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Do software suppliers only have half a brain? By Simon Hurst

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26th Mar 2007
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Before I start I must stress that what follows are my initial impressions of what the range of Web 2.0 technologies is all about. This presents a couple of dangers. First, my initial enthusiasm may have led me to overestimate the potential and second, my revolutionary interpretation of what’s going on may have been obvious to the rest of the world for months – a bit like when you smugly announce a sudden insight into the plot of a TV detective program only for the rest of the family to look at you despairingly and mutter, ‘Have you only just realised that?’.

I’m not going to attempt a detailed definition of Web 2.0, but in very general terms Web 2.0 describes a range of internet technologies that have recently come to the fore – the most well known examples would probably be blogs and wikis [shared online documents].

I recently attended a meeting organised by David Terrar and hosted by Goodman Jones, the firm of accountants that won last year’s Accountancy Age ‘Best use of the Internet by a professional firm’ award. Under the title of ‘Wiki Wednesday’ the attendees were an interesting mix of developers, vendors and users. The format was also interesting – anyone who wanted to, could have five minutes ‘show and tell’ time to tell the meeting about their latest adventures.

I was a bit sceptical initially – the last meeting of a similar format I had been to was many years ago when someone was trying to persuade me to sell water filters using a method that absolutely wasn’t pyramid selling. However, with hardly an exception, Wiki Wednesday was very different. Developers had interesting stories to tell about the direction their applications were taking, and users revealed the effect that wikis and blogs had been having in their organisation.

One observation that immediately caught my attention was made by someone in a large company who contrasted the usual process of having to drag users ‘kicking and screaming’ to use a new application, with the introduction of an ‘undercover’ in-house wiki that had started to achieve tens of thousands of hits within a few months.

Not wishing to overstate the case for wikis, I did wonder whether the software industry had actually got it all wrong over the last 20 or so years and wikis would save the world.

Maybe there is a gaping void in the software that businesses use. Business software has tended to concentrate on all the right side of the brain stuff: handling accounting, process control and that sort of thing. Obviously, this is all very important and technology has played an extremely vital role, but it’s only part of what makes a business successful. Surely, it is, in part at least, an organisation’s ability to innovate and to harness the creative potential of its staff that puts it ahead of its competitors. Yet mainstream software development has tended to concentrate on the detail and failed to help support the creative side of business.

This emphasis on detail and control can make collaborative technologies such as blogs and wikis seem dangerous – where’s the control? How do we know that the information we are using is accurate? Well, perhaps none of that matters. Perhaps it is the very lack of control and the very presence of spontaneity that the creative side of business needs to prosper. The ability for anyone interested to make a contribution may result in far more effective realisation of an organisation’s intellectual assets than relying on favoured members of staff or badly run meetings.

Of course businesses need to sort out the traditional IT stuff- accounting systems, security and so on. But if there is a technology that might contribute to the success of the business, rather than just minimising its failures, it must be worth investigating.

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By david_terrar
27th Mar 2007 16:47

Come for some more creativity next Wednesday
Hi Simon,
I'm really glad you enjoyed the Wiki event. I think you've got it spot on that the risks are far outweighed by the rewards in "opening up" the organisation to community developed content on a Wiki or a blog. You've also hit upon one of my favourite topics - how creativity is stifled by the command and control approach of most organisations. The problem starts in our schools with the current education system focusing on achievement in particular subjects, at the expense of the creativity that we so desperately need to remain competitive in the current world. Children are born creative, and then we educate it out of them and teach them conformity and fear of failure. If all we can do is churn out well trained graduates in business and accounting related disciplines, there are plenty of countries who can do the same at much, much cheaper wages than the UK. We need more focus on creativity in education and in the workplace.

The next Wiki Wednesday is being sponsored by Microsoft next week on 4th April, and is taking place at their Soho office. Full details are on the wiki. Please book yourself on for an injection of some more ideas.
David Terrar
Business Two Zero

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Dennis Howlett
By dahowlett
29th Mar 2007 15:54

ah-ha
Sounds like Simon had an "ah-ha" moment. It's serendipitous to see the reference to gaping void.

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Simon Hurst
By Simon Hurst
29th Mar 2007 18:46

ah-ha
Speaking as a Led Zeppelin fan, that's probably better than an a-ha moment......

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