimed at is tangible value creation even if activity is a good indicator. The second will never come without the first, but we have to be conscious that if activity is the goal, things may quickly fade away to nothing when investments will be reassessed according to their ROI. Value needs activity but continuity needs value demonstration.

Depending on what adoption mean for you, you may say that it tool 3 years or 3 months. 3 months to launch the first pilots, 6 to get the first business successes, 1 year for a global deployment, 3 years for a global mutation.  These numbers are only examples but they are coherent with the reality of many companies.

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