The mass market culture has been fundamentally changed by the Web and the economies of the Long Tail. Companies often focus on bringing products and services to market with mass penetration being required to meet the demands of making a profit over the cost of sales and distribution. The Web has provided a channel that greatly expands exposure and lowers the cost of distribution and delivery. Many small niche markets are now more and more attractive to reach, and in aggregate are attractively profitable.
However,
Companies focus on strategic plans and annual business
plans – identifying the resources and organizational piorities that need to be
devoted and aligned to achieve business results. Those piorities are likely
focused on the front, large end of the tail and as such are high cost
transactions. While focus and alignment
are important, it can also diminish the opportunity for innovation and ideas
that might be slightly off-topic to high level priorities, but nonetheless can
alone or in aggregate yield productive ideas, streamlined or new economies in business process enhancements, or better customer engagement.
When collaboration is fostered by both access to simple, adaptable tools and technologies, and a cultural and management approach that supports collaborative work styles, productive ideas and work habits can flourish.
Evans and Wolf explore this notion in two case study examples as disparate as the Linux open source community, and Toyota. They recommend the following collaboration guidelines to advance productive collaboration, rules that I've posted in a mind map format. Like many powerful notions, these helpful "rules" are simple and direct, but perhaps not common enough.
Where collaborative Enterprise 2.0 tools and practices are used, both team members and managers can and must evolve to functioning in an increasingly networked and participative model, where some key people become hubs in a team, while others, especially managers, become links to wider networks of people and expertise.
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