Production | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Enterprise 2.0 as a part of the Global Enterprise

May 12, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 6 Comments

Many questioning about enterprise 2.0 these last weeks. How to make it work, how help companies to understand it, how to calculate the ROI ? So many questions that, at the end, can be summed up in only one : undestranding how these new logics can integrate into the existing and add to it. Without that, it’s obvious that either companies don’t dare either they will dare with overcautiousness and won’tbe able to get the most from their initiative, either will dare in a bad way and things will be counter-productives.

One consequence of this misunderstanding is that “2.0 projects” are isolated from the “real enterprise” in order to preven itself from any side effect of something that’s still not well understood (what proves once again how important it is to find answers to all these questions). So, what’s needed is to help companies to visualize things according to what they are today and according to their very nature.

First, the primary goal of any enterprise has to be identified. Easy : make money. Period. Of course we can discuss what can be done with that money and what can and cannot be done to make it, but it is the only undisputable goal.

What leads to an undisputable consequence : companies spend their time trying to organize themselves in order to produce as efficiently as possible. Becoming an enterprise 2.0 is not a goal for any enterprise and should not be. The only one is : improving the way things are done everyday, the way it produces.

But what does “production” really mean ?

Is there a 2.0 way to draw an org-chart ?

February 11, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 2 Comments

When talking about enterprise 2.0, something we offer hear is “sounds interesting but our company is not designed to work this way”. Understand : we decide to do something and we “push” it, don’t even think of allowing a bottom-up flow to exist in this context. Of course, that causes gaps, the company isn’t able to meet clients and employee’s needs right away, many realignments being necessary while the exchanges that would makes it easier are not facilitated at all. In a colorful language, companies use the existing pipes, hoping all pieces will fit together at the end.

That’s why I suggested to think about a Service Oriented Organization, which starting point is not the top of of the pyramid but the goals the organization has to achieve. Don’t forget that the purpose of any company is not to keep people busy or give to what already exist a reason to live but to meet the market’s expectations, even if it means to change what already exist.

Now let’s play a little game.

External social networks are not only for marketing purposes

January 21, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Generally, when I talk about social networks for other people than employees, I’m answered “ah ? I thought you were not interested in all these marketing things”. This is the obvious proof that, for many people and many companies, when you aim at an external audiance it’s for communication and sale purpose, following a one way flow. Said differently : “outside we talk, inside we work and both have nothing in common”. Seen with a little distance it embodies the idea according to which it’s the company that condition its environment and not the opposite.

Preconceived ideas that were true at a given moment but shows we are now entering a new era.

Can enterprises organize themselves as markets

January 17, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 3 Comments

What’s a market ? It’s a place when offer meets demand.

Companies love markets because it’s the more efficient way to find outlets for their products and identify suppliers. It’s a competitiveness factor because of the outlets it provides and the optimization of costs that competition makes possible.

The “social” web is a market somehow. Contents can find an audience, ideas outlets, projects people who’ll make them become real, people partners, question answers. It’s because of this market that events as trivial as flashmobs happened, that some people had great carriers evolutions, that some companies where born. This huge self-organized space made possible things that would not have been in a classical, organized, regulated market, operation costs making it irrational the organization of niche micro-markets. It’s because it has no physical nor economic barriers that the web made all this possible : intermediation and transaction costs are near to zero.

There is another place that is full of ideas, projects, needs, competences, longings, question, which would gain a lot if the ones were able to meet the others within its walls : the enterprise.

Experience showed me this is definitively the place where exist the more questions and answers, and the place where we can be sure there are very few chances that the ones meet the others. Companies are traditionnally, on this point of view, the place for misses opportunities. It may sound surprising according to all the things companies do, to all their obvious successes, but when looking at what they don’t or painfully do and would make sense, it may makes us feel dizzy. A kind of vertigo that is proportional with the size of the enterprise. Are there any reason to that ? Of course : high transaction and intermediation costs and the fact companies don’t want to give intermediation up.

What 2007′enterprise is. Production is changing.

March 3, 2007 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

At first sight nothing has changed. Coca Cola still produces beverages, GM cars… So what makes me say production changed ?

If you have a closer look you’ll realize that enterprises are now producing information. And what about car manufacturers for example ? Exactly the same. Consider, for example, how much information was necessary to conceive and build the famous Fort T ? And the amount of information that the same goal, making a car, requires now. Compare the number of people whose job is producing information to those whose job is producing the final product in the 70s…the 80s…and now. Enterprises are information producers because the part of information contained in each final product, may it be a car, a shampoo, a computer, is increasing to an extent we can hardly realize.
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